#Sam:Mary

[thestanfordmoose]

‘ no, no, no, no, no. ’ (Mary)

Shane Madej Sentence Staters || Accepting

Some days, it wasn’t so bad.

Sure, he misses his mom - it’s a longing that never really goes away. A thirst for a love he had resigned himself to never knowing. Mary was the first death in a string of many, of a life littered with graves and corpses and loss. He was not immune to the hurt of it all, to the way the ever present ache in his gut grows sharper, more indignant, with each person they were unable to save. He’s still resentful that by age 6, Sam was intimate with the concept of loss. Before he reached hunting age, he helped to research. Before that, he listened. 

He was a smart kid, probably too much for his own good, and when his dad and Dean were briefing about a hunt - Sam paid attention, he learned, and despite the cushions and safety packing Dean tried to shelter him in - the ambiguity and ignorance John supplied - Sam knew that a lot of civilians didn’t make it out of a hunt alive.

Death was like a companion to him, or at the very least, a family member. An absent family member (another thing that Sam understood too well), that skirted along the edge of awareness. Sending cards every other birthday, sometimes Christmas if they remembered, and periodically missing reunion dinners. Death was always there, lingering, but somehow just out of reach. Until, of course, Jessica died above their bed in a graphic recreation of The Start.

On a good day, the taste of smoke in his throat is barely noticeable. 

When he closes his eyes he doesn’t see flashes of everyone who has left them - all their faces etched in regret and begging Sam to save them. (He never does.) 

On good days, Sam can joke with Dean and pretend that nothing has ever bitten off the tether of their brotherhood, that Sam has never disappointed his hero. On good days, Sam sees the light at the end of the tunnel. And he believes he’ll get there. On good days, he trusted that he’d see his mom again, and that she would be proud of him.

Then, there are bad days.

Those are the days when he can’t breathe, when the crushing weight of his mistakes are like lead in his lungs. When the hole in his gut is festering and raw. Days when it feels like blood is covering everything and his head is cotton, muffled and not cognitively present. When he tells Dean “you know I don’t eat real bacon,” because just the smell of grease in the pan is enough to remind him of his own calves frayed in the cage. (He watches Dean eat a burger, the juices dribbling down his brother’s chin and he wants to gag and heave and he wishes he could explain why meat is Off Limits but he doesn’t fully know why himself and it’s weak, weak, weak, Winchester.)

On bad days, Sam blames himself. He wallows in his own personal hell and agonizes over the prospect that this is it - hopping from one catastrophe to another; they’ll never be Done. They’ll never get to rest. The worry in his brother’s eyes is probably the worse part, that Dean is desperate to fix things, but there’s no panacea for his melancholy.

Maybe, just maybe, his mother can be his cure-all now.

She’s here, alive again and he wishes he didn’t find resurrection a curse. He’s happy to see her, of course he is, but he can’t help but mourn the peace she had in Heaven. Winchesters never stop fighting; never stop dying. When she first came back, it was like getting to know a stranger - a figure you had dreamed about but had no real conception of. Sam knew her, obviously, but he didn’t know Mary. It had wounded his pride, somewhere deep and childlike; jealous at his brother’s relationship with their mother, the one Sam had longed for but lacked. 

Now, though, here in Washington, they had previous footing. They had something they didn’t before - and it gave him hope for the first time in months- they had history. A past. 

‘ no, no, no, no, no. ’ She was shaking in front of him, mumbling out the same one syllable word over and over like a litany. A prayer. 

Sam had a moment where he assumed she was done with him, this was it and she wanted no part of the Fallen Son, but dismissed that thought as quickly as it came; the voice which fed it to him tickling his ear in a hum that mimicked the Morningstar. Demons lie. So do angels. “What? No, mom. Mom-stop. It’s me, what’s going on--Hey, hey, hey. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

[thestanfordmoose]

Happy Mother’s Day, @mary-win. The angels you said were watching over me have always been you.

Angels are hiding in the motions of humans. Angels are around to help us all.   We are angels hiding in the bones of humans. Helping all these miracles along.

[thestanfordmoose]

“you have broken ribs, take it easy.” (Mary)

HURT MEME ||  ACCEPTING

It would be fair to compare him to a question mark, with his hunched over frame and curved back, as he shuffled toward the only vacated chair in the room. It took off a solid three inches from his otherwise towering height and Sam knew his brother would savor in the additional mockery ammo, “The world is just righting a wrong, Sammy. Big brothers are supposed to be taller,” if it wasn’t for the grimace that accompanied every move the younger man made. He savored his right side where he knew the two breaks were; felt the crunching and grinding of the bones as he inhaled. As he tried to settle into the chair - a herculean task - he sheepishly smiled up as his mother. He appreciated her doting, not used to the mothering coming from his actual mother (it had been 35 years of brothering from Dean), but he had also had worse. Much worse. “I,” He took a shallow breath, unable to expand his ribcage anymore. He released the air on a painful shudder. “I’m fine, mom. I’m alright. Just, ah, pass me the Advil?”