A/N: You've read this story many times since "In the Beginning." But, I was "inspired" last night while watching my DVDs. I apologize to anyone whose ideas I've unconsciously stolen (I know I have.) But, I hope you enjoy it.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a princess. She was hunted by a dragon who placed her in a tower. But, a man rescued from the tower. And she loved this man very much….

Mary couldn't decide if she wanted to get away from Lawrence. John's garage was there, and he inherited his parents' house after they died. Plus, there really was no place to go to. However, she made a point to avoid her parents' house and the Point where John officially proposed.

Too many bad memories.

It was relatively easy to avoid those two places, though. Her parents' house had sat on the outskirts of town. She could avoid it, if she wanted to. And she did. She usually had no cause to go that direction.

The Point was out of town. No reason to go.

John never really asked about what happened on the night he proposed to her—May 2, 1973—and Mary never talked about it. She didn't know what John even remembered about it, if he remembered anything.

Most of it was a blur to her. She no longer trusted her memory of that night. What was real, what was the product of a grieving mind.

She figured that she would move forward from that. Although she missed her parents terribly, she learned a long time ago that life is tough. People die. And it's a lot better having them dead and gone than dead and here.

Plus, she spent most of her teenaged years wishing she had a normal family. She now had a chance. Luckily, most people in Lawrence didn't really know the Campbells. It was like she was a new person.

John made her a new person.

She loved the normal life. She was thinking of getting her college degree at KU. Something that had been denied her all of her life. The only thing she had to decide was what she wanted to do. She was good in folklore and history, but those were too connected to hunting.

She figured she had 10 years to decide before Yellow Eyes came after her. Besides, she was trying to figure out a plan to exorcise him when he came calling again.

Her father taught her well.

A few years after the princess ran away with the man, her love grew bigger than she ever thought possible. She became a queen, and she gave birth to a prince…

Keeping up with a three-year-old boy was exhausting. It was like a small tornado would hit the house every morning. Mary wondered how many hours a day she devoted to running after Dean, stopping him before he made a bigger mess or hurt himself.

Preschool wasn't helping him calm down any. He could handle some little reading, like the Sesame Street books. He could pick out words whenever she tried to read with him, which made her about explode with pride. Her son was so smart!

Whenever he sat still long enough for her to read with him. And he was pretty much the same in the morning preschool section. Yesterday, when she came to pick Dean up from preschool, the teacher told her that Dean had to stand in the corner for 15 minutes because he snuck out during the alphabet section to play on the slide.

Sesame Street interested Dean to a point. He liked Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird. He could sing along to "Rubber Ducky." But the education portions didn't keep him interested. Whenever overtly educational segments came on Sesame Street, the tornado would start churning. And especially when Mr. Rogers came on afterwards. Dean was always bored by the children's entertainer. The evening shows, like Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider fascinated Dean to no end, to the point where punishment for his activities of the day was to take away the TV for one night.

Whenever Dean got bored, Mary knew she would have to beat Dean to the front door, or he would take off down the street, which freaked her out the first time she couldn't catch him and he ran outside and across the street. Luckily, they lived in a neighborhood with not a lot of traffic.

Who knew a three-year-old could be so fast? It probably didn't help that Dean had the attention span of a distracted goldfish overdosing on sugar.

Mary pulled Dean off from walking on top of the little playground set that John bought him when he turned three, wondering how Dean got up there in the first place. Dean was absolutely fearless, and it scared her to death. Even whenever he fell off things, he barely stopped. He broke his wrist when he jumped out of the swings a couple weeks ago, and now he was climbing on top of the pole the swings were attached to, like he didn't have a cast on his hand.

At times like these, Mary wished her mother was still alive. She would have loved to have known her namesake. Deanna probably would laugh at Mary's complaining about everything Dean got into and tell her that she was just like him when she was three years old, and Dean being her son was karmic payback.

Mary carried Dean upstairs for his nap, praying to everything she could think of that he would actually take one and knowing she wasn't going to be able to carry him up the stairs too much longer. At her check-up a month ago, she happily discovered that she was pregnant. Once again, she missed her parents terribly. Although the last thing she wanted was her dad to train her little boy to be a hunter. Mom would have understood.

John was a wonderful father, but he was like a big kid himself. Mary's punishments generally never held, because Dean could run to his father, and his father would cave. However, John was getting better at supporting her punishments toward Dean.

Except when it came to any punishments that dealt with John not teaching Dean how to fix the Impala. Even though Mary would remind John that it would be 13 years before Dean could drive, John still wanted to show him everything about how the Impala worked. For Mary, it was just a car. It took a while for the car to grow on her, but it was still just a car. Her two boys loved that car.

Dean actually went to sleep before she finished reading a bedtime story. Her wishes came true. Although she didn't want to even think about the state the house was in after spending the last 3 hours running after her son. Or supper. She'd make spaghetti for supper. It'd be quick and easy.

Mary glanced at her sleeping son as she walked out of his bedroom. Every bad memory she had was now a distant, faded, half-forgotten memory. Her son was like a ray of sunshine, driving out every shadow in her memories.

She now only thought about happy times.

Just when the princess, now queen, thought she couldn't be any happier, she gave birth to a second son…

Mary was originally worried that Dean would be jealous of his baby brother. However, he took to being a big brother like a duck took to water. The day that Mary brought Sammy home from the hospital, Dean wanted to play softball with Sammy.

Mary and John had to explain that Sammy was too little to play ball with. John turned it into a running joke between him and Dean.

Having a little brother did wonders in calming down Dean. He wanted to help Mary with everything. But changing diapers. He tended to disappear when Mary had to change Sammy's diapers.

Sammy was a much quieter baby than Dean ever had been. Something about Sammy made Mary a lot more nervous than Dean had ever been.

Probably because even as a newborn, Dean liked people. He preferred his family, even reaching out for Mary's aunt and uncle when they came down to see him when he was 6 months old, shortly before her aunt died of cancer. Dean made friends easily. He was outgoing. A little too outgoing. He didn't know what a stranger was.

On the other hand, Sammy never really reached out for anyone, including John and Mary. His independent streak ran deep. He didn't like being held that much. It wasn't like he pulled away or anything. But, there was something about him that worried Mary deeper than Dean's hyperactivity or accidents.

However, Dean could handle him. So far, the only person who ever made Sammy laugh was his big brother.

Mary carried Dean into the nursery so he could say goodnight to Sammy. Dean ran to a stool by the crib and kissed Sammy's head. "Good night, Sammy," he said, just before John came in. Dean ran up to John, and the two of them did the now old joke of tossing a football around to Sammy.

Mary whispered good night to Sammy and kissed him. For once, he didn't object.

But, the dragon didn't like that the princess escaped his tower. He would hunt her down, no matter what it took…

"On November 2nd, 1983, don't get out of bed." The man's choking voice flooded through Mary's dreams. "No matter what you hear or what you see. Promise me you won't get out of bed."

Mary hadn't thought about that hunter for a long time. It was a time in her life she tried to forget. But, she remembered him now. She remembered how he looked, how he was dressed, the tone of his voice, his belief that he could kill a demon. She also remembered her confusion about why he would care so much about a future date.

She remembered everything except his name. It didn't matter now. He was gone, with the rest of her past.

She wondered about him, though. Was he still alive? She hoped so.

The baby monitor made a sound, completely waking her up. She noticed that John's side of the bed was empty. He was probably downstairs, sleeping in front of a war movie. She never could understand how John could stand watching those things. She hated watching horror movies. They hit a little too close to home for her.

She staggered out of bed to see what was going on with Sammy. John was already in the nursery.

"John?" She asked sleepily. "Is he hungry?"

He shushed her, and she shrugged and stumbled back down the hall, pausing to check in Dean's room. He was sleeping.

The light down the hall was flickering. Mary walked up to it and tapped it, although her hunter instincts were prickling. The flickering stopped.

Mary wasn't entirely satisfied. The man's voice was almost yelling in her ears before she realized she was actually hearing the television downstairs.

She told herself that John must have left the television on when he went to check on Sammy and tried to tell herself to go back to bed. But, those hunter instincts that she was able to forget about in the light of day probably would never go away in the dark.

She walked downstairs and stopped in horror at the sight of John sleeping in a chair in front of a horror movie.

Mary ran back up the stairs to Sammy's nursery, mentally kicking herself for letting time get away from her. She thought she had so much time to plan, to keep that yellow-eyed bastard from coming. And now he was after her children.

She'd be damned before she let that happen.

She burst into the nursery, and the man turned, his yellow eyes glowing. "You!" Mary growled out, ready to take him down with her bare hands.

The demon didn't let her get any closer. He mentally threw her against the wall, and then up it to the ceiling above Sammy's crib. Mary felt her stomach cut open from the inside out, like a knife chopping her insides up.

She couldn't keep the scream from escaping her throat, instantly regretting it. She prayed that Dean wouldn't wake up and come wandering in.

At her scream, the demon smiled up at her and disappeared out the window, just before John ran in to the nursery.

That was all Mary remembered.

The dragon took the princess away for a long time. Away from her king. Away from her princes. She had no way of knowing how much time had actually passed from then…

Mary liked the new family who moved into her house. The woman, Jenny, was a single mother, hoping to get a new start in Lawrence. She was looking for jobs in Kansas City. A fair commute, but very doable. Her two children were cute. The boy reminded Mary a lot of Dean. He was constantly getting into trouble.

She knew that some time had passed between that night Yellow Eyes made his re-appearance and now. But, she didn't know how long.

She hoped her boys were all right. All three of them.

The only thing she knew besides wishing she knew what happened to John, Dean, and Sammy was that a bad poltergeist was targeting the new family who had moved into the house.

Not on her watch.

She smiled at the irony. It took her dying to fully embrace her destiny as a hunter. She wasn't sure if her father would be proud or pissed.

There were a few other spirits. Much lesser spirits. They weren't all that bad. Just confused. However, the poltergeist was a nasty piece of work.

She kept trying to warn the family to get out of the house. However, much to her horror, she kept freaking out the little girl.

Two men came to the house. Mary couldn't get a good look at them. They came back with a woman that Mary knew was a psychic. The two men must have been hunters. They moved through the house like they were hunters. Which, of course, got the poltergeist angry. One of them blocked knives being hurled at him with an upturned table. The other one was nearly killed by being strangled with a lamp cord.

Mary wasn't happy with that. These men were her own kind, no matter how long she had tried to deny it. And the poltergeist was threatening the family that Mary was trying to protect.

She wouldn't tolerate that.

A flash of light and a loud roar made Mary dizzy. When everything cleared, the lesser spirits were gone. The poltergeist was still there, and it was angrier than ever.

The two hunters were much better than their psychic friend, because they came back when the poltergeist started its new-and-improved plan to get the family out. This time would involve actual killing.

Starting with those two hunters. Even though one had gotten Jenny out, the other told the kids to run outside before he was dragged away by the poltergeist.

The first hunter obviously wasn't going to leave his partner behind. He managed to get inside the closed off house.

Mary followed the poltergeist to the young men. It was holding one of them against the wall as she appeared.

It was only then that she got a good look at the hunters.

The one who got Jenny out of the house was the same hunter she met all those years before. She had never really met the other hunter before, but she knew instinctively who these young men were.

Her sons…

Her worst fears had been realized. Her sons had her life. John, the playful man she had fell in love with years before, the naïve civilian, had turned her sons into hunters.

She was deeply sorry for that.

End

A/N: I hate endings. I never know what to say. I hope you liked it. I was bored at work this afternoon…

I've got a plot bunny bouncing around in my head. However, I'm trying to ignore it, because it's telling me that it might be more than a one-shot. And if one of my one-shots takes an afternoon to write… I don't really want to write a multi-chapter. But, I might work something up.