like a prayer before dying

by darthjamtart

Summary:

I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

-Song of Solomon, 5:6

pessulum ostii aperui dilecto meo at ille declinaverat atque transierat anima mea liquefacta est ut locutus est quaesivi et non inveni illum vocavi et non respondit mihi

-Song of Solomon, 5:6

 

Mary Campbell has dreams like a prayer before dying: desperate, ephemeral, nothing she truly believes in. Dreams are for girls with a future beyond the graveyard.

Mary Campbell's got death like a dog at her heels.

She meets John on her third shot of tequila. "I didn't know angels could hold their liquor like that," he says, and it's not the worst line she's ever heard. Most bars she's been in are full of hunters.

“Who says I’m an angel?” she says, leaning back against the bar. She pops the sliver of lime into her mouth and smiles against it, close-lipped.

“Darlin’, you couldn’t be anything else,” he tells her, but he doesn’t move to kiss her. Just offers her a lazy grin and his hand, outstretched. “John. Winchester.”

Like the gun, she thinks, but she shakes his hand like a girl who wouldn’t know a pistol from a porcupine. Like every good girl she’s never been.

The lie can’t last; she knows it can’t: Mary Campbell’s been a lot of things, but never this, never the girl who takes it slow, exchanges chaste kisses over months of slow burning and secrets she can’t share. It’s too easy to keep the cuts and bruises hidden. He turns the lights low before sliding her dress off her shoulders. She touches him and this is the first thing in her life worth keeping.

And then he’s dead in her arms and she’s got nothing.

She trades away the future: it was never hers to begin with. She never dreamed that far. She trades away someone else’s dream. Maybe it could have been hers. Maybe it still will be.

Mary Campbell’s got salt and a pile of matches in place of a prayer. Maybe there’s an angel out there somewhere, but it’s sure as hell not her. At night she listens to John’s heartbeat, the steadiness of his breath, and she can’t regret her choice.

Image base via Google image search, modified by author.