Title: Simple Man
Word Count: 1,145
Rating: K
Summary: After getting in a fight with John over the phone, Mary finds a small observer: three year old Dean Winchester.
Notes: I wrote this while listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Simple Man', if you can't tell. It just gave me serious Mary and Young!Dean feels so I had to write it down.
Mary sits alone at night, curled up against the headboard of her and John's queen sized bed, back against the hard wood and arms wrapped around her knees, head hung forward so that her hair curtains her face. She just got done crying. John and her had another late night phone conversation that ended in a fight. He's out again, told her that he wouldn't be home for the night. She's pregnant again, just a few months along, and she is feeling the anxiety of having another baby. All she wanted was for him to be with her, to hold her while she slept.
A noise alerts her to another's presence. It's the soft patter of bare feet against wood flooring, the sound of the bedroom door creaking open just a tad. She looks up, her cheeks still wet with tears, to find Dean, aged three, standing in his pajamas, a teddy bear emblazoned with the words "I Wuv Hugs" on the front of a blue tee shirt. He's leaning in the door way, hidden mostly behind the oak wood, hand still grasping the handle as he peers questioningly inside. He's timid, afraid to see what has made his mommy cry, for he had heard her in the night. It's what had awoken him in the first place.
Mary scrambles to look presentable, wiping her cheeks and uncurling from her position on the bed. She pats the mattress beside her, telling him that it's okay, to come and sit down. Dean opens the door all the way, light spilling in from the hallway to illuminate the quaint sized bedroom furnished with her and John's things. The young boy pads softly over to the bed, climbs up onto the soft mattress and scrambles to his mother's side. Dean does the only thing he knows to comfort his mommy, he does his best to wrap his arms around her, his progress already beginning to be slighted by the baby growing inside his mommy's tummy. He presses his face into the cotton of her nightgown, whispers that he loves her and that his new brother or sister loves her too.
Mary laughs, slightly choked up from his words, as she cards her fingers through his mop of dirty blonde hair. She pulls him further into her lap, cradling him close as she begins to speak. She tells him to lead a simple life, to be everything that he can when he grows up. She tells him that he shouldn't live to fast, that he shouldn't be in such a hurry to grow up. She tells him that money doesn't matter. That all she wants is for him to be happy when he grows up, and that she wants him to be a simple kind of man, something that he loves and understands. Its foolish to tell him this, she knows, but can't stop the flow of words that tumbles from her lips.
Dean looks up at her, questions running through his mind, but he holds his tongue. He lets his mommy speak, drinking in her words as much as he can. He tries to get a grasp at what she says, not fully understanding the meaning of her words because of his young age. But he still tries and commits everything he can to memory, wanting to live by his mommy's image of him.
Mary sits and talks for while, voice soft as she plays with her son's hair, speaking of the life she wants him to lead. As she's finishing a thought, she glances at the clock and notices the time. Its late, near ten thirty, which is two hours way passed her little one's bed time. She gently kisses his forehead and lifts him in her arms. Dean is already getting big, almost to big for her to get up from the bed while holding him with ease. She shifts his weight to her hip, holding him tight as she walks through the empty upstairs to his bedroom, just down the hall and off to the right.
As Mary lays him down to bed, pulling the blankets up over Dean's feet and to his chest, tucking him in to make sure he stays warm, she notices the angel on the shelf. She goes to retrieve it, the porcelain cool in her hands as she studies its bowed head and hands steepled in prayer. Mary sits back down on the edge of the bed, looks to Dean and turns the angel toward him. She tells him that there is some one always watching him from up above, that he'll never have to worry about anything. Troubles will come and they will pass, but there is always someone there that will watch over him to keep him safe. She places the angel back up on the shelf, Dean watching her through sleep ridden eyes as she turns the statuette to face him, to watch over him while he sleeps. Before he finally fades into the land of dreams, he remembers feeling his mother slide her hand over his forehead to push back his hair and the warm touch of her lips against his skin.
A few short months after this talk, Sammy is born. Dean is now four and takes the role of older brother very seriously. He watches over the new addition to the Winchester family, always over enthused to hold his baby brother with Mary and John watching over. At nights, he whispers to his brother before going to bed the same words Mary wholeheartedly believes: angels are watching over you.
Six months later, though, all happiness comes to an end. Dean is given his baby brother and the instructions to run from the house. He cradles his brother close and does as he is told, making sure to do his best not to jostle the bundle in his small arms too much in his haste to escape the burning building. Mary is gone, dead and burning on the ceiling while John screams for her.
Where were their watching angels that night, Dean finds himself wondering.
It hurts Dean years later as he thinks back on the night of his and his mother's late night conversation. Because of the demon that killed her, he never got to live as she wanted. He was forced to grow up fast, to become a soldier. His life is nowhere close to simple, and he definitely isn't anything that he once aspired to be, just a low life that hunts the things that go bump in the night, continuing on the family business. He'll never find love, at least not the kind that his mother talked about, just many one night romps in back alleys and dingy motel rooms. His belief is gone as well. There was never anyone watching up above, no angels there to protect him and Sam.