Mary Winchester (Jr) (marygoround) wrote in lost_world, @ 2013-02-28 16:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | !status: complete, johnny outlaw, mary winchester |
21 Questions (Mary/Johnny, TBC in comments)
Lately, Mary had been going over a lot of things in her mind. There had been a lot of memories of Johnny from her time that were now called into question. She wanted to tell herself that it didn’t matter what was and wasn’t true now, but she couldn’t just let it go. She knew that the Johnny that was in the present couldn’t answer all of her questions-certainly not her most urgent ones. But she still had questions that he could answer.
She hadn’t seen him in a few days because she’d been busy looking into aliens and trying to give the suspicion that her parents were throwing her way time to die down. She thought that it would just draw more attention if she was visiting him on a daily basis. But enough time had passed that she thought it couldn’t hurt too much to drop in and maybe ask a few things.
Mary brought the burgers because she knew that they were one of his favorites and she figured that playing twenty-one questions might be a little bit more palatable if done over dinner. She didn’t bother with drinks this time. It felt a little pointless anyway, unless she was prepared to buy out another liquor store.
She found her way to his motel room and juggled the bags of food enough so she could knock.
----
He’d been out, looking to see what he could discover about what was going on. Electric City was his home, after all. He knew it better than anyone he’d arrived there with. The dual pupils on the people he passed by were unnerving. There was pretty much nobody who was who they were supposed to be. He went almost everywhere, narrowing the search down to the last few people he hoped were still people and weren’t aliens. Or whatever. He’d yet to try to find Max, the librarian, or any Tower members. The last thing that Johnny wanted to deal with were alien Tower members. And he didn’t go looking for the fairy, either. Johnny knew that the fairy was just a fairy, thanks to Jo, and a fairy was bad enough on its own.
He’d just gotten back to his room when the knock came. So he answered, still wearing the hat and all. Seeing Mary on the other side was a bit of a surprise. Johnny supposed they’d been avoiding one another enough that Jo and Dean wouldn’t suspect something of her visit. He raised a brow at the bags she was carrying, then stepped inside to let her through.
“So what did I do to deserve a bunch of food?” He moved back to the dresser in the room, and started to take off his gun belts.
---
Mary noticed the indications that Johnny had just gotten back to his room. Not that it was exactly subtle. She wondered where he’d been and if he’d found out anything new, but she supposed he would tell her if he had.
She moved over to the table and set the burgers down before casting him a furtive, somewhat apologetic glance. It wasn’t his fault that she had so many questions and conflicting emotions, after all. Not really.
“I was actually hoping I could ask you a few questions.”
She didn’t sit down just yet, even if that might have been her first instinct. She wasn’t going to just go about making herself comfortable in his room every time she visited.
“We could always do an exchange. I know you have more questions, so maybe I can ask you something and then you ask me something?”
She waited to see his reaction. After all, she had sort of dropped in unannounced so she couldn’t expect him to just drop everything because she had all sorts of questions about his life.
---
Johnny set his hat on top of the guns that were now resting on the dresser, he slowly unbuttoned the vest and shrugged out of it, folding it up and putting it to one side. The neatness was a habit, and he wondered if it would continue through the rest of his life. He didn’t see why it shouldn’t, but maybe there had come a point where he’d given up on trying to be meticulous.
“I’ve got a lot of questions.” He nodded, not looking at her yet. “I think, though, that it’s fair that you just get to have yours without mine thrown in. You’ve been really patient at answering what I’ve asked so far. The biggest things, I think, I’ve already asked you. I’m sure there will be little tidbits here and there where I’ll want blanks filled in. I know that I don’t age, and I know that I don’t die. I know that I told you some pretty heavy things. The rest is really just... there.”
The bandana was in his pocket, which he pulled out and set with the vest. The jacket was already hanging on the coatrack by the door. There wasn’t a whole lot more that Johnny could take off without it being slightly indecent. He did untuck his shirt, though.
“Why are you not sitting.” He smiled a bit at her, then took up one of the chairs. He picked the one that had the uneven legs so that Mary wouldn’t have to wobble around as they talked.
---
Mary laughed softly at the invitation and took a seat herself. She was still figuring out her boundaries and as a result, she was probably more formal around this version of Johnny than she’d ever been around the version that she’d met in her time. It was still just a matter of figuring out what parts of their relationship needed to stay out of the picture here and what behaviors she could continue as normal.
She just hoped that they both found that balance eventually because she liked having him in her life, even if it was in a different capacity than she’d gotten used to.
She pulled out one of the burgers before nudging the bag over to him.
“All right. My turn for questions it is then,” she said with a small smile.
There were certain things that she woudn’t ever question-the story about what had happened to his family, for one. Making sure that he’d been honest about the details on that wasn’t worth making him revisit the tragedy. Especially considering that it was a whole lot fresher for this Johnny than for her Johnny. And even then, it had been hard for him to tell her.
“So you were born here,” she started out. That wasn’t a question. She’d confirmed that already. “Is there anyone left here that you knew before?”
She wasn’t sure how it worked with the aliens. If they were the only humans left and everyone else was a clone of someone they’d once known, or if they were just generic humanoid looking aliens. She was also curious about the people that he’d known back when he’d still been Daniel.
---
Johnny looked at the bag of food and wondered just what she thought that he needed out of life, if she was going to buy this much food and only take one for herself. Instead of asking, Johnny just pulled one out and sat back.
“So far, the fairy. I went out looking today at places I might find familiar faces, and found nobody. They’re all swapped out for the dual pupiled. I mean, the faces I know, they’d probably know me, too if I went and talked to them. I didn’t do that. I just watched. There are a couple that I didn’t look for today, I didn’t want to know. Milo, the librarian, Max, I don’t know what I would do if I found out they’d been replaced. Simon, the fairy, he’s here though, that’s the one your mom ran into.”
Johnny was still a little bit upset that Jo had made a deal with Simon. He knew she had thought it was such a tiny thing. That the items she had swapped hadn’t been important. Everything was important to the fae.
“Listen. If you run into that guy? Never say ‘I promise’, or ‘I swear’, or ‘deal’. Not to anything. Those words are all binding to the fae. Don’t let him kiss you, even if it’s just a little peck on the lips. That’s the best way to find yourself addicted. Don’t swap anything with him. Don’t ask for a favor.”
It might have sounded paranoid, Johnny didn’t care.
---
“I promise,” Mary said, with the faintest hint of a smile. “No kissing or making deals with fairies.”
Truthfully, she was uneasy with the fact that her mom had made a deal too. She was glad for the information and she knew that her mom was competent enough to be careful when dealing with creatures, but she didn’t like it all the same. Especially with everything else going on with Jo and the rescue that she’d had to make shortly after her arrival.
She could understand why he hadn’t looked for anyone else yet. She was currently fighting the fear that one day she’d go out and come back to find that her parents or Johnny had been replaced with the aliens. She didn’t know how likely it was, but she could see avoiding it.
“Have you seen any of them since you came back?”
She doubted she needed to elaborate on what he would have come back from. She did wonder if he’d cut off his ties to everyone after his death and return. Had they mourned him? Did they mourn him still?
If so, she found it even more of a surprise that he’d been willing to return to his hometown with her family. That went a long way-anyone willing to help her family earned a debt of gratitude in her books.
---
“Max. The librarian. I’m sure that Simon knows somehow about the whole sordid affair. He’s unnervingly up to date on everybody’s lives at all times. Though, I guess that the last time I saw Max wasn’t when I was... whole. I’m not sure if he even knows that I’ve progressed past the fresh from the grave, smelly, zombie stage.”
And he knew that if he ran into the librarian again, she was going to be really not happy with him. She’d done everything she could to convince him to turn around and go lay down in the grave and let death take him back. She’d said she’d help, even. Now he was whole and wandering around like none of it had happened. At least, outwardly.
“I think that Max is aware of some kind of connection between me and … me. Daniel and Johnny. We didn’t get too much into it. Just be really careful if you run into him, mentioning one name and the other in the same breath. I’d really just prefer it if you continued to keep Daniel out of circulation while we’re here.”
---
Mary nodded.
“I won’t mention that name to anyone.”
They’d been over this and she’d promised, but she had slipped up while drinking. She didn’t plan to slip up again and certainly not to anyone other than him. Calling him Daniel behind closed doors when it was just the two of them was something that she’d gotten used to in a way. But mentioning the name outside of those circumstances? Never. Her parents in both her time and now would never hear that name. Neither would her sister.
But there was something interesting about this that she’d never really seen Johnny have to deal with in her time. The whole dual identity aspect.
“So you knew Max and the librarian as both Johnny and Daniel once upon a time?”
She wondered if the bandana really worked that well as a disguise, though it sounded like Max might have had his suspicions.
---
Johnny shook his head. “Just Max. I mean, in the know know way. Max did a few things for me when I was a lawyer. The librarian I didn’t really meet until I was dead. I’m sure that I saw her around, I was in the library a lot. Electric City is big, but not huge. She would know the name Daniel Letham for sure, however. The first time I really encountered her, I was a ghost. Then again when I was … well, in the between stages. I’m not exactly sure what she’d do if she saw me now. Be very unhappy more than likely. She could cause problems, potentially.”
He wondered if he should seek her out specifically, to discuss the way that things were now. Talk her out of trying to send him back to death by force. Maybe clue her in that there were some people that couldn’t know just what he was. Though, telling her why likely wouldn’t encourage her to keep the secret. She’d likely be on the pro-death-to-Johnny bandwagon.
“These really the kinds of questions you were looking to have answered? They seem so... not difficult.”
---
Mary shrugged. A lot of the harder questions that she had were questions he couldn’t answer for another three decades or so, assuming things got back on track.
“Just filling in the gaps, I guess. Tell me about your parents?”
It was a request, not an order. She wanted to know if the backstory he’d given her about his dad was the truth. She hated that she was questioning even that, but it was hard to know now. Which she hated too.
She took a few more bites of her burger, helping herself to some of the fries that she’d brought along. She wondered if bringing burgers had been a bad idea. It was difficult to avoid thinking of what he’d asked for a week after she’d thought he was dying. It brought up too many memories of the fear she’d felt that week, and of the conversation they’d had afterward. That conversation was the first time she’d felt like he’d truly let her in. Looking back now, she realized that he’d allowed her to worry that he might be dying for a week rather than tell her that he would heal. That he couldn’t die because he’d been there and come back from it once already.
---
Johnny finished the burger he’d snatched out of the bag before starting in on her question. It did make him wonder if she was checking facts of what he’d told her. He didn’t blame her, even a little bit. He’d lied to her about some pretty large things, what difference would it make to lie to her about little ones, too?
“My mom was named Rosie, and she died about a year after I was born. I didn’t know her, I know my dad loved her, though. He never remarried, and never dated that I knew of. If he did, he never brought them home. I guess that if he did, he never thought they were worthy of being a part of our family. He raised me, and he was a real good father. His name was Jack. He was a lawyer, and I’m pretty sure that I became a lawyer to make him proud. It’s what I’d always wanted to do.
“He died, too, about two weeks before I was going to graduate high school. It was a car accident, though the details never lined up quite right, and it could never be determined if he lost control or if there was another car, or cars, involved. Nothing was certain, and the case was never closed. He always told me stories about his cases, even the parts that I technically wasn’t supposed to know about. He was my best friend, really. We talked about everything.
“He used to tell me all the time ”Never let life get boring, Danny. He was the only one to ever call me that.”
---
Mary couldn’t help the smile of relief at that answer. That part of the story was the same. It might seem small, but she couldn’t help but cling to the points where he’d told her the truth. It was comforting to realize that not everything was a lie. To realize that maybe he’d had his reasons for keeping the secret that he had and he’d only told lies that would protect the secret.
It didn’t make it that much better, but it eased the sting a little bit.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that you never did let your life get boring,” she said with a nod.
It wasn’t a happy life, per se, but it certainly wasn’t a boring life.
“What about becoming Johnny Outlaw? Did you always do things on your own, or did you have help?”
He had most likely made up a ‘friend’ who could heal. It was possible that he’d made up the anonymous benefactor that had donated his weapons, bike, and armor. It wasn’t a lie that would have made sense, but it would be easier to be able to sort that into the ‘truth’ pile. Every truth she uncovered just underlined the fact that he’d really only been lying to keep one last big secret. That was something that she could live with, she thought. It still hurt, but understanding why went a long way to making the deception easier to swallow.
---
Johnny pulled out another burger, thinking about what she’d said. It was true, his life had never been boring. From what she told him, it never got that way, either. He almost wished there was a way to find out the things that happened between the time he knew now and the time he met Mary. To discover all the details of the stuff he did in that timeline. It was easy to imagine that not an ounce of it was dull.
“Before I died, I worked with other vigilantes. They’re the ones that gave me the Outlaw nickname. I started the game using Johnny Law. I just... well. I kept killing people. They all deserved it, I promise. There was also a guy called the Inventor. I never met him, but that’s where the guns, the bike, and the spurs come from. He’d send me these letters, and all they were were addresses. I’d go to the address, and there would be something new for me.
“But after I died, after I’d seen so many other vigilantes go down because they’d gone on an outing with me, I stopped associating with others. I guess I was sort of pulling away before that, too, though. I started to feel like everything I touched died.”
---
Mary felt a little tug at that last line. She’d seen that look on the face of some hunters that she knew. She’d seen it on her dad’s face a time or two, even if having a family and having her mom come back to life seemed to have eased it ever so slightly. Without thinking, she reached out and covered Johnny’s hand with hers. She gave it a brief squeeze before taking her hand back.
“In my time, you were both a hunter and a vigilante,” she told him, even if she was sure he’d guessed as much. “You’d kind of shut yourself away from others then too. From what it sounded like, you let the person who taught you about hunting in and then didn’t really let anyone help you all too much until me.”
She clapped her hand to her forehead. It wasn’t the exact first time that she’d realized it, but this just drove the point home.
“That person was my mom.” It shouldn’t have been news, but in her mind she’d always pictured the person who had taught Johnny about hunting as being... well, someone that she didn’t know. Someone from a few years back, but not her mom from back in the heyday of her mom’s time as a hunter.
She couldn’t help but laugh softly.
“Somehow, this time travel thing never stops being weird. How the hell did Marty McFly do it?”
Her dad had made sure their education in classic movies was complete, after all. Or at the very least, he’d made them watch some of the movies that he’d obsessed over as a kid.
---
Johnny laughed a little bit, too. He’d had that realization a while ago, and hadn’t really known what to think about it. Jo had taught him to hunt. Mary was Jo’s daughter. He was certain that if Jo knew anything about him being with Mary, he wouldn’t have been alive very long in the future. At the very least, he wouldn’t have been with Mary. It also occurred to him that he must have stopped associating with Jo a long while before Mary had been born. He would have never stuck around to see the kid grow up, then start dating the kid once she’d become an adult. He wasn’t creepy like that. It also meant that Mary never talked about her family to him, it must.
“I have no idea. All I know is this is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. It’s weird to know that in the future, I’m still there. Honestly, it’s that part that I get stuck on before I can even start to think about the rest of it.”
He sat back, quiet for a bit.
“It also bothers me that I would just disappear on somebody. But I can’t deny that I must have. I’m sure that in her life, I wasn’t the first person to vanish suddenly, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
---
Mary nodded her understanding.
“If it helps, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced too. Misery loves company, right?”
She tilted her head, studying him carefully.
“Thirty-some years is an awful long time to be just as you are.” She knew that had to be weird for him.
She wasn’t quite sure how he’d coped with it in her time. It was also a long time to be alone, though she didn’t say that. When they’d talked-really talked-about things, he’d told her that he’d just assumed he would always be alone. That it was better that way.
“You don’t think that you would have realized who my mom was, do you?”
She was asking for speculation, but it was a very odd thing. Gave a creepy layer to the whole situation that she did not need. She’d given her last name, but she thought it was fair to think that he might not have immediately thought of Jo’s married name. And while she’d talked about her parents, she hadn’t ever told him their first names.
----
“Uh.” Johnny scratched his head a little bit. The numbers thing didn’t sit very well with him. He’d done the math. The math was unsettling. “I’m sure if you’d said Harvelle to me, or I’d ever seen her face, I would have known her. It’s not like she’s a very plain or average kind of person. And Harvelle isn’t exactly an ordinary name.”
He cleared his throat again, shifting a bit in his seat. Right now, as they were, their age weren’t too far off. He was technically speaking only 32. But in the future? In the future the gap was significant. Again, he felt like a dirty old man. Dirty. Dirty dirty.
“Pretty sure that for one reason or another, had that happened, there would be no Johnny in your life.”
---
“I didn’t,” Mary said. “It’s still weird to think of her by her maiden name, and how many people call their moms by their first names?”
She did her best not to make a face and instead finished her burger.
“Okay, I think we’ve veered into the weird territory for long enough. Let’s just... not think about that anymore.”
The age difference was definitely something she’d thought of too. Oddly, it didn’t bother her as much as she would have thought. Then again, what person would have imagined this sort of situation? It also hadn’t escaped her attention that they were closer in age right now, not that it was a concern right now.
---
He nodded.
“Yeah, I think I would rather not dwell on that. I know that it doesn’t really make a huge difference, since I’m of the unaging, undying sort, but it’s freaking me out a little bit to think that I’m past 70 when... nothing. Nevermind. Move on.”
Johnny waved his hand and tried to clear his mind of the thoughts. All of them.
---
There was a little bit of a smirk on Mary’s face at the thought of what ‘nothing’ actually was. She did miss that aspect of their relationship, but it was a little funny to see him skirting the subject like this. Then again, it was less funny to think of the age difference at the time when they’d been close like that.
She distracted herself by fishing out a few more fries from the bag.
“You know, I could go check out Max and whoever else you want me to. Make sure that their eyes are normal. I could just not tell you when I go so you don’t have to know whether or not they’ve been replaced,” she offered.
---
Johnny thought about it a moment before shaking his head. “No, I appreciate it, but if they’re still here, with us, I should probably make sure that they’re doing alright and that they know about the situation. Besides, it’s likely that they’ll have at least a whisper that I’m back in town. It’s hard to sneak around on a bike like I’ve got.”
He grinned a bit.
His smile dropped though, as darker thoughts entered his mind. “I think I’d also like to see for myself if they’ve been replaced.”
---
Mary could understand that. She nodded.
“Well, if you need back-up...”
Or moral support as he checked to see if the people that he had some ties to here were still around, though that part went without saying. It was easier to pose it as simply being there to help out if things got out of hand.
“So before York, were you traveling or were you still here? You never did tell me what brought you to York.”
It was another benign question for the moment. There was a part of her that just wanted to know everything-the small things that he might not have even thought to tell her thirty-some years later, the big things of course. Everything. There was also a part of her that simply wanted to get to know this version of Johnny, who was so far removed in years from the version she knew.
---
Johnny shook his head. That was a good question. A hell of a good question, actually. Half of it was easier than pie to answer. The other half? He didn’t know if Mary would believe him. She’d believed everything else about him, but that stuff hadn’t quite been so lacking in detail or fact to back it up. Really, Johnny didn’t know if he believed it himself. But whatever. He’d tell her anyway. He’d made a promise for only the truth. He’d never forget it.
“I was here, in Electric City. Just going about my usual routine. I hadn’t ever even been to Pennsylvania previously, I’m sure I’d heard of York in passing, but I didn’t know anything at all about it.” Johnny tossed the second burger wrapper back into the bag and took out some of the fries. He chewed on one slowly while he thought back. “Honestly, Mary. I have no idea why I went to York. I just had this gut feeling that I needed to. All of my instincts said that I should head that direction. I tried to fight it for a day or so, attempted to convince myself that it was just a fluke thing. By the third day, the urge got so powerful, I figured I’d just go. Go and if it was nothing, I could always come back. I just felt like there was big evil that needed to be stopped. How stupid is that?”
---
Mary watched, trying to keep the shock off her face. It didn’t sound crazy. The trouble was, it made an awful lot of sense. Strange things had been showing up at the Hellmouth-things of the supernatural sort-for months, from what her parents had told her. It would make sense that whatever was going on had reacted as a sort of beacon to other things that weren’t human that walked the Earth.
It was just another reminder of how different he really was. It was easy to forget because he was more human than a lot of actual humans that she’d encountered. Even with the people he’d killed as a vigilante, he still had a spark of humanity and a good heart.
She looked down, toying with the straw in the soda that she’d brought along.
“It makes sense actually.”
She stopped playing with the straw and actually took a drink, still turning this over in her head. She suddenly realized that she didn’t want to ask any more questions right now. Not any of the questions that he could answer. She felt a great longing for her Johnny, both to ask the questions that this Johnny couldn’t ever answer and for all of the other things that she couldn’t ever expect from the Johnny of now.
---
He found himself unnerved, not only by what Mary said, but also by the look on her face right before she said it. It felt like she knew something that he didn’t. As much as he had come to trust her, in light of certain details, he couldn’t help but feel like she’d kept something to herself. Maybe not intentionally. Maybe not even realizing she had. It was an absurd notion, and he knew it. If Mary had had some kind of knowledge about goings on, she would have shared, even if she hadn’t known it had anything to do with him directly.
“What do you mean, it makes sense?”
Johnny wasn’t sure that he really wanted the answer to that, he just knew that he needed to have it.
---
Mary grimaced but didn’t look up right away. She mentally cursed herself for saying anything. Finally, she took a deep breath and forced herself to meet those blue eyes.
“The Hellmouth seemed to be sending out some sort of beacon to various supernatural elements. It would make sense that you’d feel something too.”
There was an apologetic look in her eyes at pointing out that he wasn’t exactly human. It still wasn’t the way she thought of him on a regular basis. Even knowing what she knew, it was so easy to forget that he wasn’t quite human anymore. Then again, resurrection wasn’t all that strange in her family-both her parents and her uncle had been brought back in some way or another. Multiple times in the case of her dad and uncle. But it was different because they hadn’t been brought back in such a way that they’d stopped aging or that they could heal from everything.