Crossbones by Baylor (R)

[liptonrm.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: John/Mary
Author on LJ: baylorsr
Author Website: Fanfiction by Baylor
Why this must be read: This is one of those great AUs that does things that you wish Show would do, even though it couldn’t. The story posits what would have happened if, after the events of ‘In the Beginning’ Mary had told John everything about everything. It is a fantastic story that shows Mary and John at their fullest, both their best and worst, while the plot pulls you along breathlessly to the end and beyond. It is truly great.

The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.

John dismissed it as a strange confusion caused by the sudden, violent death of her mother and father, but then Mary began unlocking and opening the locked and closed doors in the Campbell household, and taking out weaponry and tools that John had no idea rested behind those innocuous doors. Then he began to fear that this was no momentary confusion, no grief-inspired delusion, but a lifelong aberration, a sick and dangerous family fantasy that perhaps had led in some way to her parents’ deaths.

When Mary told him that a demon, not a burglar, had killed her parents, he took her hands and told her that they were going to get her help. Mary was young, and with her parents and their influence gone, John was certain that treatment, therapy, medication – something – could save his Mary.

Mary’s eyes were clear and steady and blue and not at all what John thought crazy-eyes should look like. He’d seen crazy, in the eyes of the enemy, in the eyes of his brothers-in-arms, and it didn’t look like this, but maybe that was because Mary’s crazy went so far beyond the brand caused by the horrors of war.

Crossbones