My heart bleeded, girl

Master Post

We will organize our children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way…



Prologue

One of Mary Campbell's earliest memories is of hiding under her bed, salt rough and scratchy beneath her bare knees. She can still remember holding one hand over her mouth to keep from sneezing at the dust bunnies hiding there with her.

In her other hand she clutched the doll Nana gave her on her third birthday, hugging it close. Her fingers worked the colorful threads knotted into its dress, their patterns offering familiarity and comfort.

"Don't make a sound," her mother whispered, and then she was gone.

Mary's daddy had taught her how to be as quiet as a mouse, and so she held as still as she could. She smiled when she thought of Daddy's voice, deep and warm when they played together.

"Mice aren't quiet, Deanna. They make all kinds of damn noise, rustling in the walls, can't even tell if they're really mice, or –"

"Hush," Mary's mother had said, putting a finger over Daddy's mouth and laughing. "Go on now, you two. Mary, you show your daddy how quiet you can be. Don't worry about any mice."

Mary nodded and slipped out of the kitchen when Daddy covered his eyes with his hands and started to count. They'd been practicing, and Mary could walk across the hall and up the stairs without making any noise at all. She knew each step and had figured out which ones made noise when she trod on them.

It took Daddy a long time to find her when they played hide'n'seek that day. She was huddled inside the linen closet at the end of the upstairs hallway, and he had been so proud of her that he kissed her on the cheek and told her she was his best girl.

I'm Daddy's best girl she thought now as she breathed slow and quiet. The dust bunnies in front of her barely moved, and Mary knew she was doing a good job. She wanted her Daddy to be proud of her.

Something scary was in the house, but she was safe under the bed as long as she was quiet and as long as the salt stayed just the way Mommy sprinkled it.

Mary wanted to run her fingers through the line of salt that encircled her. She liked how it felt, and she wanted to draw designs in it, maybe just like the designs on her doll's dress. She knew they were special designs. Her hands made tiny fists as she resisted the urge.

There was a scream, the kind of screech Mrs. Wilson's cats made sometimes when they played under Mary's bedroom window at night. Mary jumped a little when she heard it, but she didn't make a sound.

She waited, barely breathing, and soon Mommy lifted up the bedspread and peered under the bed at Mary. "It's okay, baby, you can come out now. Everything's okay."

Mary frowned at her mother and hesitated. She wasn't sure she liked the screeching noise, but Mommy nodded reassuringly, so Mary scooted out from under the bed and flung herself into her mother's arms.

"I'm sorry," she said into Deanna's neck. "I messed up the salt when I came out." She clutched her doll and shivered.

"That's all right, honey. The scary thing is gone now. The salt is fine." Mommy held her tight and said soothing words as she rocked her in her arms.

"Can you tell Daddy I was real quiet?" Mary asked, looking at her mother with wide eyes.

Mommy smiled. "Yes, baby, I'll be sure to tell him. In fact, he should be home soon, and you can tell him yourself."

Daddy had been proud and said she was a good girl. He told Mary to go play, and then he shook his head and frowned at Mommy.

"How did it get in here?" Mary heard him ask as she went in the other room to find her doll.

"I don't know," her mother said, and after awhile Mary had forgotten all about the scary thing and the salt under the bed.

She learned, though. Over the years she learned about a lot of scary things. She learned a lot of different ways to kill them, too, and all about how to ask people questions so they didn't think you were crazy or dangerous.

Sometimes it was fun, and sometimes it was terrifying.

Sometimes she just wanted to go to the movies with her friends.

When she was six, Mary's father taught her to use a gun.

When she was seven, he started teaching her how to fight with her fists and her feet.

When she was eight, her mother taught her how to handle a knife. How to protect herself with it and how to kill things with it.

When she was ten, they started teaching her about all the scary things that were out there in the dark: what they were called, what they did, and how to kill them. She read books that were nothing like the books she read in school.

Sometimes she dreamt about the things she learned, and she'd come to breakfast hollow-eyed and quiet.

Her mother would look at her knowingly and give her extra orange juice to drink, but no one ever told her she didn't have to read the books anymore.

For Mary's sixteenth birthday, her parents gave her a silver charm bracelet. She thought it was beautiful, until she actually looked at the charms. No poodles or ballerinas or hearts for her charm bracelet. Just signs and sigils and amulets - things to keep her safe.

Maybe it's beautiful after all. She wears it every day.

She's gotten really good at sneaking out of the house, climbing easily out of her bedroom window, and after she meets John Winchester, she gets even better at it.

"Daddy, I really don't see what your problem with John is," Mary says, taking the bowl of mashed potatoes from her mother and dropping a spoonful onto her plate. "Why are you so uptight?"

Samuel rolls his eyes, stabbing his fork at his pot roast. "I'm not uptight. John Winchester is a mechanic." He says mechanic with the same scorn he reserves for anything that's not hunting-related. "He's young and he's soft. There's no way –"

"Samuel, that pot roast hasn't done anything to you, and what's more, the cow it came from is already dead." Deanna turns to Mary. "What your father is trying to say is that no boy will ever be good enough for his little girl. My father said the same thing about him before I married him." She smiles fondly at her husband.

"He was in Viet Nam, Daddy," Mary says with determination. "He's a Marine. He's not soft."

"War isn't the same thing as being a hunter," Samuel insists, putting down his fork and frowning at her.

"Thank God," Mary says, glaring right back. "I don't want to marry a hunter –"

"Marry? Who said anything about marriage? You're too young to be thinking about that, and you're certainly not going to marry John Winchester. Are we going to have this conversation every time we sit down to eat a meal?" Samuel shakes his head.

"You're real talented, Mary. You have a lot of skills, a lot of knowledge. You going to let that all go to waste to live some normal, ordinary life?" he asks. He says normal as if it's a dirty word.

Not normal, Mary thinks. Safe. But she doesn't say that out loud. The last thing she wants is for her father to think she's afraid of this life. She isn't.

She just hates it, that's all.

She loves John Winchester, and she wants to marry him. She wants to have his children. And while she doesn't blame her parents for her life, it's not a life she wants for her own family.

She wants her children to be safe from the things that hide in the dark.




And then a hunter named Dean shows up at their door, and Mary's life goes to hell. For one shattering, heart-stopping moment she thinks she's lost everything.

When the demon uses her father's dead body to speak to her, when he offers her John's life and the promise of safety, the only thought in Mary's head that has any meaning at all is John.

She can't make sense of anything else.

"Mary? It's a good deal, so what do you say?"

She's aware of Dean in the distance, screaming at her, but she barely hears his words of warning. She cradles John's head in her lap and says yes.

The demon's eyes glow yellow in the black night.




John is her rock, helping her deal with her dead parents, with the police and all their questions. Her parents' deaths aren't the only ones – the yellow-eyed demon has been busy, after all. Mary manages to persuade both the authorities and John that a deranged lunatic is on the loose, and that she and John were lucky to escape him.

She's not sure when she became such a good liar.

Mary wants to give her parents a hunter's funeral, but there's already too much attention on her, and besides, John would think she'd gone insane.

Arranging for their cremation is the next best thing she can do, and if Mary quietly pours salt in their caskets as she says her goodbyes, well, nobody sees her do it, and she sleeps better at night.

She and John get married, and they live in her parents' house. It's not perfect, but it's everything she's ever wanted.

Mary loved her parents very much, and she grieves for them. When John is at work she writes letters to other hunters, people whose names she finds in her father's journal, telling them about her parents' deaths. She only hears back from the few she's met before, offering their sympathy but no real shock or surprise.

That sense of inevitability is why Mary wanted out in the first place, but now that she's out, she'd gladly trade her safety for her parents' lives.

Not John's life, though. She doesn't think she'd trade John's life for anything.

Time passes, and Mary becomes skilled at pushing things away. Memories, guilt, fear; she pushes them all away and gets on with her life.

There's really not anything else she can do. She doesn't have much of a choice.



Dean

Mary Campbell Winchester gives birth to her first son on January 24, 1979. She names him Dean after her mother.

He's a beautiful baby, with big green eyes that stare up at her curiously when she sings her favorite Beatles' songs to soothe him to sleep.

She is fiercely protective of him. She's afraid sometimes, when she lets herself think. There are protections and sigils all around the house, and Mary does what she needs to with salt. John never notices.

"Angels are watching over him," Mary says, smiling down at her son in his crib.

"Really?" John teases. "Angels?" He eyes the white porcelain angel that sits on the nursery shelf and shakes his head. Mary pinches his arm, and he ducks away from her. "Ow."

"Yes, angels," Mary says. Her father always told her angels weren't real, but Mary figures that if there are demons, there must be angels, and she's sure they're keeping an eye on Dean.

"He's a cute kid," John says, gazing with pride at his sleeping son. "I think he looks like your mom." John sounds uncertain, like maybe Mary wouldn't want to hear that, wouldn't want to talk about her mother.

She doesn't want to, it makes her remember things she doesn't like to think about, but Dean has her mother's eyes and her fair skin and light hair. Mary can see her mother in his happy grin.

Dean is a good baby most of the time. He wants Mary's attention, needs it like air or water most days.

"Your son," she says, verging on exasperation when she finally gets Dean down in his crib, eyelids fluttering in his sleep, his tiny lips sucking while he dreams. She snuggles next to John on the couch, yawning.

"He needs you, just like I do," John says, smiling, his arm around her waist pulling her close.

Mary tips her head over onto his shoulder and sighs. She feels such contentment in her exhaustion that the memory of what she lost seems very far away.

She feels nothing but relief that no one is telling her what a good age might be to introduce Dean to the idea that maybe he'd like to grow up and learn how to kill things.

There's no timetable telling her now, now, Mary, it's never too soon to teach him how to be afraid, better get started now.

She cleans her house and cooks meals for John and takes Dean for walks in the park in his stroller. She's filled with a peace she never thought she'd have.

Fear slips away, and with it, guilt. It wasn't her fault. What choice did she have?

Soon, nothing scares her.




As time goes on, though, Mary finds herself missing her parents again. It's as if she spent the first year of Dean's life in a fog, and now she feels herself emerging from that hormone-bathed anesthesia, shaking her head to clear it.

Her grief strikes without warning, leaving her trembling with loss when she's using a simple kitchen knife the way her mother taught her, the way that can either slice a banana or carve up a shapeshifter.

She wishes her mother were here to see Dean, to watch as Mary starts a family, becomes a mother herself.

Mary sings Dean the songs her mother sang to her, but she doesn't tell him the bedtime stories her father told her.

Her father never made Mary feel like he wished he had a son instead of a daughter. His wife was a skilled hunter and so was his mother, and he had no sexist notions about gender and skill.

His bedtime stories were all about strong men and brave women, battling monsters and saving the innocent townsfolk. Mary thought they were wonderful, and she wanted to grow up to be one of those strong, brave people.

And when she did, she realized the stories left out the most important things. They left out how real the blood is, how the acrid stench of burning flesh stays in your nostrils for days. The brave men and strong women didn't mention the way grave dirt gets under your fingernails and packs into the soles of your shoes, until you almost don't notice it anymore.

You don't notice it until your best friend at school wrinkles her nose and asks you why you smell funny.

The stories leave out the screams and the blood and the fear.

Mary doesn't think she can forgave her father for that. He was her father, and she loved him. She misses him with a terrible grief and emptiness, but she would rather die than ever tell her son one of those stories.



John

Dean is a very determined two-year old. He comes up with more ways than Mary would have thought possible to convey the concept of NO.

And then he smiles at her and she melts. Her son is a charming two-year old as well as a determined one.

John is even less able to withstand Dean's chubby-faced grin than Mary, and it makes her laugh.

"You're such a pushover, John," she says as John sets Dean's rejected cup of apple juice down on the kitchen counter in defeat.

John shakes his head. "Kid knows what he wants and what he doesn't want, Mary," he says, pride evident on his face. "Nothing wrong with that." He grins at Dean. "And apparently what he wants is milk, not juice."

He reaches into the refrigerator and pulls out the carton of milk Mary bought that morning. Mary just laughs again as John pours apple juice down the drain and rinses the cup out. He turns the faucet off with his elbow and grabs the milk.

When John hands Dean his cup, Dean wrinkles his nose suspiciously, peering up at his father as if unsure whether to trust him or not.

John laughs. "It's really milk, Deano."

Dean grins triumphantly and drinks his milk, blowing bubbles at his father. Mary smiles at them both. This is the life she was meant to live. No blood, no violence.

No death. She's not a killer, and she won't raise her son to be one, either.




There's a darkness in John, something he keeps mostly hidden, but Mary is an expert at darkness. She sees it.

His memories of Viet Nam, of war and death, flash in his eyes, and that's when the darkness shows itself.

Sometimes Mary wonders what John would think if he knew about her previous life, the life she was raised in. If he knew she'd been a hunter and what that meant, the kind of things she'd done. If he knew about her parents, about ghosts and monsters.

Or about demons with yellow eyes. She wonders if he would believe her.

If he would hate her. Or worse, fear her.

Sometimes she wants to say, Do you have any idea what I've done? What I can do?

There's a house, a safe house, far out in the country. It has iron floors and salt in the walls, protective sigils and devil's traps everywhere. Mary mostly puts it out of her mind, but on bad days, days when she lets herself think too much, or days when John is struggling to hold on, she's tempted to drive out there, just to reassure herself that it's still standing. She hopes to God she never needs to take refuge there, but it's somehow comforting to know she can.

Mary wants to try for another baby. She wants a brother or sister for Dean, but John's work has been erratic lately. The garage where he works isn't always busy enough to need a third mechanic, and some weeks he barely earns enough to cover the bills.

It makes him angry and short-tempered with her and Dean. She understands his frustration at not being able to provide for his family. It makes her love him all the more.

Mary doesn't bring up the idea of another baby more than a few times, not wanting to add to the pressure John's feeling. She doesn't want to push him.

One day he comes home with a secret smile, a pleased look on his face that Mary hasn't seen in far too long.

"What?" she asks, arms wrapped around his waist, gazing up at him. He's so handsome, her husband, and she never gets tired of seeing him alive and healthy.

She's tried so hard to forget what he looked like, crumpled dead on the ground with his neck snapped, with that yellow-eyed bastard wearing her father's body and grinning at her, and she's mostly been successful. The image haunted her dreams for years after her parents died, but now she only sees it once in a while, usually when John's sleeping with his head tilted at certain angle.

She always wakes him up, makes him move, and he looks at her strangely.

Now Mary shakes her head. "What?" she asks again, and John laughs, cupping her face with both his hands.

"You know that garage on Maple? The one that opened last year? I've been talking to Mike Guenther, the guy that owns it, and he's agreed to sell me half." His eyes are bright with satisfaction.

Mary stares in astonishment. "Sell you half?"

"The money from my dad's insurance, Mary. It's enough. I don't have to work for somebody else any more. I can be my own boss. Well, half of one, anyway." John grins from ear to ear, waiting for her reaction.

Mary bounces in his arms and kisses him fiercely. "I love you," she says.

They celebrate that night with steak and strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream, and a big bottle of cheap wine that John brought home.

Dean senses their mood, and he claps his hands and laughs along with them, whipped cream all over his face.

Later, when Dean is settled down for the night, curled on his side surrounded by his toy cars, John makes love to Mary with a sweetness and joy that she's been missing.

When the final papers on the garage are all signed and secure, Mary stops taking her birth control pills.



Sammy

Mary's second son is born on May 2, 1983, and he's beautiful. He's solemn where his big brother is gleeful, but he's just as forthcoming with his needs and demands as Dean is.

She names him Samuel after her father.

Dean calls him Sammy.

Life is more complicated with a newborn to look after. Dean may love his brother but that doesn't stop him from wanting his mother's undivided attention sometimes. She cuts the crusts off his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pours him glasses of cold milk to go with his favorite apple pie.

His sweet smile is more than enough reward for the effort.

"It's Sammy's turn to eat now, honey," she tells Dean. "Is that your new truck over there? Why don't you go play with it while I feed your brother." She looks at him with pleading, tired eyes.

Dean stares at her, considering. He reaches out and pats her cheek. "Okay, Mommy," he says. There's something almost like sympathy in his gaze. He leaves her alone for the rest of the afternoon, lets her and Sammy drift in an exhausted haze on the couch.

"Daddy!" Dean calls out, and Mary blinks herself awake. She hears John come in through the kitchen door from the garage, and she opens her eyes to see him lift Dean in his arms and swing him around. Dean giggles gleefully.

"Hey, there, kiddo," John says. "You being good for your mom today?" John looks over and smiles at Mary and Sam.

"I was good, Daddy," Dean assures his father. "I was real quiet and I letted Mommy and Sammy sleep."

"That's my boy," John says.

Sometimes she and John fight, just like all married couples, Mary thinks. There are some nights that Mary goes to bed while John stays up, sprawled on the couch staring at the television. She knows he has nightmares about his time in Viet Nam, so she doesn't push.

Sometimes John's a little too fond of hanging out with his buddies, and there are nights he stumbles home long after Mary and the boys are in bed, and he smells of whiskey.

Sometimes he doesn’t come home at all, and Dean is quiet those days, and affectionate, hugging her, kissing her cheek, lips sweet and sticky with Kool-aid.

"Shh, Sammy," she hears him whisper to his brother. "We hafta be quiet today, Mommy's sad."

Sammy is on a blanket in the middle of the living room floor, inching himself along on his stomach, grunting and drooling and grinning toothlessly at his brother. Dean sits cross-legged on the blanket beside him, playing with his Matchbox cars.

Mary watches them from the kitchen doorway, wondering if John will come home tonight. It's the responsibility, she thinks, the responsibility of her and the boys that weighs on him sometimes. She knows he loves them more than anything in the world, and she knows he's strong, stronger than her father ever gave him credit for.

She knows he'll come home.

She knows something else, too. It's been almost ten years since her parents died. Ten years since she made a promise to a young hunter that when Sammy was six months old she wouldn't get out of bed no matter what she heard.

The demon said he'd be back in ten years.

Think about it, he'd said. You could be done with hunting forever. The white picket fence, station wagon, couple of kids, no more monsters or fear, I'll make sure of it.

And he had. She'd been safe for ten years, no monsters in sight.

Relax, as long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt, I promise.

Mary doesn't understand what he meant by that, but she wants to stay safe, and most importantly, she wants to keep her family safe.

She has a garden outside her kitchen door where she grows cherry tomatoes and radishes, and a little patch of lettuce, the leaves green and curly.

Hidden among spiky radish tops are the tiny white flowers of anise and chamomile, with fennel and bright orange marigolds mixed in. The yellow of St. John's Wort glows in the sunshine.

Mary burns the St. John's Wort and makes a wreath of marigolds to hang on the front door. She places fennel at the windows and keeps chamomile tea steeping in her kitchen. There's bloodroot in pots on every windowsill and anise leaves scattered around the yard.

These are the things her grandmother taught her. These are the things her mother did. And now it's Mary's turn to protect her house from evil.

The salt is harder to hide from John, but Mary tries to make sure the windowsills are lined, even if she has to spread it on the outside sills and replace it everyday. Fall is here, and the sharp wind blows leaves and salt grains around the yard.

If she's still awake after John falls asleep for the night, Mary quietly slips downstairs and pours salt along the front door, covering it with a welcome mat. She manages to do it most nights and tries not to think about the nights she's asleep before John, nights when her home goes unprotected.

Mary and John have an argument in the middle of October, the kind of fight that unsettles her for how fast it turns nasty.

It's not the first fight they've had following a phone call from one of John's war buddies. There's one in particular, a guy named Deacon, and sometimes just talking to him is enough to make John stay away from home for a night or two.

He told Mary once that memories of the violence made him feel like he was contaminating her and the boys, and he had to stay away from them for their own safety.

Mary's never met Deacon, but she thinks he and John saved each others' lives over there. John doesn't often talk about Viet Nam, never offers details, so she really doesn't know much about what he went through, but it's what she attributes his occasional drinking binges and sudden bouts of temper that seem to come out of nowhere to.

This time, after John spends half an hour on the phone with Deacon, he and Mary are screaming at each other.

"You son of a bitch," Mary yells in frustration. "You have a responsibility here, John! These are your children, too. You can't just leave like that." She wants to throw something at him, she really does, and her fingers curve around the handle of the pot of spaghetti sauce she has on the stove.

But her aim is strong and true, and she can't let herself do it. She would never use her skills against him. Forgiveness would be too hard to come by, from either herself or John.

"Responsibility? That's all I have here! That's all there is for me," John yells back at her, and his words cut Mary to the quick. Everything she's done, everything she lost so she could have this life with him. He knows nothing about being responsible for someone else, about having to make decisions about life and death. How it feels to save someone. Or to lose someone.

He thinks he does, but he doesn't really.

Her father was right. John is soft.

"What do you know about being responsible?" Mary asks him. "Nothing." She folds her arms tightly across her chest, both to protect herself from his words and to protect him from the things she's capable of doing.

John looks at her, his face pale. "You don't know the things I've done. The things I've had to do. You think Viet Nam was some kind of picnic? You don't know what I had to do while you were back here, safe -" John breaks off, like his breath is caught in his throat. He looks at her, stricken. "Mary –"

Mary turns her back on him, hands shaking, and after a moment of terrible silence, he walks out of the room.

"Mommy?" Dean says, and Mary jumps. She thought he was upstairs, but he's right at her side, looking scared yet determined.

Mary bends down, and Dean's arms come up around her neck. He hugs her tight and whispers, "Don't be sad, Mommy. I love you."

"I love you, too, Dean," Mary whispers back.

After that, John starts coming straight home from work, and he spends less time watching TV and more time with Dean. He takes Dean and Sammy to the park the Saturday before Halloween, giving Mary some much-needed free time. She uses the afternoon to make Dean's Halloween costume, and together she and John take the boys Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood.

"Avast there, me hearty," John growls at Dean, grabbing him up in his arms and tickling him. Dean squirms and giggles, and Sammy watches them from Mary's arms, bright-eyed and grinning toothlessly.

"Don't mess up my costume, Daddy," Dean says as John sets him back on his feet. He reaches up to fix his eye-patch as John straightens the small stuffed parrot attached to his shoulder.

"Sorry, Deano," John says. He turns to Mary with a smile. "You land-lubbers ready to go get some treasure?"

That night John takes Mary to bed, and they make love with a passion that lately has been redirected into anger and resentment. For the first time since Sammy's birth, Mary feels herself relax.

Two nights later, she's roused from sleep by the flicker of lights and the sound of something whispering in the dark. She gets out of bed, pushing the covers back and listening hard.

John is in Sammy's room, so she goes downstairs to warm up a bottle.

Except that John is on the couch, dozing in front of the television.

Mary races back up the stairs, remembering too late that Sammy is six months old today. Remembering too late the other Dean's long-ago warning not to get out of bed.

Her heart pounds in terror.

She bursts into Sammy's room, and the man hovering over the crib turns around to smile at her. His eyes glow yellow in the dark of the nursery.

"You!" she says, as she reaches desperately for her son.

Part 1