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shallowseeker · 1 month ago

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Hey shal, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but I really love a lot of your speculative meta, so I was wondering how you see a relationship going with Mary and Anna?

This is actually surprisingly easy for me to answer, specifically regarding (our) time traveler angel Anna and young Mary.

///NOTE: I was gonna try to edit this down, but I've decided to just ramble and repeat myself gloriously instead WHOOHOO. I wrote half on my phone / half on my computer, so it's a mess...

Whichever way you take this relationship-wise, I think the most interesting story arc in terms of its THEMES would revolve around the shared trauma involving the loss of their parents. (I really, really like the "I took you for granted" of it all, while being off-key/opposite directions.)

= MARY + HUMAN HUNTER PARENTS =

Mary ran from the support of her human family because it felt, to her, like a trap tied to a job and a future she feared. But maybe her family was more flexible, more loving, than she allowed herself to see? She projected some rigidity onto them, maybe to justify her need to escape.

In the end, she loses her old family, and only sees their value too late. This grief very much haunts her, even after she has her own children, and well into her later episodes in s12.

///

= ANNA + HEAVEN FAM =

Meanwhile, Anna fled a system that was every bit as rigid and punishing as she believed. The angelic "family" demanded obedience, erased individuality, and used violence to enforce order.

And yet... Anna’s pain, her longing, her desire to fall—those probably aren’t alien to the angels she left behind. If angels were truly emotionless, Anna couldn’t have fallen at all. Heaven's system wouldn’t need brainwashing or jails or execution to keep them in line.

So while Anna rightly saw the cruelty of Heaven, she also mischaracterized the "emotionless" suffering of the angels still trapped in it.

= ANNA + HUMAN PARENTS =

When Anna loses her parents, she’s crushed. But like Mary, she never mentions the loss again—and that silence is fucking loud, echoing through each of their narratives.

Even with Dean, someone who might have understood, Anna defaults to speaking about her soldier trauma rather than her human grief. It's an older wound. Easier to voice.

Later, becoming an angel again lets Anna sink even deeper into that celestial numbness. While she’s absolutely backed into a corner, putting on her angelic armor allows her to retreat from the rawness of love and loss she once risked everything to feel.

I'd argue that that the "numbing" process was already well underway, at least emotionally. After Pamela jogs her memory, the parental loss is completely shelved (or is it?) WHICH BRINGS ME TO...

///

= WHY ANNA FELL? =

I believe the real reason Anna fell was because of seeing HUMAN PARENTS love HUMAN CHILDREN.

That kind of love wasn’t something she ever felt in Heaven, and I think that’s what changed everything for her. (It also explains why she didn’t just fall... but she became a baby.) She wasn’t just running from something, she was reaching for the most loved, most vulnerable part of being human.

Her fall came from a wish to be held, to be chosen, to be loved the way a child is...

I feel like this is her mostly closely guarded (but at the same time COMPLETELY OBVIOUS) heart.

And when she loses her human parents, she’s crushed... and then... she zips it up.

ASIDE// Her words about “sex, chocolate cake, yadda yadda” feel like a convenient, surface-level explanation that sidesteps the deeper, painful, human emotions—much like s13 AU Kevin Tran’s “hot virgins and paradise” as the smokescreen for wanting to see his mom again.

So all in all, the loss of her human parents stays shelved, and she throws herself into a physical experience (sex) to forget it. This is a characteristic Anna shares with season 15 Sam with respect to Eileen.

I think Sam, Mary, and Anna all embody this RUNAWAY energy in big ways.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY MOST CHERISHED HEADCANON...

= WHY ANNA TIME TRAVELLED =

I've long believed that Anna was manipulated into traveling to the past with the promise that she could bring her human parents back.

After all, Anna's parents were DEAD and feasibly IN HEAVEN.

That is... INSANE leverage. And it perfectly explains the extraordinary desperation behind Anna's actions.

ASIDE// Interesting that this means that Anna either truly escaped Heaven as a desperate bid to prevent the Apocalypse and save her human family... -OR- it also means that the Heavenly orderly that let her go was an ANTI-Apocalypse supporter.

But anyway, it makes THIS scene between Anna and Cas read like:

ANNA (maybe): "I'm sorry, but I'll kill YOUR human family... to save MY human family."

CAS: "You come near Sam Winchester, and I'll kill you."

///

= MARY & ANNA + FEAR, SELF-LOATHINTG, AND THE NON-INTEGRATION OF FULL SELF =

For Mary, it’s not just about wanting to be safe—it’s about feeling powerless despite all her hunter training. As Mary approaches adulthood, she realizes that growing up doesn’t lessen her fear. Instead, she begins to see how fragile her seemingly invincible parents actually are, and like how Sam balks at Dean's weakness in season 4, Mary balks at the fragility of her whole support system.

This realization shakes her deeply, and she reacts by pulling away, going into RUNAWAY mode, fleeing from everything and creating rationalizations instead of owning her fears and desires in a more honest way.

(She's, in short, in a constant state of whiplash.)

Anna’s struggle is different but parallel. Anna wants to be a human to be allowed to feel. (Though, like I said, I’d argue that Anna becoming a human child is also tied to a deep longing for safety as an escape from the harshness of her angelic existence.)

Like Mary, Anna can’t fully reconcile her dual nature. She labels her very real angelic emotions as “human,” living with a fractured sense of self much like Mary’s.

///

= A DIRECTION TACKLING PARENTAL GRIEF =

At the time Anna meets young Mary in 5x13, Mary is still very much haunted by the death of her own parents.

I think it would be a compelling story arc to explore and deepen both of their grief cycles.

Another compelling parallel between Mary and Anna lies in how they both tended to view their fathers as scapegoats for their pain. Maybe Mary unfairly characterized Samuel. After all, he wasn’t actually going ballistic over John; rather, her reaction was shaped by trauma from the brutal hunting life she’d been immersed in.

Similarly, Anna was perhaps unintentionally—and perhaps unfairly (?)—afraid of her human father. From what we can tell, he didn’t seem to want to hurt her, but the trauma of the soldier-angel existence made her perceive him as a threat.

There's great potential for a lot of sorrow and regret to be tied up in each of those scenarios, because in both cases, their fathers become symbolic scapegoats for the larger, brutal dangers they faced.

= FEELING MY OWN FEELINGS + SEEING MY OWN UGLINESS AND ACCEPTING THAT IN OTHERS =

I think... both Mary and Anna struggle to fully parse and accept their own feelings.

Make no mistake, for both of them, running away is an absolutely understandable response—an attempt to escape the overwhelming pain and fear they carry...

But their views of themselves as soldiers, and of the soldiers/hunters who came before them, tend to be somewhat short-sighted and incomplete.

They tend to put humanity and civilian life on respective pedestals—seeing it as safer, purer, and better than their own harsh, complicated pasts.

Rather than face their pain/fear/emotions, they try to become something else entirely.

Mary won’t accept the messy, painful truth of being a hunter and especially NOT the vulnerability that comes with it. Anna pushes all her real angelic emotions onto a "human self" she thinks is totally separate. (Anna tends to think: "I'm different from them." Raphael and Metatron echo this, painting other angels as sheep. Compare to Cas seeing his AU self as "the same" as himself.)

ANYWAY

This kind of avoidance keeps them both stuc... and unable to fully accept who they are, both soldier and human.

((Later, it also keeps them from truly facing their grief, regrets, and failures.))

Their matching arcs could be about learning to face the hard, complicated parts of themselves, instead of running from them or idealizing what they’re not.

(These are also HUGE Cas and Sam themes, especially in season 8 re: The roadrunner chasing the divine/the mode of the RUNAWAY, and of course Dean too is stuck in a lot of idealization and apple pie figments at various points, using always-and-never statements a fair bit.)

///

= HOW THEY SEE OTHERS =

Mary mischaracterizes John just as readily as Anna mischaracterizes angels, though in opposite ways.

Even though John is a stone-cold veteran, Mary paints him as purely civilian—everything she believes she, as a hunter, is not. It's a paradox. John is obviously as battle-hardened as she is in a lot of ways; that's perhaps even why they connect so deeply.

But she idealizes him in the same way Anna idealizes humanity, seeing it as all good, all feeling, and all safe.

This lets Mary avoid acknowledging the part of herself that is like John: a weapon, a soldier. She hides how much she actually relates to—and even admires—that side of him. She quietly casts him in the role of someone softer and untouched, almost damsel-like, which lets her keep pretending she is the one who is too far gone.

Meanwhile, Anna discredits angels as cold and unfeeling. But that too is a paradox! If she truly felt nothing as an angel, she wouldn’t have fallen at all. Her own story proves that angels do feel—she just doesn’t want to face that part of herself.

By painting angels as emotionless, Anna distances herself from the world she came from. It lets her rationalize their suffering and avoid the responsibility she still feels toward them.

Both Mary and Anna are caught in rigid thinking. They project their fears onto others and deny the parts of themselves that are hardest to accept.

Their self-hatred makes and inability to look at themselves honestly... it's a blinding thing, really...

///

= HOW THEY COULD BOND... OR BUTT HEADS =

I like to think that while Anna bonds with Dean about the idea of a distant, unknowable father, she has the capacity to bond with Mary over the deeper, more visceral hurt that she won't dare voice: "my parents."

These are the deepest parts of Anna that she is way more unwilling to share: LOSS and IDENTITY.

While Mary was willing to make a deal with Azazel to bring John back, she drew a hard line about offering her soul. We see this in her sarcasm: "What, all it costs is my soul?"

So, she takes the deal she thinks she can win (winner take all!) and she walks away, willing to gamble with upholding their safety and getting to have John.

She takes the losses, buries her parents quietly, and carries the grief in silence.

Anna, by contrast, is tortured nonstop in Heaven. Maybe she winds up in a place where she's willing to risk everything for her human parents... in the NAME of stopping the Apocalypse and saving the world.

(Because again... it's a grief so profound, Anna needs an angelic mission to justify it and ease. This parallels how I feel like Cas also feels the need to convert his feelings into MISSION MODE.)

Anna maybe doesn’t have a soul in the traditional sense, but narratively, she’s already sold it the moment she’s ready to kill Mary and John.

Maybe Mary tries to live with her the loss of her parents by suppressing it, but maybe Anna tries to undo hers, no matter the price. One buries the past. The other tries to rewrite it.

Both are driven by love.

Anyway, that's how I'd like to see the dynamics play out!!! Mostly I have repeated myself over and over... Oh well that happens when I'm working it out in my head. Tune in for future brevity.

#it's absolutely the child soldier of it all imho #but for a character who is to ME steeped in a desperate need for human parents that PROTECT her... it tends to feature little in anna fic #or maybe i just need to read more anna fic???#but anyway YES THE GRIEF OF THE DEAD PARENTS!!!! you don't even have to write this as a relationship to get all this deliciousness #secretly i fear i’d find anna mary boring except as a sketch in grief #i do worry that having anna and mary would feel like having two sam modes at once and it wouldn't quite hit in a romantic sense?#i feel like you need a duty driven character to challenge each or it gets boring... and i'm not sure they could be that for each other #instead *we operate in similar ways and there's no spark between us* vibe if you will - TBH i think anna might hit it off more with john!!!#i think to get it to work you’d need structural elements like this or it’d fall flat #but to be COMPELTELY fair i don’t read much tension between anna and ANYONE... not even DEAN... which was always hilarious to me #except... and this is anathema to fanon but I *DO* see a lot of chemistry with cas all throughout the series especially 5x13 #anna being like: you're UNDERESTIMATING ME NOW???? to cas reads as so real compared to her faux-wisdom shtick #i know siblings are a popular reading but if you see them as fellow soldiers instead like how hannah is a fellow soldier it absolutely work #//sorry not sorry// i know fanon rules the roost on this in particular #while we're on hannah though... a character like hannah would be interesting to pair up with anna #anna: i deserve human things and i wanna be safe #versus hannah: those humans things aren’t for us and duty mission means something even when it’s flawed we’ll try democracy #i think they could naturally challenge each other in the same way spnwin's mary john actually do when they're allowed to see one another #spn anna #mary stuff #mary and anna

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