Disclaimer: The characters of Supernatural do not belong to me. The original character of Evelyn Winchester does.
A/N: I got this idea from watching two movies this week-Toy Story and Baby Geniuses. If you haven't seen either of them, I very highly recommend them. They're both funny and worth the watch. Anyway, this story is told from Squish's POV. If for some reason you bumped onto this story and haven't read my others, Evelyn is Sam and Dean's baby sister. Squish is her stuffed cat that she carries around with her everywhere she goes. Squish tells the story of his and Evy's relationship-from the day they met until the day he had to say goodbye. Warning-I had to have Kleenex as I wrote this!
Also, I've been rewatching Supernatural. Not exactly from the beginning, but watching my favorite episodes from each season over again. So I'm getting a lot more ideas for future Evy stories. Writing them really brightens my days, as does any comments from you guys. So stay tuned!
I've been around for a very long time. How long exactly, I don't know. But I've been a part of a lot of little kids' lives. Most of them barely took any real notice of me. Who would? I'm just another toy, to be played with and put aside when the kid is done. And I don't mind that. That's my job. Make a kid happy until they don't need me anymore.
I thought my life was over when I landed at the thrift store. I had been there for going on two years. I lived in the corner of the shop, in a huge bin with a bunch of other stuffed animals. I'd gotten to the point where I would stop hoping that when a kid picked me up, I'd go home with them. Every time I did get picked up, the kid would just throw me to the bottom of the stuffed animal pile and go for one of the newer, better looking animals.
All that changed the day that Sam Winchester picked me up. He picked me up and started to put me back down, but he didn't. I don't know what about me caused him to pick me back up, but he did. He took a good long look at me. He was older than most kids who had picked me up before, so I started to think that maybe, just maybe, he'd take me home. My heart sank when he started to put me back down.
But he didn't put me back into the bin. He bent down and put me into a stroller. In this stroller was a baby. She was tiny. I was bigger than she was. I heard Sam behind us, talking to her.
"What do you think, Bug?"
Bug looked at me closely. I had never been with a kid before that was smaller than me. But something surprised me. I don't think grownups realize this, or even older kids, but babies can understand. And they can talk too, just not to adults. What I'm sure sounded like unintelligible baby talk to Sam was perfectly clear to me.
"Hi." she said.
"Hi." I said. "You can understand me?"
"Yeah." Bug said. "What's your name?"
"Name?" I asked. "What's that?"
"What does everyone call you?" Bug asked.
"I don't have a name." I said. "Whoever takes me home names me."
"Do you want to come home with me?" Bug asked. "If I hug you, Sammy'll let me take you home."
"Who's Sammy?" I asked.
"The big kid that picked you up." Bug explained. "He's my brother. He loves me a whole lot."
I didn't know what to think. This kid was special, I could see that. She couldn't have been more than a few days old, but she had a big heart already. She actually wanted me, not just to play with me. And that was enough for me.
"Sure." I said. "I'll come home with you."
And so began my longest friendship so far. No, that's not right. Bug became something I'd never ever had before. My family. Every single day she'd talk to me, hold me, hug me, kiss me. Sometimes she'd talk to the point that I stopped listening. But she always told me, every day, that she loved me and cared about me. I figured out pretty quickly that Bug wasn't her real name, but I never stopped calling her that. She didn't seem to like me calling her anything else, so Bug stuck.
As Bug grew and learned to talk more, she lost her ability to understand me little by little every day. I worried as she got older that she'd stop talking to me, stop caring about me the way she always had before. But I shouldn't have worried. Even after she got older and couldn't understand what I was saying to her anymore, she still talked to me, still hugged me, still carried me around, still told me she loved me.
I still remember the day I realized that she'd grown bigger than me. It had actually been a while since it happened, but I just noticed it one day. Bug was a few months old, and Sam had been playing with her outside. He brought her back inside, and into the room she had at the time. She and Sam usually shared a room, which meant that I spent plenty of nights sleeping with both Sam and Bug. But the family was staying with their friend Bobby for a few days, and Sam had set her up in her own room. He laid her down and told her it was time for her to go to sleep.
"Naptime, Cricket. Sleep tight, I love you."
Sam leaned down and kissed Evy's forehead. What I'm sure sounded like baby talk to Sam was actually a whine, one I heard many times as Bug grew up. She hated going to sleep, even when she knew she needed it. She always went down easiest for Sam, because he would spend the most time with her. Her brother Dean loved her, but he seemed afraid of her sometimes, like she would break if he touched her the wrong way. Her dad John seemed to love her, but he wouldn't spend a lot of time with her. He usually pushed her off onto Sam at the first sign that she was unhappy.
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
Bug was reaching over for me, and Sam picked me up and brought me closer to her. Bug wrapped her arms around my neck, and I wished again that I could hug her back. Sam stayed behind, brushing her hair out of her face, watching her talk to me.
"I hate going to sleep." Bug complained.
"Why?" I asked, although I knew the answer.
"I want to stay up and play." she said.
"But playing's no fun when you're tired." I said. "Come on, let's take a nap and I can play with you when you get up."
Bug yawned and squeezed me tighter. "Okay. Goodnight, Squish. I love you."
"Love you too, Bug."
As we settled down to go to sleep, that's when I noticed the size difference. It bothered me a little at first, until I realized that she was already asleep and she squeezed me again. I settled down and slept beside her. I knew then that I'd be with this kid until the day I died.
And that's exactly what happened. Bug kept me with her from that day forward. I was with her when John told her the truth about monsters and what he did when he went on his long trips. She had lost her ability to understand what I was saying at that point, but she held me tight because she knew I loved her. I was with her when we got taken by a demon, and I still remember the demon snatching me away from Bug and tearing me into two pieces. It hurt, but not as badly as Bug crying, thinking that I had left her. I was with her whenever she had a bad dream. If she wasn't holding onto Sam, she was holding onto me. I was with her the night she got sick and wouldn't wake up for days. And, probably the worst time of them all, I was with her when Sam left.
I still don't completely understand why Sam left. Bug seemed to understand because she wasn't mad at him, she was just sad that he was gone. She held me tighter from that point forward than she ever had before. She cried herself to sleep for days, her tears dripping into my fur. I never felt as useless before as I did that week. I wished I could leave the house and bring Sam back to her. But I couldn't. All I could do was keep being there for her whenever she needed me.
Which makes what happened three days ago all the more heartbreaking. John was packing up the house, getting ready to move everyone again. He got everything he needed out to the car. I was sitting on Bug's bed, waiting on her to get home from school. John kept coming in and out, in and out, in and out. He made a last sweep of the house, and I heard him drive away. I was screaming at him, praying that somehow, someway he would hear me. But he never did. I hoped that I was mistaken, that he wasn't leaving permanently, that they would be back. But the next day, the crabby old landlord, Mr. Burns, came by. He snatched me up and threw me into a bin, along with all the other things from Bug's room that had been left behind. He put me in the back of his car and drove me to another thrift store.
People don't realize this, but toys have souls. When a child cares about them and loves them, they are connected with that child until they die or until the child doesn't need them anymore and a new one comes along. How can a toy die, you ask?
By being thrown away.
I had always known this. Don't ask how, it's just something that all toys know from the moment they're created. They're going to die one day. It's not a scary thought to us; it's just a fact of life. Most of the time, by the time a toy dies, they have not been truly loved in a long time, so they go willingly. I didn't want to go willingly. When that shop girl grabbed me out of the bin and placed me in that black trash bag, I wanted to pounce to life and scratch her eyes out. I was terrified. Bug was out there somewhere. I knew that she hadn't left me behind on purpose, which meant that she still needed me. With Sam gone, I was the only friend she had. The thought of leaving her alone broke my heart.
But here's something I didn't know. The spirit of a child's toy can go back to them. As soon as that black trash bag was tied and I was thrown into the garbage, I didn't lay there and start to rot as I was afraid I might have. I was transported to a small, dingy motel room, like many of the others Bug and I had stayed in before. Bug was on the bed with John, and I heard him tell her that he had tried to come back for me and couldn't find me. I could tell that Bug was sad, but what I heard John tell her next shocked me. He told her they were going apartment hunting and that she would get to go. I then heard him ask,
"How would you feel about going to stay with Sammy for the summer?"
That moment was bittersweet. Bug was finally happy again. She grabbed John's neck and squeezed him hard, the way she used to squeeze me when she was sad. I realized then that my time was up. Bug would be okay without me there. I watched her spend a little more time with her family. John seemed genuinely sorry about forgetting me, and he held Bug until she went to sleep that night. She would be okay. She was going back to see Sam soon. With a tear going down my face, I finally said it as she slept.
"I love you, Bug. Goodbye."