Who: Mary Winchester and OPEN to residents or anyone walking by What: Mary plants a tree and some flowers When: Afternoon Where: Outside of the Winchester home (front yard) Status: In Progress Rating: Shouldn't be too high
Even without Sam telling her, Mary would have known her sons were fighting. She could sense it in the tense way Dean looked, the way his entire face changed whenever his brother's name was mentioned. She had felt that tension herself lately, worrying about her younger son with such intensity that it led to her making lasagna far more often than normal just because she knew it was one of Sam's favorites and if he made it to supper...To distract herself from the idea of another lasagna, Mary decided to work on some of the landscaping for the front yard.
But one major problem was that Sam was away from home a lot lately. There seemed to be something going on with him all the time, whether it was Faith being gone or a hunt to do...and the only constant of his many excuses for 'sucking out loud,' as Ben put it, was Ruby. Mary's shovel slammed into the ground with a little more intensity than was entirely necessary as her thoughts turned to the demon. She felt like her family was being torn apart at times, with Sam there one minute and gone the next, the boys there together one minute and fighting the next...and the only productive thing she could do about it was plant and cook and clean and try her hardest to hold the family together.
She sighed, sliding the small tree into the hole she had prepared. It was small and scrawny now, but she hoped that by the time this new child she was carrying was old enough to enjoy it, they could add a tire swing or something. The baby was a precious secret so far, with only John and her knowing the truth, but that didn't mean that Mary didn't find herself doing little things to prepare for it already. Buying baby clothes or telling the rest of the Winchester clan felt a little like jinxing the good news, alerting the Powers that Be to the fact that she was getting yet another blessing in this crazy, unsteady town, and that by all rights she and John shouldn't be able to conceive after all they had been through...but a tree felt right.
She patted the dirt around the tree to make sure that it was straight and snug in the ground, then turned to the flowers she had ready to plant around it.