*Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that once I am done with "Apologies" (only a few more chapters to go!) I will be starting another story- a non-fanfiction, that will be dedicated to Misha Collins and GISHWHES. The story will be called "Gi's Wishes" and I will be posting updates on its progress via my twitter account: "Gi's Wishes" WorksBySenoraJ . I really want to get personal stories from people who participated in GISHWHES this year or years prior, to tell me what they did and how it effected them, so that I can work it into my realistic fiction piece. The finished project will be bound and sent to Misha. My hope is, that he will see it as a giant "thank you" from all the people whose lives he changed and impacted. So please, follow my twitter and start sharing your stories. Thank you guys again for reading "A Story for Mary" and "Apologies" and for all your love. Really, you have no idea how much it means to me!
A Story for Mary
Her hair is a frenzy of golden waves and arches; only growing more frazzled with her bouncing run into her uncle's arms.
"Uncle Sammy!" she cries in a fit of joy and excitement.
"Mary! How are ya, cutie?" Sam beams back, swooping the tiny child into his hands and up to, what she feels, is a thousand feet in the air.
Mary giggles and squeals, loving the flying sensation as Sam whips her around in circles, so high that she can almost touch the ceiling. She catches glimpses within the dizzying blurs, of her papa, smiling, with slight concern in his giant, blue eyes.
"Faster!" she yips through the elated screeches and laughs.
"No, not faster" her father cautions, "Uncle Sammy should probably put you down now."
"Nooo!" Mary whines, flailing her limbs a bit as she starts to slow and descend, as if she could beat the air into whizzing by her ears once more.
"Mary, don't whine." Castiel warns, throwing her an authoritative glance as her feet touch ground.
Mary huffs and wraps her pajama, clad arms around Sam's leg, sliding down his calf until she is sitting on his shoe.
Sam smiles crookedly at Cas, wondering why the man is such a worry wart all the time. Conceding, Sam glances back down to Mary and sees the pout looming on her face.
"These new shoes I got are very strange, aren't they, Cas?" Sam says, kicking his weighted leg out a little, shaking the tiny girl into another fit of giggles.
"Yes, it certainly is strange; and it looks like they only gave you one! You should talk to the shoe store about that." Cas hums, smiling again at his daughter's delight.
Mary laughs and pulls on her uncle's jeans, "Uncle Sammy! I'm not a shoe!"
"Oh my gosh, Cas! My shoe can talk!" He yips, while doing a jig that jostles Mary again. The girl erupts; her tightened arms vibrate on the back of Sam's knee—laughter racks her little limbs until she about falls off Sam's foot.
"A talking shoe is the strangest thing I have ever seen, Sam!" Cas laughs coolly. Mary carries a look back to her dad, a smile on her face and a body full of musings that, Castiel, likens very much to Dean.
"Daddy!" she chides playfully; finally, falling backwards onto the floor with a thud. Sam drops to his knees and tickles Mary's stomach, causing her eyes to squint and her tiny, milky white teeth to each make an appearance.
"Well, all that laughter can only mean my brother is here, hyping up my kid!" Dean booms, walking in from the hallway.
Sam stops the attack of tickles and pulls himself upright, towering over everyone else in the room.
"Hey Dean." he says with a smile, opening his arms wide and bending at the waist to give his brother a hug. Mary is still rolling on the floor, chuckles bubbling up from her stomach in random bursts.
"You realize, she will be impossible to get to sleep now." Dean smirks.
"Hey man, I can't help it if she is so excited when I come over. She must like me best."
Mary giggles again, her tiny hands shooting up and cupping her mouth as Sam gleans down at her. She looks like the sun- hair shooting out, like rays from her head.
"Then her favorite uncle can put her to bed!" Cas jabs. Dean looks back at him and gives an approving nod.
"I don't mind! Her and I will have a better time hanging together than with you two!" Sam laughs, before squatting down, his knees cracking along the way, "These guys smell like farts and moldy burgers anyway, don't they kiddo?"
Mary's eyes blast wide as she sits up and glances back at her dads. She waits a minute until she sees a smile and an eye roll from Dean.
"Yeah!" she yips and Sam swoops her into his lanky arms once more, this time, cradling her into the crook of his elbow. She swings her legs excitedly and waves at her fathers like she's on an carnival ride. Dean leans down and gives her a quick kiss on the forehead before Sam can steal her away.
Sam bustles down the hall, swooping the little girl from side to side, making every silly noise he can think of; as she chimes in with her own renditions. He zooms into her bedroom, and with a gentle toss, the little girl is flying through the air, sailing down, and bouncing onto her mint green comforter. Mary laughs again, her voice, slightly rasped by the nonstop raucous.
"So, Mistress Mary, was kindergarten fun today?" Sam asks, taking a seat at the edge of her bed as the little girl squirms beneath the covers in a hurricane of wiggles.
"Yeah." she offers finally, still concentrating on finding a comfortable spot within the divot created by Sam's added weight.
"Well, what did you do?"
"Read stories and we colored pictures of monsters and scary things from the story."
"I bet your monster was the scariest." Sam says quickly, loving the way Mary's massive, ocean eyes glow with pride as she nods. He never has to question whose DNA won out on the petri dish when it came to Dean and Cas, creating this little angel.
"Yeah, mine had claws and was black and had black eyes. Daddy said it looked like a Demon . . . and then Papa said it looked like Daddy" Mary giggled, covering her mouth again with her baby-carrot fingers.
"Well, your Daddy is a demon" Sam mumbles, thinking of all the pranks and hell Dean likes to put him through.
"What's a demon?" Mary finally chirps, curiously; and Sam bites his lip a little, realizing he didn't intend for Mary to hear him, nor did he really want to give the child nightmares with an honest explanation.
"Well, demons are tricky little monsters, like the one you drew, I'm sure. They like to play pranks on people and tease them and when they get angry, their eyes get really dark."
The little girl listens intently, nodding, in an unblinking stare, that Sam feels Cas must have given her lessons on. "Daddy is a demon then. He loves playing tricks."
Sam laughs and knows that if Dean ever hears of this, he will kill him.
"So what is papa then?" Mary asks interestedly.
Sam thinks for a moment, of Dean and Cas and just how opposite they are, "Papa is an angel."
Mary eyes round and her mouth gapes a little, "He is?"
"Yep!" Sam says smiling, "Your Papa is an angel, that's why everyone likes him so much."
Her blonde head bounces up and down with excitement, "Does that make me an angel too?"
"I would imagine so!" Sam gleans, "You are also a little bit of a demon, because I know you like to play just as many tricks as your daddy!"
Mary grins mischievously, tossing the sheet over her head, hiding from her uncle's accusation.
The corners of Sam's mouth soften, and he thinks for a moment of how he will get to do this every night in just a few short years, with his own baby. He imagines that his daughter will have Jessica's smile, and his hair, and it will probably be just as wild as Mary's at times; he can't wait to see it.
Mary emerges slowly from her cotton fortress, peeking out at her quieted uncle, staring across the room.
"Uncle Sammy, can you tell me a story?"
Sam comes back to the present and takes in the little girl's pleading eyes, "A story, huh? What kind?" he asks, thoughtfully, "A fairy tale with princesses and dragons?"
The girl's face contorts into a grimace and she shakes her head until her hair is a tumbleweed of blonde angles. Sam knows he has Dean to thank for his niece's aversion to princesses and other chick things, as he likes to call them.
"What should my story be about then?" Sam asks, exaggerating the concern on his face.
Mary stops a moment and thinks, her little thumb and index finger lift to pinch her chin, tapping on it, to emphasize each, deep thought she has.
Definitely Dean's daughter Sam thinks to himself.
"Angels and demons!" Mary finally yelps, wonder flushing her cheeks.
"What?" Sam laughs, thoroughly surprised by the request.
"Angels and demons! You said Daddy was a demon and papa was an angel!"
Sam rolls his eyes back to the open, bedroom door, half expecting Castiel to burst in, talking about what was appropriate bed time ritual. A few seconds pass, and no dark haired man graces the doorway.
"Please, Uncle Sammy?" Mary begs, her eyes growing impossibly wider and burrowing into Sam's soul.
"Okay, okay! I will try to think of one that your papa won't murder me for telling you."
Mary offers him another devilish grin.
Thoughts race through Sam's mind, finally resting on what caused this whole, odd topic in the first place.
"Okay, ready?" Sam asks, peering down at the tiny girl, now cozying into his side. Mary nods enthusiastically.
"Alright, well, once upon a time, there was an angel who was sent to earth to help out all the humans."
"Why did the human's need help?" Mary muses.
"Well, humans can be pretty silly sometimes—they don't think about what they are doing and they can make mistakes and get into trouble. You have made mistakes before, haven't you?"
Mary nods again, looking slightly ashamed.
"Me too, because we're human. So every now and then, angels come down and help us."
Mary stares once more, and Sam feels like no one has ever found his words more important than this little girl does right now.
"So this angel was named Castiel—"
"Like papa?" Mary exclaims in amazement.
"Yep, just like your papa." Sam coos, imagining that even Cas couldn't complain about the direction of this story now.
"So the angel Cas was sent to earth to help a lot of different people. He saved some people whose baby was really sick; he made their baby feel all better!"
"Papa does that!" Mary squeals again.
"Yep, your papa is a doctor, he helps when angels aren't around."
Mary's face twists in confusion, "But, I thought you said papa was an angel?"
Sam laughs, knowing that only a six year old would be able to find every plot-hole within his made up story.
"He is, but there are many types of angels. Some that come straight from heaven, have wings. Others can earn becoming an angel by being really nice and good and helping people a lot; but they don't have wings."
Mary pauses, eventually nodding, accepting the invented explanation as truth, "So then what happened?"
Sam takes a beat, trying to figure out what would happen next in his spontaneous fairy tale.
"Well, you see, one day, Castiel came across a young man who was very, very upset."
Mary's eyes bowed with concern, "Why?"
"Well, this particular young man was being teased constantly by a tricky demon."
"Oh . . ." Mary hums, in wonder.
"Yeah, so Castiel said he would help the young man stop all the teasing by going to talk to the demon. So the young man took his new angel friend back to his house, where the demon lived."
"The demon lived with the young man?"
"Yeah, you see, even though the demon could be very annoying, he was still actually, an alright guy so the young man didn't mind him hanging around, most of the time."
"I wouldn't want to live with a demon!" Mary exclaims, shaking her head at the thought.
Sam chuckles. "Hate to tell you kiddo, but you do, remember?"
"Oh yeah! Daddy is a demon!" Mary peeps, shocking herself a little. "But he is really a nice demon though!"
"Yes, he is and so was the young man's demon; but the demon could still bug him a lot every now and then; and when Castiel met the young man, the demon was being really, really, really annoying."
"What was the demon doing?"
"Oh, the demon was playing all sorts of tricks on the young man! He put shaving cream in his shoes and toothpaste in his hair! He called the young man's girlfriend one time and pretended to be the superintendent of the young man's college and told her that he got kicked out for cheating on a big test. Thankfully Jess—I mean, the young man's girlfriend, was very smart and knew that the demon was trying to trick her. It was still very annoying though."
"What's a supertendon?" Mary inquires, lost on the sounds of words she doesn't understand.
"A super-in-ten-dent. That is like the boss of a school or college."
"Oh." Mary says, fairly uninterested by the answer. "What else did the demon do?" finding the thought of shaving cream-shoes, much funnier.
"Well, the demon wasn't only tricky, he was clumsy too. One time, the young man spent hours writing a very important paper for his homework and the demon came in and spilled his bee—I mean, his drink all over that young man's computer! It broke and the man lost all of his hard work."
"Did the demon apologize?"
Sam felt an antique tinge of frustration cloud his brain, "Not right away, no. That is why the young man was so upset when he met the angel. He had to go to the library to re-do his homework and the angel came up to him and offered to help him do his research."
Mary nods sleepily and Sam could tell he was losing her interest by falling too far into memory and not enough into wonder.
"So when Castiel met the demon for the first time, they got into a big, big fight!" he bursts, letting his arms blow out above his heads, causing Mary to perk up and yank her green blanket in excitement.
"What happened?" She trills.
"Castiel told the demon that he wasn't being very nice and the demon told him to mind his own beeswax."
Mary giggles, "Daddy says that all the time to people."
Sam nods, knowing that all too often, when Dean and Cas are out with Mary, they get too many prying questions that cause Dean to lose his cool. "Yeah, your daddy likes his privacy, for sure." Sam mumbles, pausing a moment to think about just how heated Dean is after those types of encounters.
Mary sits, rocking eagerly for her uncle to continue.
"Did the demon hit Castiel?" Mary asks, her smile suddenly sinking from her face, making her look so different from the eternally happy child that Sam loves.
"No, no. Nothing like that. You see, the way angels and demons fight is with words and lots of times, without words." Sam offers, recollecting all the times he has heard Dean complain about Cas's epic silent-treatments.
The girl's tiny face slides into confusion again.
"Basically, they yelled at each other a lot and the angel said that the demon was really rude and should be more considerate of other people's things and their feelings. The angel was right too, you should always think of other before yourself."
"Did the demon get mad at him for saying that?" Mary asks.
"At first; but the young man liked the angel and became friends with him, so the angel kept hanging around. Soon, the demon started liking the angel too."
"He did?"
"Yeah, and the demon slowly started getting nicer and nicer. He got so nice that the angel actually started to like him back."
"Really?" Mary twists her sheets between her tiny fingertips, sending an azure gaze up at Sam.
"Really. The angel liked the demon so much, that both the demon and Castiel started hanging out when the young man wasn't there with them."
"Did that make the man sad?"
Sam laughs "No! No, no, no, he didn't want to be around the angel and the demon when they were . . . uh . . . being friendly. He liked that Castiel and the demon got along. It gave the man more time to hang out with his girlfriend and get homework done."
"So the demon didn't play any more tricks?" Mary asks curiously, wondering just how that still made him a demon.
"Oh, no, the demon still played plenty of tricks; they were just nicer tricks and everyone could laugh about them afterwards—most of the time." Sam grunts, before hearing the doorframe creak and seeing a spiky haired shadow leering from the other side. Sam smiles and wonders just how long Dean has been listening in.
"So anyway, the angel and the demon got along so well, and liked each other so much, they finally decided they were in love and should live together, away from the man."
"They fell in love?" Mary sings, a wondrous grin crawling up her cheeks.
"Yes, and you know what happened after that?" Sam asks, leaning down to Mary's ear, softening his voice with the descent.
"What?" the girl peeps excitedly.
"They decided they would have a baby. One who is half angel and half demon."
Mary turns her head, slowly looking at Sam. He beams, as her gorgeous blue eyes sparkle in the light shining from the illuminated hall.
"Me?" she whispers, astonishment flooding her face.
"Exactly! How did you get so smart, kiddo?" Sam chuckles, tickling the little girl's sides, causing her to fall back, and kick up the sheets in a fury. Mary laughs and smiles and peers up at her uncle with a fondness that melts him to the bone.
"Alright sweetheart, it is past your bedtime and you need to sleep, or else your demon daddy will put shaving cream in my shoes!"
Mary laughs and nestles back into bed, her eyelids suddenly feeling heavy as she relaxes into the pillow.
"Goodnight sweetie" Sam hums, giving her tousled head a kiss.
"Goodnight Uncle Sammy" she whispers back, loosening her grip on her blanket.
Sam back away, finally turning around at the doorway. He tip toes through and turns back towards the living room. Dean's green eyes glow in the hazy light, as little laugh lines crease the corners, making his entire face brighten the rest of the space. Castiel is at his shoulder, arm intertwined with Dean's, fingers laced into Dean's large hand. They both smile at Sam before Dean finally exhales, closing his eyes and shaking his head, stepping up and putting his free hand onto his brother's shoulder.
"You know man, that shaving cream trick really is timeless, I should do that again."
Sam laughs, rolling his eyes, watching as a contented Castiel, does the same.