A Small Respite

Soul Stories - Alternate realities don't grant wishes

“Mary…. Mary!” A shout rang out from down the hallway, bouncing off the walls.

The girl heard her name being called but didn’t care to answer, she knew it would only cause her trouble.

“Mary, answer me or I’m going to leave without you!” The voice was further away now.

Don’t answer him

A faint whisper blew through the room as if a slight breeze had entered through the window. Mary jumped up as if shocked but more so out of surprise than fright. She searched around the room to try to find the source of the voice but to no avail. Mary let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and organized her papers into a neat pile before preparing to stand.

“John I’m here don’t leave without me!” The girl got up from her little desk and headed towards the door.

The sun was shining down from a clear blue sky as the boy and the girl stepped outside. Their little cottage was nestled at the base of a grand mountain. A beautiful field of wildflowers stretched out before them as far as the eye could see while a dark and powerful forest rose up behind the cottage and into the mountainside.

“Why didn’t you answer me sooner?”

Mary stood in the sun and looked at the boy. John was a few years older than her but seemed much more so with his mature and sometimes overbearing nature. He carried his lean, powerful figure with grace and purpose. Short, messy hair framed his face perfectly as she followed the curves of his high cheekbones and strong jaw, finally meeting his gaze. Dark brown eyes watched her with slight curiosity but also showed underlying dark intentions normally reserved for the stare of a large cat. She sighed at the sight and could feel her brow knitting.

“I don’t want to go to the market.” Mary looked away and off into the distance.

“Is there a reason?” John gave a slight chuckle and started to close the distance between them.

“You know the reason, John.” Mary braced herself for what was coming.

“Mary, look at me please.” John was now standing within inches of her. Mary gripped her arms tightly across her chest and stared straight forward; she did not want to look into those eyes.

“Mary…” John whispered, reaching out his hand.

John softly, gently slid his fingers down the side of Mary’s face, being careful not to get caught in her wavy blonde hair. She looked up at him and winced as she finally met his eyes. The dark predatory gaze that stared back at her was enough to send shivers running down her spine; it took all of her strength to continue standing on solid ground.

“I asked you a question” John cupped his fingers on Mary’s chin.

Run.

Again, a whisper seemed to come from nowhere but this time Mary did not react. Her gaze was still trapped by the boy in front of her and all she could do was listen.

“Hmm? Shall I ask again?” He leaned in and whispered.

A hand shot out like a snake from the grass and adept fingers wrapped themselves around the girl’s throat. The force of the strike caused the boy and the girl to lose their balance and fall backwards onto the wildflowers. Mary tried to bring her arms out from across her chest but they were pinned by the weight of John’s body straddling her.

“You know I hate doing this.” John gripped tighter, squeezing the last ounce of breath from her throat.

Mary struggled to breathe; trying to focus her sight, as darkness clouded her eyes. Her throat burned with the desire to scream but no sound would come as she fell backwards into the abyss.

Coolness enveloped Mary as she drifted through the darkness of the abyss as she slowly opened her eyes. Not surprisingly she could see nothing, not even her own hand in front of her face. She concentrated in the darkness to try to hear a sound, any noise which might ring out from around her. Nothing. She laid back and relaxed the tension which had built up around her, allowing her body to float weightlessly and waited in a world of darkness.

~

“So, Dean, what do you think of my world?”

Floating through the darkness Dean could see everything that was happening. He watched as the young couple lived their lives in the cottage by the mountain. Mary and John Winchester… except they were not his parents. He looked on in vain as the boy raged and tormented the girl for no reason that Dean could see. The darkness held within the boy was all too familiar to Dean but that rage always had an outlet through hunting. Did the darkness always exist within his father? Dean shook his head at the question; THAT disgusting thing was not his father, he was one of the monsters needing to be hunted.

“How do you think I like it?!” Dean spat back at the voice in the darkness “You’re sick you son of a bitch.”

The voice chuckled to itself as Dean continued to seethe and not be able to do anything about it.

“I quite enjoy playing with these two… Your parents.” The voice paused for a moment before continuing. “Try as hard as you can but you will never reach them. Now just relax and watch me work.”

Dean felt helpless floating through the abyss as he watched the girl who looked just like his mother suffers at the hands of his father. He tried so hard to separate the two but the task was so difficult. Dean could do nothing as an ethereal existence except watch what was happening in the alternate lives of his parents.

~

You seem calm child.

A voice sang through the darkness and seemed to pass through Mary as if she were air. It was such a strange sensation to feel a voice rather than to hear it.

“…” Mary forgot she could not speak in this world.

Project your thoughts child and I shall take them in.

Mary brought her hands together across her stomach and began to entwine and release her fingers over and over in order to calm herself.

I am not your child. She thought of the words and they formed into existence, slowly drifting out of her body.

Somewhere in the darkness, the voice laughed. It was similar to the morning song of a small bird perched on a dew-covered branch. The bird-like laughter began to die and silence fell once again. Mary relaxed into the darkness once more.

It frustrates me to no end that you feel no desire to follow human instinct. Where any one person in the world of light would be asking irrelevant questions, you lay in the darkness as if it were your own bed.

Mary opened her eyes. She did not need to do so as they could not see, but she felt compelled to as she answered the voice in the abyss.

How dare you assume to know me! You are the one that keeps pulling me into this darkness!

The words did not drift from Mary as they had before; instead, they felt sharp as if they were small razors scoring her skin. She would have liked her words to cut the voice instead but the thought was useless, it would not be affected by such trivial things.

If you wish to speak then do so now. Before the others return.

The others. Where were the others?

I… who… The words would not come. She had to calm herself to form thoughts into substance but fear had gripped her body. Why did she only think of this now? In one instance there was only her and the voice, how did she forget about ‘them’?

John, where is John? Why did she ask such a stupid question? She knew he was in the world of light and she was in the abyss. Fear gripped her body even tighter as if wrapped up in a constricting blanket.

Silence surrounded her as the fear coursed through her body, it did not normally take the voice so long to answer her questions.

Screw that son of a b***h you’re better off without him!

That same strange whisper blew through her mind like a warm breeze. She tried to focus on the whisper that had entered her mind and was able to finally calm herself from the fear that had been about to drown her. She had no understanding of why, but the whisper seemed familiar to her in some manner. She tried to concentrate on figuring out where she knew it from but nothing came to mind. The confusion lingered and bothered her more than it should have.

What? Mary had calmed herself enough to pose the question.

There is no need for you to be concerned with that.

Mary recognized the voice of the one she always had to deal with and sighed in frustration that the fragile whisper hadn’t answered her. She was almost convinced that she had made it up and that there was no other voice. But try as she might a sliver of her mind held onto the idea that someone was watching over her.

I wish to return. Mary released the breath she had been holding and tried to will her body to move. It was time to go back and see what damage had been done.

An unimaginable pain seared through her body beginning at her feet and crawling up the length of her legs. She writhed in the darkness and began to claw at her legs to relieve the pain, as it slowly started moving across her stomach and into her chest before pulsating towards her neck. She struggled in agony trying to scream but no sound would emerge. Mary wished to be granted death but no matter what she tried to do the unbearable pain would not stop.        

As you wish, you shall return.

A warm breeze gently blew across the meadow of wildflowers. The light summer dress Mary wore fluttered along with the wind and she slowly began to stir awake. She wondered why she could only feel the breeze across her body and not the sun rays on her face, and why she felt warm but not from the sun. As she opened her eyes Mary stared straight into the awaiting gaze of John and the fear which had gripped her in the abyss suddenly returned.

“You’re awake,” John stated plainly while still staring into her eyes.

“I…ahem…I am.” Mary had to clear her throat before she could finish speaking.

She searched his face that was so close to her own and could clearly see that he showed no signs of emotional response to their situation. If anything, John seemed less connected to the reality around them than before she fell into the abyss.

“Let me up John, I want you to tell me what happened.” Mary slowly sat up while John supported her back; she went to push herself off the ground when he stopped her by placing his hand on her knee.

“Do you remember anything?” John had leaned over slightly to be able to continue to look into Mary’s eyes.

Mary could never get a straight answer out of that boy. She would ask him questions and he would always choose to ignore them. She knew that he chose to ignore her because once she had asked him something similar in the past and he answered with ‘I don’t wish to say'. Everything about him was a secret… at least that was what he thought.

“Just like last time I don’t remember anything. How long was I asleep? The sun did not seem to move much so I guess it was only a few minutes.” Mary was rambling, she just wanted to get up and leave.

“It was only a few minutes; you woke up very quickly this time,” John spoke softly to her, never drawing his gaze from her face. She could only endure keeping eye contact with him for a small amount of time before it became unbearable. As that thought passed she realized he had begun tracing circles on her back where he was supporting her, his other hand squeezing her knee as if trying to bring her closer to him.

“John…” Mary began to fidget, she wanted to pull away.

“They spoke to me this time.” John’s gaze finally broke.

It felt as if someone had punched Mary with all their might. She could not catch her breath which caused her to fly into a panic; she began to struggle to get out of John’s embrace as quickly as possible. He would not let her move. As she turned to get up he pulled her back into his lap and wrapped his hands around her stomach, pinning her back against himself. Mary could feel her face become damp as she started to cry. She could not take it anymore, she’d had enough.

“Mary, please. Don’t cry,” John whispered softly into her ear. He was holding her so tightly.

The tears were starting to subside, she was angry again at her reactions. She could not help herself though, this was a first. Not only did John actually tell her something but never in the past had he admitted that he had spoken to the other voices.

Mary…

That faint but familiar whisper came to Mary once more. She calmed herself and stopped struggling against the arms that held her so securely. She took a deep breath and tried to focus herself before continuing. Small fleeting moments of kindness and compassion reminded her that John was still with her, if only momentarily.

“Mary it’s time to go.” John pulled back from his hold on her and began to stand. Mary had no time to process the sudden change and before she knew what was happening he was already standing over her.

“Wait, wh- what?” Mary was at a loss for words but instead of sitting in the middle of a field in utter disbelief, she decided to pick herself up and move forwards.

John began to leave before Mary could ask him anything further. She watched his broad back as he walked away from her as she felt tears well up in her eyes once more.

Don’t cry over the likes of him.

Mary could hear the voice once more and felt a weak smile spread across her face. She closed her eyes and composed herself before setting off to follow the boy in front of her.

“I don’t know who you are but thank you,” Mary whispered underneath her breath. “Ever since the darkness visited us both he has been… different. Cruel and torturous I can no longer see the boy I once knew in his eyes. But for the life of me, I cannot him leave alone.”

But he’s not even hum-

~

Dean’s words were cut short as the entity behind all of this shut down his connection to Mary. Dean struggled as he tried to reach out to her once more, to warn her to leave the creature that John Winchester had become.

It is not your place to interfere! The voice shouted at Dean for pushing through the boundary that separated them from the world of the light; from Mary and John Winchester.

“Oh I am so sorry, did I mess up your plans?” Dean smirked to himself in the darkness as he finally felt a bit better. He had no proof, but he knew that she had heard him. Even more importantly Dean knew she understood.

I think it’s time for you to leave. The irritation flowing through the darkness was palpable as Dean smiled wider at the thought of pissing off one of Hell’s minions.

“Damn, and I was just starting to have fun.” Dean felt the darkness shift around him as if being constricted by a monstrous animal. He tried to focus but in his state, there was no point, he had no control over where they sent him or how he was going to get there. The only thing he could control was what he did once he arrived.

Dean fought against the life slowly being squeezed from him as he glimpsed one last time at the world of light. John, or the creature that wore his face, was marching forward towards his destination of the afternoon market without a care for his surroundings. Mary on the other hand was strolling casually through the wildflowers in the meadow and humming to herself softly. Dean gasped as he recognized the sound of the nursery rhythm she would often sing to him as a child. Mary turned her face towards the sky above her and Dean could have sworn she smiled, just before the darkness finally enveloped him. The last thought he had before death came once more; be careful what you wish for, they might not be granted in your favour.