The Haunting of Mary Winchester

_You are so beautiful.

I'm your son. I don't know how else to say it. I'm your son.

You think you can have that normal life that you want so bad but you can't. It's all going to go rotten. You'll die and your children will be cursed.

Mary rolls over, forcing the voices out of her head, cotton pillowcase cool against her cheek. The baby monitor is blinking on the bedside table. Sammy's mostly been sleeping through the night but it sounds like he's getting fussy tonight.

Promise me, no matter what you hear, you won't...

She shakes her head firmly and slides out from under the covers, shivering a little in the November chill. The TV is on downstairs and her house is dark and safe and everything is perfectly fine.

Sammy is restless tonight but Mary loves these times with him as she holds him and walks from the crib to the dresser and back again. She murmurs to him softly, telling him about hedgehogs, cathedrals, or fireflies.

The night the yellow eyed stranger appears in the nursery, she doesn't remember running up the stairs. She doesn't remember how she gets past him. She doesn't remember how he winds up stumbling back against the dresser.

He looks surprised, as if a kitten just scratched him. Then he smiles.

Pain makes her aware again.

Only then does she think to scream.

He pins her to the wall, the ceiling, and splits her gut open with a twist of his hand. It hurts and she's going to die any minute and her family will never, ever be safe.

The reaper appears before the fire does, her eyes full of ageless pity, and Mary says no. She'll stay behind and keep watch.

John sits on the hood of the car, holding Dean who holds Sammy. The smoke lingers raw and bitter in the back of his throat. In some part of his mind he is still upstairs in the nursery watching Mary burn and the only thing that brings him back to reality is when Dean sneezes.

It seems to John that he has always been cold except along his arm where it encircles his four year old son, that the lights of the emergency vehicles have been his only illumination, that Mary had never really been with them.

Perhaps he only dreamed her.

The stench of melted flesh, smoldering and blackened, clings to the scorched walls and furniture of the abandoned nursery. To the espresso wood crib and its mobile dangling its cushioned baseballs and mitts, once rotating gently above it. To the colorful stuffed giraffes and other animals once lined up on wall shelves, to the sailor print curtains no longer covering the nursery window.

If either of the beings present inside had an ounce of morality in themselves perhaps the encounter would have prompted a less reposeful disposition.

Tessa observes the gowned woman with her green mournful gaze out the second story window, with her mouth set in a determined line. This particular woman, stone silent when the firefighters managed to put out the blaze and hoisted out her grotesque misshapen corpse for the paramedics team on the cool dewy lawn…it is a very important task to reap her. Perhaps one of the most important and delicately approached reapings.

I'm dead…aren't I? Mary finally acknowledges, her pale bare arms crossing over herself as if there's a possibility that she feels the chilly evening. Her visage remains unmarred, as she was before the start of the demonic attack, the fire.

Tessa nods, keeping her distance. It's easier when you accept, she explains deliberately, gently. You can rest now. There's no more pain. The reaper makes no expression as Mary chuckles, facing away from the window and staring at the empty driveway, at the single cop car patrolling down the cleared out street, where her grim faced husband and children vanished from her line of sight as they rode away down that dark street in their family's vehicle.

Those motherly and warm green eyes narrow in a deep familiar emotion. Soft features hardening, bitter. A cynicism of breaching the subject of otherworldliness worthy of a hunter's intuitive. And why should I believe anything you say?

I don't expect you to, Tessa tells her plainly. She holds out her hand. But you've suffered enough, don't you think?

Mary unwraps an arm from herself, reaching down to press a palm to the flat space of her stomach where it had ripped open agonizingly and slow, dripping bloody from the ceiling, and she turns herself back to the window, rustling her clean white gown.

My family is about to suffer more than I ever did. My sons. I can't leave them, she murmurs.

There's nothing you can do for them now.

Demon or not, you can't know that for certain, Mary argues, lips quirking faintly when Tessa's hand lowers, rebuffed. They're still my boys. Even if I'm a spirit I need to watch out for them. Because no one else knows about the yellow eyed demon and what he'll do.

They're not alone. They have each other. They no longer need you, Mary Winchester. Her shoulders tighten at those harsh truthful words and the dark eyed reaper gives Mary a half smile. You have a choice, of course. There's always a choice. You can move on, accept your passing and be at peace, or you can suffer further. As a vengeful spirit doomed to walk the ruined halls of your beloved home until your rage eats away your very existence from this world.

A pause, a nighttime breeze from the shattered nursery window flows in and Mary's gold curls remain limp to the invisible caress.

You are sure? Tessa asks, disguising her reluctance in the decision with that fictitious smile still in place.

The dead woman cocks her head smugly. I don't think I need to repeat myself.

A heavy sigh. Then I am sorry for your loss.

Wisps of smoke rise into the air, thickening and surrounding Mary's form. Then the flames, red, orange, bellicose yellow, lick around the gown, around her limbs, whipping her hair around her shoulders and stern face. And now I want you out of my house.

The reaper waits one last moment before obeying, out of respect and not fear. A spirit cannot harm her.

But she can harm herself.

She will harm herself.

There's no rest for the malevolent souls.