SPN FIC - The Adventures of Fred the Magical Ninja Christmas Bear
For borgmama1of5, charis_kalos, and the rest of the "Oh, look! Carol has stuff on Amazon!" boosters club (with many thanks for the support). And... heck. For everybody else, too.
You remember Fred the Bear, right? This guy?
Bet you didn't know he was a superhero.
CHARACTERS: Dean (age almost-8) and Sam (age 3 1/2)
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2375 words
THE ADVENTURES OF FRED THE MAGICAL NINJA CHRISTMAS BEAR
By Carol Davis
"You gotta tell me a story. Dean, you gotta."
"No I don't. Go to sleep, you little fart monster. It's the middle of the night and Dad's gonna get mad if you keep this up. He's gonna hear you."
Sammy didn't say anything for a minute - didn't make a single sound. Then he started to cry, in big gulpy sobs. "I can't go asleep, Dean. I gotta, 'cause Santa won't come if I'm not sleepin', but my brains are too busy and I caaaaan't sleeeeeeep."
His body started shaking.
It was like trying to sleep in a bed with the Tasmanian Devil, Dean thought.
Sometimes, Pastor Jim let him sleep downstairs on the couch - Dad slept down there sometimes too - but the living room was a no-go place tonight. That was Santa's territory, and though Dean had his doubts that Santa was actually going to show up (the last couple of Christmases, he hadn't found them because they were in a different place from the year before), he wasn't about to do anything to mess up the situation this time around.
That meant he was stuck up here with Sam.
"Just be quiet," he told his brother. "Close your eyes and be quiet."
"It don't work."
"It will if you try."
Sam just went on crying.
To Dean's mind, Santa's reasons for a kid's landing on the "naughty" list were much like Dad's, which meant he and Sam were skating closer and closer to the edge. It might well be that Santa could see into the thoughts of parents around the world - and if a parent decided a kid was naughty, that would be enough to convince the fat guy.
Since the walls of Pastor Jim's house were anything but soundproof, and it was after two o'clock in the morning…
"Once upon a time," Dean said with a sigh.
Sammy sniffled. Then he sniffled again, and gulped a couple of times.
"There was a…"
"Ninjas?" Sam said.
This didn't seem like the right night to put together another chapter of the ongoing Teenage Mutant Ninja Giraffes story. That one had gotten a little too bloody; in the last chapter, one of the giraffes had lost a leg.
Santa might not approve of three-legged giraffes with swords.
"There was…" Dean fumbled.
He'd been trying to drift into sleep by thinking of his warm, cozy bed back home. Most of the time, he commanded himself not to think of home, or his room or his bed or his toys, or (most especially) Mom, because (as Sammy would say) it broke his brains and made him cry. But this one time, since they were all safe and warm here at Pastor Jim's, and they'd had a good dinner and a nice time singing a bunch of Christmas songs with the people in Jim's church - though Dad had said no thanks to that part of it - it seemed okay to remember Mom a little bit.
Pastor Jim had even said something in his sermon about remembering the ones who weren't around any more.
But there was no way Dean could tell a story about Mom out loud. Sam didn't remember her, and talking about her too much might end up with both Dean and Sam crying like a couple of stupid snot-rags, and that would certainly land them both on the naughty list. So he had to keep all the stories about Mom wrapped up safely in his own head.
Just remembering, not talking.
He thought about her. Then he thought about his bed, back in Lawrence.
And he thought about Fred.
That would work, he decided. He'd made up all kinds of stories about Fred, back when he could still wrap his arms around Fred and whisper to him in the middle of the night. Sometimes, he'd imagined that Fred could answer him - that they'd fly out the window and around the world, sharing adventures and saving people who were in trouble. Then, before the night was over, they'd zoom back into Dean's room and land safe and sound in Dean's bed, without anyone knowing they'd ever been gone.
Those were good times.
"Once upon a time, there was a magical ninja bear named Fred," he said softly.
"A bear?"
"Yeah."
"Like… a bear that eats people?"
"No, dumbass. A nice bear."
"I don't know about any nice bears. What's a nice bear?"
"Fred," Dean said firmly. "Fred is a nice bear."
Sam was about to go on protesting the whole thing, so Dean clamped a hand over his mouth and told him to shut up and listen. "There's a lot of nice bears," he insisted. "Those pandas in the big zoo - the ones we saw on TV. And the koalas in Australia. You like koalas. And they don't eat people. Not all bears are bad. Some bears are nice, and brave, and they protect people."
For a minute, Sam was actually quiet, so Dean took his hand away.
"How come he doesn't protect us?" Sam asked.
That hit Dean like a punch in the heart.
Because he's with Mom, he thought. He's protecting Mom, in Heaven.
"'Cause we don't need it," he told his brother. "We've got Dad, and Pastor Jim, and Uncle Bobby, and we've got you and me. But other people need help - like the ones Pastor Jim talked about, the people in need. The ones who don't have anything, or anybody. We've got all kinds of stuff. And we're Winchesters. We kick ass."
"Oh," Sam said.
"Right?"
"Yeah. We kick ass."
That was a step in the right direction. "Now listen. Once upon a time, there was a magical Christmas ninja bear named Fred, who was brave, and strong, and smart, and he could run really, really fast."
"He could?"
"Yeah. Really fast."
"Faster than Superman?"
"Superman doesn't run. He flies."
"Sometimes he runs."
"GOD," Dean said. "Who's telling this story, you or me?"
"You are."
"Then LISTEN. One night, Fred heard about some people in need. He always knew about people in need, 'cause he had a special radio that would tell him every time something was wrong, and only he could hear what was on it. This time it was Christmas time, and he heard about a whole bunch of people in need. So he woke up his brave sidekick and they flew out the window to go help all the people in need."
He gave Sam a minute to think about that - hoping, just a little; okay, just a LOT, that Sam would give up and fall asleep.
"What's the name of his sidekick?" Sam whispered.
Dean, Dean thought. "Sammy," he said.
"Can Sammy fly too?"
"Sure."
"In a suit? Like Superman?"
"Yeah. Sure. There's a suit. So they flew off to these people's house, where everybody was very sad because their dog was lost. All the kids were crying because they looked everywhere in the whole town and they couldn't find their dog, no matter how much they looked and looked and looked. But Fred the bear and Super Sammy went out and flew over the town in their suits, and looked with their super vision, and they found the dog."
"He was okay, right?"
"He got stuck in a building. The door slammed shut and he couldn't get out."
"But Super Sammy found him."
Dean sighed. "Fred the Ninja Bear found him. Sammy's just a sidekick."
"Robin does stuff sometimes."
"Robin's a weenie. If he does anything, it's 'cause Batman told him to."
"Super Sammy is not a weenie!"
That got the waterworks going again. We're doomed, Dean thought. We are a hundred percent doomed. "It's a cool suit," he said. "With a utility belt, with all kinds of cool stuff in it. And it's fireproof and everything."
Fireproof… he thought.
If only things, and people, could be fireproof.
"That was Fred's favorite thing to do," he went on. "Finding lost things, and pets. Sometimes, he would fix cars, because he was very good at taking things apart and putting them back together again. But mostly, he would find missing things, or stolen things, or people who got kidnapped, and sometimes he could solve fifty or a hundred cases in one night. The police didn't have anything left to do except tell people when to cross the street, and not to be jerks in the Walmart."
"Even Australia?"
"What?"
"Did they solve everything in Australia?"
"Yeah. There too."
"Even on the moon?"
"There's no bad guys on the moon."
"There maybe is. In that movie, there was monsters on the moon."
"Fred's cousin Barney takes care of stuff on the moon. Fred just works on Earth, because it's his home."
Something bumped. And thumped.
"Santa!" Sam shrieked.
"It's Dad," Dean whispered. "You little jerk. That's Dad, banging on the wall. He wants you to clam up and go to sleep."
"He'll scare Santa away."
"He might, if you don't clam up."
"Fred could beat him up. Fred could beat you up."
It would be a good plan, Dean thought, if Fred could fly Sam out the window and be gone for the whole rest of the night. They wouldn't even have to find lost dogs, or solve crimes. They could just be gone for a few hours - long enough for Dad and Pastor Jim and Dean and the whole rest of the world to get some sleep.
Thump.
Bump.
"We've got about two seconds to go to sleep," Dean hissed. "Or Dad's gonna come in here and kick butt."
"He can't kick Super Sammy's butt."
"No, but he could make you stay in this room all day tomorrow. No Christmas tree, and no Christmas dinner. No turkey. Is that what you want him to do? You know he'll do it. Just keep making noise."
"You'll be up here too."
I sure could be, Dean thought.
They might be banished to this room for the whole rest of forever, except to use the bathroom. If Dad got mad enough, he might put one of those baby potty chairs in here, and then neither one of them would be allowed out for anything - which was pretty much Dean's worst nightmare. He'd be stuck in here with Sam, telling stories about Superman and talking cars and flying three-legged ninja animals, until his brain gave up and exploded.
If only Fred could show up, and fix things…
The real Fred didn't have any superpowers, and didn't wear a suit. He'd had a ribbon around his neck for a while, until the ribbon got dirty and fell off; otherwise, he was naked and fuzzy and soft. He made a good pillow, Dean remembered, and had been very patient about Dean using him that way. In fact, he'd been very patient about Dean using him for any purpose he could think of - even when Dean blamed him for breaking something.
He'd been a good friend - the best friend in the world.
He'd never talked back, or cried. He'd never swiped any of Dean's toys.
He's with Mom, Dean told himself. They're taking care of each other, because you can take care of yourself now.
And you can take care of Sam.
"We gotta go to sleep," he whispered to his brother. "We gotta close our eyes, and let Fred come flying in. He's got sleeping stuff that he brings to kids who can't sleep. It's like magic dust in the air, kind of like fairy dust only not glittery. It's invisible, so grownups won't see it in the morning if there's any of it still on the covers or in your hair. But it'll only work if you shut your eyes and be very quiet, and breathe in and out and in and out so it can go in your nose. Sometimes, Fred doesn't work with his sidekick. He works by himself on Christmas, helping kids go to sleep so Santa can come. That's his favorite job in the world. You don't want to mess up his favorite job in the world, do you?"
Sam thought about that for a minute, gulping and snuffling like he wanted to go on crying.
Then he nestled closer to Dean and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Normally, that was a no-go, because it would make Sam's teeth go all crooked and weird, but this one time, Dean figured he could allow it, particularly if it kept Sam from talking.
"He's the most magical bear in the world," he whispered. "He loves all the kids in the world, especially the little ones, and helping them go to sleep is his favorite thing to do. After they're all asleep, he gets to sleep too, and that's good because being a superhero really gets you tired out. You want Fred to get some sleep, right?"
"Uh-huh," Sam muttered.
Sam wasn't nearly as soft as Fred had been, mostly because Sam had a billion pointy little bones and Fred had had none.
Sam made a halfway decent pillow, though, and he was warm.
Fred hadn't been warm.
But Mom had.
Together, Dean reminded himself. They're together and that's good. Like me and Dad and Sam are together.
We're all safe.
"Breathe in and out, in and out," he told his brother. "And he'll come."
Sam muttered something. Just sounds, mostly, which was a good sign. After a minute, he wrapped his short little arms around Dean and grabbed fistfuls of Dean's pajamas. Normally, Dean hated that because it meant he couldn't slide out of bed to go to the bathroom, but tonight it seemed like a good thing.
It was a good thing, having a brother.
Better than having a bear, Dean told himself, because Fred was really only ever going to be just a stuffed bear, but Sam - once he got done being a stinky, stupid little jerk - would be able to play ball, and go to the movies, and share comic books, and help Dean solve real crimes, like finding missing dogs.
They'd be a team, him and Sam.
A real-life, superhero team.
Eventually, Sam fell asleep, snuffling and muttering, and holding Dean's pajamas in a lethal death grip.
Dean remained awake, thinking about Heaven.
About Mom.
About his superhero brother.
And a magical Christmas ninja bear named Fred.
* * * * *
You remember Fred the Bear, right? This guy?
Bet you didn't know he was a superhero.
CHARACTERS: Dean (age almost-8) and Sam (age 3 1/2)
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2375 words
THE ADVENTURES OF FRED THE MAGICAL NINJA CHRISTMAS BEAR
By Carol Davis
"You gotta tell me a story. Dean, you gotta."
"No I don't. Go to sleep, you little fart monster. It's the middle of the night and Dad's gonna get mad if you keep this up. He's gonna hear you."
Sammy didn't say anything for a minute - didn't make a single sound. Then he started to cry, in big gulpy sobs. "I can't go asleep, Dean. I gotta, 'cause Santa won't come if I'm not sleepin', but my brains are too busy and I caaaaan't sleeeeeeep."
His body started shaking.
It was like trying to sleep in a bed with the Tasmanian Devil, Dean thought.
Sometimes, Pastor Jim let him sleep downstairs on the couch - Dad slept down there sometimes too - but the living room was a no-go place tonight. That was Santa's territory, and though Dean had his doubts that Santa was actually going to show up (the last couple of Christmases, he hadn't found them because they were in a different place from the year before), he wasn't about to do anything to mess up the situation this time around.
That meant he was stuck up here with Sam.
"Just be quiet," he told his brother. "Close your eyes and be quiet."
"It don't work."
"It will if you try."
Sam just went on crying.
To Dean's mind, Santa's reasons for a kid's landing on the "naughty" list were much like Dad's, which meant he and Sam were skating closer and closer to the edge. It might well be that Santa could see into the thoughts of parents around the world - and if a parent decided a kid was naughty, that would be enough to convince the fat guy.
Since the walls of Pastor Jim's house were anything but soundproof, and it was after two o'clock in the morning…
"Once upon a time," Dean said with a sigh.
Sammy sniffled. Then he sniffled again, and gulped a couple of times.
"There was a…"
"Ninjas?" Sam said.
This didn't seem like the right night to put together another chapter of the ongoing Teenage Mutant Ninja Giraffes story. That one had gotten a little too bloody; in the last chapter, one of the giraffes had lost a leg.
Santa might not approve of three-legged giraffes with swords.
"There was…" Dean fumbled.
He'd been trying to drift into sleep by thinking of his warm, cozy bed back home. Most of the time, he commanded himself not to think of home, or his room or his bed or his toys, or (most especially) Mom, because (as Sammy would say) it broke his brains and made him cry. But this one time, since they were all safe and warm here at Pastor Jim's, and they'd had a good dinner and a nice time singing a bunch of Christmas songs with the people in Jim's church - though Dad had said no thanks to that part of it - it seemed okay to remember Mom a little bit.
Pastor Jim had even said something in his sermon about remembering the ones who weren't around any more.
But there was no way Dean could tell a story about Mom out loud. Sam didn't remember her, and talking about her too much might end up with both Dean and Sam crying like a couple of stupid snot-rags, and that would certainly land them both on the naughty list. So he had to keep all the stories about Mom wrapped up safely in his own head.
Just remembering, not talking.
He thought about her. Then he thought about his bed, back in Lawrence.
And he thought about Fred.
That would work, he decided. He'd made up all kinds of stories about Fred, back when he could still wrap his arms around Fred and whisper to him in the middle of the night. Sometimes, he'd imagined that Fred could answer him - that they'd fly out the window and around the world, sharing adventures and saving people who were in trouble. Then, before the night was over, they'd zoom back into Dean's room and land safe and sound in Dean's bed, without anyone knowing they'd ever been gone.
Those were good times.
"Once upon a time, there was a magical ninja bear named Fred," he said softly.
"A bear?"
"Yeah."
"Like… a bear that eats people?"
"No, dumbass. A nice bear."
"I don't know about any nice bears. What's a nice bear?"
"Fred," Dean said firmly. "Fred is a nice bear."
Sam was about to go on protesting the whole thing, so Dean clamped a hand over his mouth and told him to shut up and listen. "There's a lot of nice bears," he insisted. "Those pandas in the big zoo - the ones we saw on TV. And the koalas in Australia. You like koalas. And they don't eat people. Not all bears are bad. Some bears are nice, and brave, and they protect people."
For a minute, Sam was actually quiet, so Dean took his hand away.
"How come he doesn't protect us?" Sam asked.
That hit Dean like a punch in the heart.
Because he's with Mom, he thought. He's protecting Mom, in Heaven.
"'Cause we don't need it," he told his brother. "We've got Dad, and Pastor Jim, and Uncle Bobby, and we've got you and me. But other people need help - like the ones Pastor Jim talked about, the people in need. The ones who don't have anything, or anybody. We've got all kinds of stuff. And we're Winchesters. We kick ass."
"Oh," Sam said.
"Right?"
"Yeah. We kick ass."
That was a step in the right direction. "Now listen. Once upon a time, there was a magical Christmas ninja bear named Fred, who was brave, and strong, and smart, and he could run really, really fast."
"He could?"
"Yeah. Really fast."
"Faster than Superman?"
"Superman doesn't run. He flies."
"Sometimes he runs."
"GOD," Dean said. "Who's telling this story, you or me?"
"You are."
"Then LISTEN. One night, Fred heard about some people in need. He always knew about people in need, 'cause he had a special radio that would tell him every time something was wrong, and only he could hear what was on it. This time it was Christmas time, and he heard about a whole bunch of people in need. So he woke up his brave sidekick and they flew out the window to go help all the people in need."
He gave Sam a minute to think about that - hoping, just a little; okay, just a LOT, that Sam would give up and fall asleep.
"What's the name of his sidekick?" Sam whispered.
Dean, Dean thought. "Sammy," he said.
"Can Sammy fly too?"
"Sure."
"In a suit? Like Superman?"
"Yeah. Sure. There's a suit. So they flew off to these people's house, where everybody was very sad because their dog was lost. All the kids were crying because they looked everywhere in the whole town and they couldn't find their dog, no matter how much they looked and looked and looked. But Fred the bear and Super Sammy went out and flew over the town in their suits, and looked with their super vision, and they found the dog."
"He was okay, right?"
"He got stuck in a building. The door slammed shut and he couldn't get out."
"But Super Sammy found him."
Dean sighed. "Fred the Ninja Bear found him. Sammy's just a sidekick."
"Robin does stuff sometimes."
"Robin's a weenie. If he does anything, it's 'cause Batman told him to."
"Super Sammy is not a weenie!"
That got the waterworks going again. We're doomed, Dean thought. We are a hundred percent doomed. "It's a cool suit," he said. "With a utility belt, with all kinds of cool stuff in it. And it's fireproof and everything."
Fireproof… he thought.
If only things, and people, could be fireproof.
"That was Fred's favorite thing to do," he went on. "Finding lost things, and pets. Sometimes, he would fix cars, because he was very good at taking things apart and putting them back together again. But mostly, he would find missing things, or stolen things, or people who got kidnapped, and sometimes he could solve fifty or a hundred cases in one night. The police didn't have anything left to do except tell people when to cross the street, and not to be jerks in the Walmart."
"Even Australia?"
"What?"
"Did they solve everything in Australia?"
"Yeah. There too."
"Even on the moon?"
"There's no bad guys on the moon."
"There maybe is. In that movie, there was monsters on the moon."
"Fred's cousin Barney takes care of stuff on the moon. Fred just works on Earth, because it's his home."
Something bumped. And thumped.
"Santa!" Sam shrieked.
"It's Dad," Dean whispered. "You little jerk. That's Dad, banging on the wall. He wants you to clam up and go to sleep."
"He'll scare Santa away."
"He might, if you don't clam up."
"Fred could beat him up. Fred could beat you up."
It would be a good plan, Dean thought, if Fred could fly Sam out the window and be gone for the whole rest of the night. They wouldn't even have to find lost dogs, or solve crimes. They could just be gone for a few hours - long enough for Dad and Pastor Jim and Dean and the whole rest of the world to get some sleep.
Thump.
Bump.
"We've got about two seconds to go to sleep," Dean hissed. "Or Dad's gonna come in here and kick butt."
"He can't kick Super Sammy's butt."
"No, but he could make you stay in this room all day tomorrow. No Christmas tree, and no Christmas dinner. No turkey. Is that what you want him to do? You know he'll do it. Just keep making noise."
"You'll be up here too."
I sure could be, Dean thought.
They might be banished to this room for the whole rest of forever, except to use the bathroom. If Dad got mad enough, he might put one of those baby potty chairs in here, and then neither one of them would be allowed out for anything - which was pretty much Dean's worst nightmare. He'd be stuck in here with Sam, telling stories about Superman and talking cars and flying three-legged ninja animals, until his brain gave up and exploded.
If only Fred could show up, and fix things…
The real Fred didn't have any superpowers, and didn't wear a suit. He'd had a ribbon around his neck for a while, until the ribbon got dirty and fell off; otherwise, he was naked and fuzzy and soft. He made a good pillow, Dean remembered, and had been very patient about Dean using him that way. In fact, he'd been very patient about Dean using him for any purpose he could think of - even when Dean blamed him for breaking something.
He'd been a good friend - the best friend in the world.
He'd never talked back, or cried. He'd never swiped any of Dean's toys.
He's with Mom, Dean told himself. They're taking care of each other, because you can take care of yourself now.
And you can take care of Sam.
"We gotta go to sleep," he whispered to his brother. "We gotta close our eyes, and let Fred come flying in. He's got sleeping stuff that he brings to kids who can't sleep. It's like magic dust in the air, kind of like fairy dust only not glittery. It's invisible, so grownups won't see it in the morning if there's any of it still on the covers or in your hair. But it'll only work if you shut your eyes and be very quiet, and breathe in and out and in and out so it can go in your nose. Sometimes, Fred doesn't work with his sidekick. He works by himself on Christmas, helping kids go to sleep so Santa can come. That's his favorite job in the world. You don't want to mess up his favorite job in the world, do you?"
Sam thought about that for a minute, gulping and snuffling like he wanted to go on crying.
Then he nestled closer to Dean and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Normally, that was a no-go, because it would make Sam's teeth go all crooked and weird, but this one time, Dean figured he could allow it, particularly if it kept Sam from talking.
"He's the most magical bear in the world," he whispered. "He loves all the kids in the world, especially the little ones, and helping them go to sleep is his favorite thing to do. After they're all asleep, he gets to sleep too, and that's good because being a superhero really gets you tired out. You want Fred to get some sleep, right?"
"Uh-huh," Sam muttered.
Sam wasn't nearly as soft as Fred had been, mostly because Sam had a billion pointy little bones and Fred had had none.
Sam made a halfway decent pillow, though, and he was warm.
Fred hadn't been warm.
But Mom had.
Together, Dean reminded himself. They're together and that's good. Like me and Dad and Sam are together.
We're all safe.
"Breathe in and out, in and out," he told his brother. "And he'll come."
Sam muttered something. Just sounds, mostly, which was a good sign. After a minute, he wrapped his short little arms around Dean and grabbed fistfuls of Dean's pajamas. Normally, Dean hated that because it meant he couldn't slide out of bed to go to the bathroom, but tonight it seemed like a good thing.
It was a good thing, having a brother.
Better than having a bear, Dean told himself, because Fred was really only ever going to be just a stuffed bear, but Sam - once he got done being a stinky, stupid little jerk - would be able to play ball, and go to the movies, and share comic books, and help Dean solve real crimes, like finding missing dogs.
They'd be a team, him and Sam.
A real-life, superhero team.
Eventually, Sam fell asleep, snuffling and muttering, and holding Dean's pajamas in a lethal death grip.
Dean remained awake, thinking about Heaven.
About Mom.
About his superhero brother.
And a magical Christmas ninja bear named Fred.
* * * * *