Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural.
Author's Note: This is part seven of the series Skies on Fire. Sorry, I meant to post it yesterday but had a medical emergency delay me. But here it is!
Two months later...
"Damn it!" Mary shoved her bloody finger in her mouth and ran her coarse tongue along the cut. Demons she could handle, chopping vegetables for soup kicked her ass. She could have easily ordered a pizza but it'd been so long since she'd had something other than fast food (she wasn't sure how her dad and uncle lived on that fake greasy crap) that she itched to actually get in a kitchen and make something edible.
She stepped to the sink and ran her finger under the tap. It didn't appear to need stitches, just antibacterial cream and a bandage. Luckily she hadn't made much of a mess of her bodily fluid so she was confident she could hide the injury from her dad. Dean had lately gone from overprotective father to paranoid freak. He'd started making excuses to ban her from hunts, which pissed Mary off to no end. She and her cousins were more than qualified for a damn salt and burn and her angelic powers had saved their asses on many occasions.
"There is nothing wrong with being a concerned parent," said a deep voice behind Mary. She spun around and frowned at Castiel. She hated telepathy. "Don't do that," Mary begged.
Castiel mumbled an apology. He crossed the motel room and reached for Mary's hand. She hid it behind her back. "Let me see," Castiel demanded. Mary shook her head. The last thing she needed was her lover making a big deal about her carelessness, which in turn would only fuel Dean's paranoia. She smiled and said, "It's fine, already clotted over." Castiel's expression was unmoved.
Mary sighed and grudgingly held out her hand for Castiel's inspection. He gingerly took the lean digits in his rough palms and held her index finger to his eyes. "Just a scratch," he concluded. He kissed the dark red scar. Mary automatically jerked her hand away. This was how it always started; one simple touch was enough to make her head spin. "I've got soup to finish," Mary said hastily.
Too late. Castiel was fully aware of the thought that crossed the young woman's mind. He smirked. "Soup can wait."
"So can you." Mary pivoted and resumed chopping a carrot into little pieces. She felt Castiel wrap his arms around her waist, his soft lips tickling her ear, his face buried in her thick brown hair. She leaned back into his embrace but continued her work. "You're beautiful like this," Castiel murmured. "You're free, no cares, no war, just you and me."
Dropping the bright orange cubes into the pot on the stove, Mary was reminded of her mother's elegance in the kitchen. They were rare occasions, those family dinners, but her mother went above and beyond to make them as perfect as possible. For a few hours there were no demons, no angels, no shotguns and rock salt. They were just a family.
Castiel positioned himself at the little table opposite the stove. The kitchen area of the cramped motel suite was pushed to the back of the room, partitioned by a low bar that was too narrow to pass for a table, so an actual table had been installed. It was here that Castiel sat, watching his lover playing house.
"Where is everyone?" Castiel asked.
Mary tossed a few final vegetables into the pot and turned the range to the lowest setting. "Dad and Uncle Sam are working a job, Aunt Ruby's interrogating the demon we caught last week, and John and Jessica went to Uncle Bobby's to rummage through his books," Mary explained. Castiel nodded. Mary expected him to be silent. He was the one who brought the kappa to their attention and suggested Dean and Sam take Mary along. Dean adamantly refused. Castiel knew better than to go up against the Winchester stubbornness and let the subject drop. Once he threw up the white flag, that was it, end of discussion, he would have nothing more to say. Mary liked that aspect of his personality, it made for a good listener.
Right now though, Mary didn't need an ear, she needed a shoulder. She'd spent the past several weeks adjusting to life with her family but had yet to run into her mom. "Now that I have you alone, I have to ask how Mom is."
"Fine," Castiel said simply. Mary hoped he would elaborate. She yearned to know more. After a minute's pause, she squirmed and asked, "Does she know I'm here?"
A single nod was her answer. That was enough to break the camel's back. Mary exploded. "What? She freaking knows that I'm here, in the same time she is, and she hasn't contacted me? I spent eight years, eight years, Cas, thinking she had disappeared with Dad, thinking she was dead, until you blurt out 'No, she's alive, she's just in the past because the mother you know has been jumping through time and actually hasn't given birth to you yet!' Do you know how twisted and confusing this all is? Why the hell hasn't she come to me and tried to explain? What the hell does any of this mean?"
Mary's face was flushed and her breathing labored. Her chest rose and fell quickly, as though she'd run several miles. Castiel lowered his gaze to stare at his shoes.
"Aren't you going to say something?" Mary shouted. She couldn't hold in her anger. She didn't mean to take it out on Castiel but there were some things that couldn't be discussed with her father or her uncle, and her cousins never had understood the whole manipulation of the timeline thing. Castiel was the only one besides her mother who would understand and since her mom wasn't in the picture, her lover was forced to take the brunt of her emotions.
Castiel spoke slowly, allowing time to pass for Mary to cool down. "Our lives are complicated. We do not adapt to time, we create the present around us. There is no future or past, there is only whenever we exist. Time has no meaning to us," he said. He looked up at Mary with sad eyes. "The woman who raised you did not fetter herself solely to your time. She spent much of your childhood, unbeknown to you, in many eras with many people you have never met and never heard of. But her experiences came at a price- you."
Mary slid into the chair across from Castiel, more confused than she was earlier. "How do you mean?"
"She loves you more than anything, Mary. She knew the life of God's warrior and never wished it for you. When it was decreed that the burden of leading us to victory would fall to you, she flew into a frenzy. She tried everything she could to change that future for you. She began to question Him and her wavering faith led her down a path few of us have ever trod." Castiel stopped here, letting his words sink in.
Mary just looked at him incredulously. "I'm the root of her doubt?" she asked.
He reached under the table and took her hands. "There's more. It won't be easy, but stay with me." He waited for Mary's acknowledgment before continuing. "She removed her grace and fell to Earth. She lived as a human for over twenty years before her grace was restored. That was why she left when your father disappeared. She didn't know what happened to him. She thought you were in good hands, that he was there for you, and so she traveled to what you call the past and she started anew."
Mary exhaled slowly. This was almost too much. She stared into Castiel's eyes and saw pity. She saw how it hurt him to hurt her but she also saw determination, a reflection, she presumed, of her own stoic stance. If she wanted to truly know the woman who was her mother then she needed to hear what Castiel was telling her. "You said she restored her grace?" Mary's voice broke with the question.
"With your father's help. She's one of us again but..." Castiel faltered. "But there will be repercussions for what she did. Eventually, anyway."
That caught Mary's attention. "Eventually?" She scrunched her forehead. "What does that mean?"
"Your destiny is greater than her punishment. She will not face judgment until after your birth."
Mary let out a long breath. That didn't leave her mother much time. She glanced at Castiel, studying his face while she worked out an appropriate way to phrase her next question. He didn't give her the chance. The coldness in his eyes was all she needed. Mary began to sob. Castiel moved to his beloved and pulled her close. Mary felt helpless. There was nothing she could do to help her mother, for when He made a decision, that decision was upheld.
"Shh, it'll be alright," Castiel whispered. He lifted a hand to Mary's face and wiped away her tears. His touch was like electrocution, sending a deep, warm shock through Mary's body. She grabbed the lapel of his coat and pulled him to her level, forcing her mouth on his.
Mud squelched beneath Dean's boots. The river to his right gurgled along a series of large boulders that stuck out from the gravel bottom. Dead fish washed up on the bank. All around were skeletal oak trees, barren and frozen in the winter chill.
Dean trudged to the Impala, which was parked along the shoulder of the highway parallel to the river. He kept going over the night's hunt. He and Sam had tracked the kappa, a Japanese water demon that Dean thought was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen, then his dumbass brother tricked the demon into emptying the bowl in its head by bowing to it. Once dry, it shrieked, convulsed, and froze in a terrible voiceless death scream. Dean cremated the body while Sam walked around the car, looking for a signal on his cell phone. He insisted on being available if John or Jessica found something in their research and needed to get hold of him.
The youngest Winchester brother was leaning against the passenger side door. He looked up as Dean approached but did not hang up the phone. "No, all Ruby got out of him was that the demon Mary killed two months ago was pretty high on the hierarchy, kick-ass powers and all. He was old, maybe ancient even, so you have your work cut out for you." Sam jerked his head towards Dean, who was throwing weapons in the trunk. "Okay, take care of yourselves. I love you," Sam ended the call.
Shutting the trunk, Dean glanced at his brother. "You okay, Sammy?"
Sam nodded, slipping his cell phone into his pocket. "Just worried about my kids." He grinned at his brother. Dean knew Sam relished fatherhood, nearly as much as Dean himself did.
The boys were about to jump in the car and head back to the motel when Sam's phone went off again. He frowned, fished it from his pocket, and flipped it open. "Ruby, what's up?"
Dean adopted his brother's worried expression. They had agreed to rendezvous with Ruby at the motel when they finished the hunt and she got information out of the demon she was interrogating. She would only call if something had gone wrong with her job. "I'm on my way," Sam was saying. He closed his phone for the second time and sighed. "She lost the human it was possessing and was forced to exorcise it. She needs help getting rid of the body."
"I'll drop you off." Dean moved for the driver's seat, keys jangling in his hands. Sam's hand was on the door handle when a feminine voice said, "Give Sam the keys."
Both brothers whipped around and gasped. "Anna?" Dean asked. The skinny young woman standing in the shadows behind the Impala nodded. "Hello, Dean," she smiled, "we need to talk."
Dean tossed Sam the keys. "One scratch and you're dead," he warned his little brother. Sam smirked, rounded the car, and zoomed off. Dean turned to Anna, grinning. "Thought I'd never see you again," he said.
Anna did not smile back. She simply looked at Dean with tired, sad eyes and stepped into the glow of a nearby streetlamp. Dean's eyes grew wide as he took in the small rounded bump protruding from Anna's stomach. "You're pregnant," Dean breathed.
"These books are so not helping!" Jessica moaned. Her head crashed into her hands, blond tresses falling forward to obscure her face. She let out another groan. "How are we supposed to research a demon that old?"
John shoved another dusty tome towards his sister. "We pray he's mythical. The stories might not be accurate, but they'll be something to go on." He flipped a few pages of the book his was reading. Words blurred and he swore it was written in Latin. He finally slammed the damn thing shut and glanced at Jessica. "I give."
Jessica, too, was beyond defeated. They'd been attacking Bobby's library for nearly five hours now and could find not even a trace of the demon they were looking for. Ancient and powerful just wasn't enough to go on.
"Here's the ones from upstairs." Bobby dropped a pile of heavy leatherbound books on the table, making Jessica jump. "How ya'll doing?"
Another groan escaped Jessica's lips. "That bad?" Bobby asked. He wiped his brow. "Keep looking, he's bound to be in there somewhere."
"What if he's not?" John piped up. Bobby stared at him incredulously. "I mean, we've been through almost everything you have and we've got nothing. Maybe this one was just so old he's been forgotten."
Bobby adjusted his trucker's hat and sighed. "If that's the case, we're really screwed. Cuz if he ain't the biggest bad in the food chain, then I don't wanna know bout the ones who are."
Sam pulled up to the abandoned farmhouse and cut the enginge. The place was grey, with busted windows and a sloping roof. Best place to hold a demon. It was out of the way of civilization and was an unlikely target for high school pranksters.
He pulled the heavy door and slipped into the musty space. It was large and dark, with a low loft and molding bales of hay. In the center of the barn was a metal folding chair atop an elaborate image drawn in chalk. Ruby stood over the body of a middle-aged man in flannel t-shirt and torn jeans. "Took you long enough," Ruby muttered.
"Bitch later, we've got a job to do." Sam knelt beside the body. The man's mouth was askew and his eyes were only half-closed. Apparently he had slumped to the floor and retained the fetal position. "Good going, Ruby, rigor mortis has set in."
Ruby shrugged. Sam ignored her and lifted the body off the floor. "Grave's this way," Ruby said as she exited the farmhouse. Sam followed on her heels.
The grave was shallow but adequate. Sam dumped the body and sent Ruby to the car to get the salt, kerosene, and matches. When she returned, Sam was hesitant about their next move. "This isn't right," he said. "His family will never have closure, he deserves a proper burial."
"He's wanted for murder, Sam. He may have been possessed but the cops won't care. It's better this way. No trial, none of that messy news coverage to bother the family, they'll remember him as he was."
Sam had to agree with that. He poured the kerosene and sprinkled the salt, just to be on the safe side and make sure the demon really was exorcised. Then he lit a match and orange flames leaped up from below.
They shoveled earth over the body, filling the hole, before heading back to the car to drop off their materials. Sam handed Ruby a bucket and a sponge. "There's a pump over there, fill the bucket and scrub the Devil's Trap off the floorboards."
Ruby rolled her eyes but did as told. Sam shoved the chair in the backseat of the Impala and went back into the farmhouse. Ruby was on all fours making sweeping motions with her arms to remove the chalk. All Sam saw was her ass.
"Unless you're gonna help me, stop staring," Ruby said. She tossed Sam a smile and dunked the sponge in the bucket.
Sam crossed to Ruby as fast as his long legs would carry him and pulled her to her feet. She grinned, threw the sponge to the floor, and wrapped her arms around his neck.