dear_mun | momchester finally made a bb account

[A slow smile spreads. He knows how to use words and presence to draw others to him. He takes a step closer to her.]

It did. Not without cost, not with price, but it did. I celebrated my birthday recently, with near everything I could ever have wanted.

Everything you wanted...

[She whispers, caresses the words like a kiss still soft on her lips. Half-disbelieving that it's even possible for someone like her. Her gaze flickers back up to him, plaintive and young.]

What was it like?

More work than I ever could have imagined. But I wouldn't have changed it. I don't regret my actions, my choices. Although I do grieve those I had to lose along the way.

[Voice low, firm, strong. Velvet wrapped around steel.]

[She doesn't step closer but doesn't move away, either, feeling drawn to him like a hook in her chest, pulling inexorably. She can't help reacting to how intense and real he is, the sincerity behind each word. Something isn't right, but she can tell he means everything he's saying, and is saying it like he knows her. Her voice comes out as almost a whisper.]

"Had" to lose...? [She shakes her head, tearing up a little at the fresh loss of her parents.] What do you mean had to lose? Like you couldn't stop it?

[He reaches a hand to her, giving her time to pull away. A slow, gentle movement, sure and steady, but not predatory towards her. If she doesn't move away, he'll cup her cheek warmly, almost fondly.]

There is always a price, for every choice. Occasionally, that means letting go of someone, or more than one someone, if we are going to walk away from the path others have laid out for us.

[She doesn't pull away, though she really really should. She's fixated on him, giving him time to reach out and touch her, to put a hand to her cheek that's so warm she's almost shocked. When he touches her everything electrifies, every nerve over-sensitized. She's hyper aware of everything: his hand cupping warm against her cheek, gentle and oddly familiar, his inhumanly blue eyes boring into hers, the light breeze around them tickling cold against her skin, the weight of her own clothes on her skin and every tiny sound of rustling leaves and distant crickets. All the while she stares into his eyes, transfixed and a little uncomfortable.

A smart person would shake off his hand and walk away. She wants to. She does. But he's speaking so surely, so gently- spinning stories so familiar, like he's talking just for her. How incredible, that his circumstances mirror her own, and it captures her young mind so desperately thirsty for guidance until she feels like she couldn't move away no matter how much she wants to.]

What choice did you have to make?

[Strength, he had learned, did not mean being harsh. Strength meant being sure and steady and solid. Max Eisenhardt had been well named, for he was a strong as the finest iron, forged and tested and proven by fire before he was the age Mary was now. The rod might have been dinged, even bent in small places, but it was true and unbreakable, and that will suffused every atom of his being.]

My wife and eldest child. So that the younger three may know peace. My oldest, dearest friend, so that the world may know it.

[He strokes his thumb over her cheekbone, lightly. Where it not for the callouses on his hand, it might be the touch of a butterfly's wings.]

The world is cruel, you see. We can never have both everything and everyone we want. That is the price we pay.

[She shivers, his thumb catching so lightly on her smooth skin. Mary feels rooted to the spot, trapped without anything keeping her there. The strength she has, that hard-packed, long-forged ability to stay strong and firm in the face of terror from when she was small, it's still only human and ever since her parents died, since the deal, she's been on the edge. All it took was this bit of softness to push hard at her last defenses and make her like this: fragile enough to break.]

It's not fair. [Speaking half to herself- and a little to the demon.] I could have had them all. It's not fair.

[He keeps his moments small, turning enough to give her the invitation of coming closer, if she would like, thumb still stroking so lightly. He's a killer, a murderer, yes. But he's also a protector, the patriarch of a family with the power to rewrite the world, the hand that guides and protects and punishes as needed. Mary has always triggered his protective instincts. Now, even more so.]

No, it's not fair. Few things are. If you could have had them, what would you have given up to keep them?

[She doesn't move (feet rooted to the ground, absolutely frozen) towards him or away, but she does lean in a little with his movements. If only a little. She can sense that protectiveness, the air of patriarch and strength that's so missing in her life without her father in it.]

I don't know. I never even got the chance to find out. There was no way to get them back.

[For the life of her, she doesn't know why she's speaking like this, in vague references that he can't possibly understand, or why he's talking like he knows her. Her brows furrow in confusion for a moment before she fights through the thick emotion to speak waveringly.]

Do you know me somehow?

[He stays still, sure and steady, like the second pulse that has beat in him since shortly after he buried his child.]

Sometimes. Sometimes my dear. We just have to accept there was truly nothing we could do. Save those we can, morn those we cannot, and go on.

[A hard, brutal lesson learned so young, but one he had taken decades to accept himself. One he occasionally still riled against, like the angry, frightened child he had once been.]

In about ten years. Time here...matters little.

[He knows her. A little tension escapes in the breath she sighs out. He knows her. It makes a little more sense now; how he's been talking to her, how he seemed to speak to her situation without asking. At least, she hopes so.

Hopes or fears. Maybe both. She's still a little frozen, still caught in his headlights, but tentatively opening up just that little bit to ask-]

In ten years? [Which means- she survives. She lives out the deal and makes it in the end. It feels like a weight almost lifts, but is kept down by the weight of his hand on her cheek. Steady, inescapable. She takes another breath.] If you know me, does that mean you know... the truth about me?

[Hopefully. Or fearfully. He's being so delicate with her yet so unyielding, too confident in the way that makes insecure young things like her feel unsettled and small. She misses having anyone in the world who knows what she really is, but there's something in his eyes: it's hard not to fear a man like him.]

I do.

[There's no judgement, no condemnation. Perhaps not a literal Deal with a Demon, but he had made his own to survive. To give Magda the chance to. He'd made the choice then, to save those he could.]

What are you looking for?

[Quietly. Only slightly probing. A nudge, not a push.]

[The gentle lack of judgment hits her like a ton of bricks, it almost floors her. That he could know this about her and still be looking at her with anything but disdain- she swallows thickly. Still looking up at him, even more off-balance and unsettled. She's never been in a situation like this before.

He still hasn't moved his hand.]

You know what happened to my parents. [She licks her lips uncertainly, gathering her thoughts.] Did you mean them when you asked what I'd give up?

[She doesn't know what she's looking for. Anything. Answers, maybe. Help. Someone to talk to, someone she can talk to with more freedom than sweet old John.]

[How many cursed his name for the choices he made? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Did it matter? In avoiding one predator, he'd jumped to another. In the end, that was all Mary had done. He wasn't going to judge her for that. So he kept his hand, rooted. Steady and solid.]

I know what happened yes. Although I didn't mean them specifically. As I said, things are not fair. You wouldn't have gotten to keep both.

I know. [She takes a shuddering breath that refuses to be a sniffle or anything that weak. She can't.] The demon wouldn't even let me choose. I didn't get a chance. He wouldn't even consider bringing them back.

If he had, would that have been a viable option?

[Still gentle. But there is a whisper of an edge to it. She can't go back, but he can make the path she is on now more sure. Smooth the way, a little. He can't change the Deal. He might, he might, be able to prevent what comes later. He certainly can't make it worse.]

Yes! [it bursts out of her suddenly, tears in her eyes that flash like lightning.] Yes! They're my parents, I love them, I miss them, I-

I know you do. I miss mine as well.

[He slides his hand just a bit, to cup her face a little more.]

Wouldn't you be more bound to them, to what they chose?

[Whatever respite her life with John had offered, she wouldn't have gotten it with her parents. So a Deal, and losing her way out?]

[That's almost exactly what the demon said. It leaned in with her father's face, touched her, slyly said her parents' deaths would set her free and that she should take the deal. It told her that that's what she wanted, and she took it. It's so close to truthful that she can't stand it, she can't stand that she might be the kind of person to accept her parents dying so she can be happy. She shivers when his hand moves, freezing for a fraction of a second before shaking her head, tears starting to fall silently.]

I could've gotten away. They didn't have to die. Mom would've let me go, they didn't have to-

[She takes another gasping breath, trying to get a grip.]

[Just the faintest pressure of his fingertips against her skin, subtle almost not there. Here, lean on me.]

No, they didn't have to. But you weren't given a choice on that.

[She understands that. Intellectually, she knows that her parents were murdered and she was powerless. But still, some irrational part of her young brain blames herself for their deaths, that she should have stopped it somehow. Shouldn't have brought a strange hunter to their home, who just made trouble and ruined their lives.]

But I would have. [Someone has to know. She needs someone to understand that she didn't want this. Nobody else knows what really happened and she just needs to confess to someone so she can stop burning inside like it's her fault.] I would've chosen them if I had the chance, I wouldn't have let them die.

[Her eyes slip shut painfully, holding back tears that she can't afford to cry in front of a complete stranger. As difficult as these months have been, as strange and isolated in her own head as she's been while processing their deaths, she's pushed John away now and then, and- it's so comforting, this simple human contact. She's been starved of it, and she can't help leaning into it, just a little. So slight she doesn't realize what she's doing.

A large part of her still wants to shake him off and leave, but she's cracking too hard to want to be alone.

Oh Mary. I know that. You needn't try to convince me.

[His hand is just that much more there against her cheek, increasing contact to match her, his thumb ghosting over her lashes, wiping away a tear that hasn't yet fallen. Steady and sure as the Earth beneath her feet, solid and real in a way she will never be able to feel - he knows what it is to be lost to a grief too big to wrap your brain around, and have to, some how, find a way to keep moving, regardless - so he's being a rock now, something strong enough to take the fall of her grief.]

[She sucks in a breath lightly, another shiver down her spine. The tears are falling, try as she might to hold them back, and nevertheless the contact is strange somehow. Rock-solid and so familiar... but no, nothing she recognizes, it's that he's acting familiar, and it strikes her as strange.

Strange, that someone should be so steadfastly understanding. Mary opens her eyes again, lashes brushing against his thumb, cheek warm under his hand.]

I don't even know your name. [She wants to know him. Know more about this person before she can justify opening up any more than she already has.] Or how you know me.

Michael. You can call me Michael.

[Yes, he's sticking with that. He gently wipes the tears away, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully dabbing at her face.]

We met after you had a particularly rough night, chatted a while until you had calmed down and your family arrived.

[Sam, but she didn't need to know that.]

And have met for coffee a few times since, to talk. I've had young children myself, sometimes it's easier to lean on someone who has walked a certain path before.

momchester finally made a bb account

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