Sin's of the Sister

Cradles and Creatures

Mary Winchester didn't have to die, but she did anyway...

There are some things you just can't change... 

 Lawrence, Kansas - 1989

At 2am, the baby monitor beside the bed went off, filling the quiet room and alerting Mary Winchester to the crying from her youngest child. The garbled wails woke her from her dead sleep.

Reaching her hand out, she felt nothing but the cold air against her exposed skin and the thick duvet pulled aside. Maybe she could go back to sleep, John would take care of it. But the crying continued, and with a sigh, she pulled back the covers and stood.

The air hit her like a punch in the face Kansas wasn't usually this cold in November, but a sudden drop had sent them into an unusually freezing winter. Padding her bare feet across the hall, Mary peeked inside nursery where her daughter cried.

"John?" She asked, her voice quiet. "Is she hungry?"

"Sssshhhh..."  Came a long, drawn out hiss. The crying had ceased, and John stood beside the crib, his silhouette darkened in the unlit room.

Mary shrugged and turned back with a noncommittal "ok". She was halfway back to the safety and warmth of their bed when the hall light flickered by the stairwell. She squinted her unadjusted green eyes at it and sighed heavily. All she wanted was to go back to bed. Tapping the side of the bulb twice with the tip of her fingernail, it flickered once more before settling. She wondered why the light was still on in the first place. Usually John would turn it off before coming to bed.

Glancing down the stairs, she noticed the television was still on. Again, she sighed, and made her way downstairs. Upon arriving in the dimly lit room, her heartbeat quickened. There her husband lay, asleep on the sofa with ESPN still playing in the background of his dreams, his mouth slightly slack. Her eyes widened and she rushed back up the stirs, not even thinking as her heavy footsteps passed the room where her two sons slept soundly, unaware, like their father, of the danger in the house.

"You." She said with an acusing tone when she reached the doorway of the nursery. But it was too late.

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A scream woke John from the unintentional slumber in front of the TV, a scream issued form his wife, Mary. Rushing with a certain urgency in his step, he arrived at the nursery with a cry of, "Mary!

A grevious sight met the man's eyes.

Mary, her white nightgown sticking to her skin with sweat and a red, bloody gash across her stomach, was pinned to the centre of the cieling. The dark figure from before was gone.

"Mary, no!" Came John's strained voice as fire of an unknown origin erupted from underneath his wife's back and enveloped the ceiling and the room in seconds. It was all he could do to grab his daughter and run.

A frightened looking boy was waiting in the hallway. No more than ten years old, Dean stared up at his father through fearful eyes. "Dad, what's going on?"

"Take your brother and sister, and go outside." John said urgently, handing the baby girl to her older brother and giving his shoulders a slight shove toward the stairs. "Now, Dean, go!"

"Sammy!" Dean called, and a younger boy came running out behind him. They all headed toward the front door as their father ran in the opposite direction, to the burning nursery where their mother burned.

Outside on the front grass, the frightened children watched as their home, caught up in a flurry of flames, collapsed. John had only just made it outside and grabbed his sons before the windows blew out in an unnatural manner and scattered the lawn with broken glass.

That was the night that changed John Winchester forever. That was the night each child in the Winchester family lost their innocence. It was a night none of them would forget, even the little girl, held protectively in her brother's arms. It was a night that had changed their lives forever.