Work Text:
I’m Coming Back For You (My Friend)
“If I die, I want you to know that I love you and I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”
Honestly, Marilyn had the worst timing.
Could she have chosen to say those three very important words weeks ago, hell, years ago when she’d first realized the depths of her feelings for the man she considered so dear to her? Yes. Was she going to? No, because Marilyn Winchester was very much a coward when it came to emotions and she had no else to blame but her bitch of a father and all that childhood trauma she could stuff into the trunk of the impala like matching luggage.
To be fair, relationships and Winchesters never ended well- take her parents for example. Her mother sold her soul for John and the bastard turned around and made her children soldiers- warriors that needed their father not a drill sergeant, food in their stomachs, not more hours of training.
Sam had tried to leave the Hunting life for college, and had been happy with Jessica. Look how spectacularly that had blown up in his face- or burned to ashes she should say.
Whatever Marylin was getting at here, she had tried her best to keep the love of her life safe from her enemies, her demons, her. Yet, even as she bled through the shitty makeshift bandages she couldn’t help but admire how the man before her had grown up so well.
Vittorio…she had first met him when they were just children.
Well, she had been a toddler actually and he was a child, but that wasn’t the point. The way Vittorio tells it, Marilyn had toddled into the abbey’s inner garden and had literally fallen over him, but the Huntress likes to believe he was exaggerating that part. No matter, Vittorio had tried to return her to the daycare, but Marilyn had ‘blinked’ out of existence between one moment and the next. It was a recurrence until she was old enough to comprehend what was happening and speak clearly, Marilyn a bit more open then she would be later in life.
(He was a clever, adorable child, green eyes sparkling with intelligence and life.)
Vittorio was quick to notice her change in temperance, from witty and friendly (if quiet) to morose and withdrawn. She had been nine years old, tucked into bed back to back with her twin Sam and scared of the dark- John Winchester put a 9mm in her hand and told her to shoot whatever moved- like that had somehow made sense to him. It made none to her.
Just...think about that for a minute.
A nine year old had more hesitation about a gun in her hand than a grown ass man who should know better.
A grown ass man who had three children.
He needed them to be taken away so long ago, damn everything about not separating children from their parents- they needed a healthy living environment, not roach invested motels and jumping from one school to the next, barely getting food in their stomachs.
Dean almost starved to death.
If it hadn’t been for Sam remembering Uncle Bobby’s number, Dean would’ve died.
(John Winchester can roast like pig on a spit in Hell for that alone.)
(Damn him.)
(They were starving children who needed him first.)
Later on when she was older, Marilyn convinced herself Vittorio to be an imaginary friend brought about by loneliness thanks to being a social outcast, forced to be around her brothers 24/7 and abused by her father in 'training', but Vittorio was far too real to be anything she conjured. Her family never noticed her talking to him, so clearly she wasn’t imagining him there either, so something else was at play there.
For a time, Marilyn didn’t care. Vittorio was a breath of fresh air from the cycle of horror that was her life. He was her only friend it seemed, even if he couldn’t help her when she talked to him with a broken arm or cracked ribs from ‘training’. Vittorio kept her warm in the darkest nights when the nightmares couldn’t be chased away so easily, humming a wordlessly memory in her ear between their bond as she slipped back to sleep.
She told him stories in return.
Told him stories of the monsters that go bump in the night.
If she had anything else to give him, Marilyn would give it easily.
(If he needed her to cut her heart out, she would hand it over on a silver platter.)
He was one of her best friends, just like Sam was. But Sam was her twin, he was her best friend in the womb too.
He was her best friend when Sam left the Hunting life and took half of her soul with him, left her laughing like a maniac as John beat her within an inch of her life in a mockery of ‘training’.
Forever a punching bag, Marilyn was to the asshole.
(A father is supposed to love his daughter.)
(If this is fatherly love, she wants a goddamn refund.)
Sam left her, just like Dean, just like John-
(Good riddance on that last fucker though.)
-but Vittorio had stayed, held her even across the vast time and space that separated them. Thanked his dark one below for their bond. Never told her a lie, never mocked her for how she spoke or acted…never treated her as below him.
Treated her as a human being. Not as a weapon or as a soldier.
How simple a concept so many before him had failed to comprehend.
Marilyn was a human being with feelings not wanting to be judged for having them and expressing them, to not wanting to be hurt and hurting.
She was twenty years old when she fully understood she was in love with Vittorio Copia Emeritus and wanted nothing more than to be fully entwined with him body, soul and mind- to become Marilyn Grace Emeritus.
Yet, that old adage strikes again; Life happens when you’re busy making other plans.
Dad went on a hunting trip and hadn’t been home for a few days….