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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…
(Unless you’re in Kansas, in which case you’re not far at all.)
…a huntress and her family lived in a quaint house. The house sat near a looming dark forest full of metaphors, and at the edge of that metaphorical forest resided a demon, one who had great power and was feared by everyone in the kingdom of Lawrence.
One day, the demon killed her family and the preordained love of her life. With the huntress in sight, the demon promised a beautiful life: one where her beloved, soon-to-be husband could live… all in exchange for a few moments alone with her second-born son at six months past his birth date.
The huntress agreed, and life went on.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, until she hardly remembered the deal at all. Despite all the imperfections and strife in the home life she’d made the deal for, she clutched onto the life she was given—the only chance at freedom she ever had—and swore to always look back on it with fondness.
Several years into her marriage, she gave birth to a hardy baby boy, and so she named him Dean, after her mother, who was just as strong.
Four years later, a second child blessed her life. He was born with beautiful multicolored eyes and an unusually full head of hair, and so she named him Sampunzel, to spite her deceased father, who had been balding by the time of his death.
Six months past his birthdate, the demon came to visit, as promised. But unlike how she promised, the huntress could not help but interfere—and the child was swept away by the demon as punishment, leaving the family heartbroken.
In time, Sampunzel grew into a fine young man. He lived in the house at the edge of the forest with only the demon, a little blue bird, and an endless library full of books for company. He often looked out the window and wondered who lived in the small house at the other side of the forest.
One day, Sampunzel asked if he could go visit. The demon grew angry and locked Sampunzel away in a tall, dark tower instead—one which had no stairs and no door, only a narrow window for him to look out of.
“You will stay here,” the demon ordered. “When I want to visit, I’ll call—'Sampunzel, Sampunzel, let down your hair,’ and you’ll do as I ask.”
Sampunzel had gloriously long auburn hair, as fine as spun copper. Whenever he heard the demon’s voice, he would lower his hair, and the demon would climb it, even though as a demon he could’ve just popped up into the tower whenever he wanted. He brought Sampunzel salad and demon blood, but no comfort or love.
“Man, I wish I had someone to annoy me with loud rock music and by leaving their food everywhere,” Sampunzel commented idly to his bird friend, Cas-tweet-el. The bird chirped in sympathy.
Little did Sampunzel know, his knight in shining armor was traveling to the tower at just that moment.
Dean had grown up hearing of his brother’s fate, and grew up determined to save him. He had been spying on the tower that Sampunzel was confined to, watching how the demon got in and out of the tower, and awaiting the perfect moment.
One day, when the demon went on a hunting trip for a few days, Dean seized the opportunity.
“Sampunzel, Sampunzel, let down your hair!” he called from the base of the tower, smug at his brilliant plan.
Dean instantly regretted his words as a heavy curtain of auburn hell fell on him, knocking him on his ass.
“Son of a bitch—you couldn’t have done that gently?” Dean asked, spitting hair out of his mouth after he untangled himself from Sampunzel’s hair.
Up in the tower window, Sampunzel shot him an odd look. “You try being gentle with what feels like forty pounds and twelve feet of hair attached to your head—you’re lucky my neck doesn’t snap!”
Cas-tweet-el chirped in agreement.
Dean groaned, then made the climb up.
Sampunzel, Cas-tweet-el, and even Dean’s trusty steed, Baby, all looked thoroughly unimpressed as he got tangled in Sam’s hair again.
“For a knight in shining armor, you’re kind of a dunce,” Sampunzel commented.
“Well, maybe if you braided this monster, it would be easier to climb!”
“Braid it? You braid twelve feet of hair by yourself!”
Finally, Dean made it to the window ledge, panting, his demon sword clanking against his armor. He hauled himself into the locked tower bedroom, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. “I’m getting too old for this crap. Not too bad for an older knight, though, huh?” he asked, and winked at him.
Overcome with relief, Sampunzel hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here. I was beginning to lose my mind.
“It’s not so bad if you just play along. This is a quick story, anyway.” Dean snickered as they pulled apart. “Nice nightgown, by the way.”
Sampunzel crossed his arms, which only made the deep V-cut chemise pull tighter. “Shut up, you still wear the purple one Mrs. Butters got you.”
“Damn right I do,” Dean said, unashamed. “So what’s the plan? I don’t think Cas-tweet-el can fly us down in the state he’s in, but you’re sealed up in here.”
“Dean, you know the story as well as I do…” Sampunzel said, eyes trailing toward the demon-blade-turned-sword at his hip.
“Right.” Dean cleared his throat, pitching it even deeper somehow. “Sampunzel, let me take you away from this horrible tower! Let me be your knight and love you for as long as you live.”
Sampunzel had never heard such carefully side-stepped yet kind and tender words before. “Yes, please, take me away! Take me far, far away! Take me back to Kansas!”
Yet, between them, a problem arose—the forty-pound elephant in the room.
“How will I ever get down from this tower?” Sampunzel cried. “You can climb down my hair, but I cannot follow.”
The knight comforted him. “There has to be a way.”
Suddenly, Sampunzel gasped. “My hair! We can use it as a rope… but you must cut it off.”
“Wait, Sam, that’s not…” Dean whispered.
“I’m not letting you go blind, even if it is pretend! I always hated that part of the story; Jack does, too. Just trust me. There’s a reason I’m Sampunzel, and it’s more than just my hair,” Sam hissed. “Go along with it!”
“As you wish?” Dean replied, unsure at first, but then more confident. Using his demon sword, he regretfully cut off most of Sampunzel’s hair, and together with Cas-tweet-el’s help—thankfully, Cas-tweet-el had gone to the Disney School of Animals Getting People Dressed and graduated summa cum laude—the three of them were able to fashion the thick swathes of hair into a rope. Dean tied the base of the rope to the bottom of Sampunzel’s bed, tossing the rest out the window.
“That should hold,” he said confidently, though in truth he had no idea.
Sampunzel wobbled over to the window, his head suddenly too light for his body.
“I’m not letting you get another concussion if you fall on your face, you’re gonna need to hold onto me,” Dean muttered. “Climb on, spidermonkey—”
“No, you do not get to quote Twilight at me!”
“But you do know where it’s from, huh?” Dean teased.
“Yeah—just like you pretend to not know about fairy tales, yet you know exactly which lines to use,” Sampunzel shot back.
Dean shrugged. Maybe once upon a time, he could’ve pretended he only knew the porn versions of fairy tales, but when Jack practically demanded his favorites be read to him every night, there was no escaping it. Not when Tangled rivaled The Lost Boys for record number of screenings in the Dean Cave.
At least now they knew what could happen if they said ‘no’ to an encore reading, or what happened if storytime was interrupted. All things considered, it wasn’t the worst outcome possible. Considering, you know, that their kid was God.
They made it safely to the ground, where the demon Azazel-Gothel sat waiting for them, along with a horde of demon lackeys.
“Fool!” Azazel-Gothel mocked. “You think it will be that easy to take Sampunzel away from me?”
Dean unsheathed his demon sword. “I do, actually,” he said, and ran Azazel-Gothel through.
Azazel-Gothel was stunned, his wound flickering with a pale yellow light. “You can kill me… but do you think it will be that easy to take Sampunzel away from his destiny? His birthright? My kingdom is his kingdom… He is already lost to you!” he said, coughing blood.
Sampunzel ignored the siren call of the blood the demon was coughing, and used the last of the power that had been building in his veins to vanquish the demon who had held him captive. “I think we decide our own destinies.”
Dean made quick work with the rest of the demons, slashing through them with his demon sword, while Cas-tweet-el pecked out the eyes of the remaining demons.
Sampunzel winced, watching as the last demon fell. “Uh… I think that was a little more Brothers Grimm than Jack had in mind,” Sampunzel commented.
Cas-tweet-el gave an indignant chirp from where he rested on Sampunzel’s shoulder.
“Hey, how does Jack know about Azazel? Did you tell him?” Dean asked, resheathing his sword, before leading Sampunzel to where his trust steed awaited by the edge of the forest.
“I mean, I’ve told him a little when I talked to him about Lucifer. But he knows everything now, doesn’t he? We don’t need to tell him because he already knows,” Sampunzel replied.
Dean paused. “We don’t have to worry about Azazel actually having been back, do we? That was just an illusion or something.” If Jack could pull Cas from the Empty, it meant he could pull anyone from the Empty, just as Chuck had pulled Lucifer and Lilith.
“No, I don’t think we should worry,” Sam said quietly. “It’s like when Gabriel put us through TV Land, or when Zachariah dropped us into that reality where you and I were office workers, or when we got sucked into your TV and ended up solving a case with the Scooby gang. We just play along until we find an out, alright? Like we always do.”
“But this is Jack we’re talking about. Who is God. And in case you hit your head and don’t remember, he’s kinda pissed at us right now. Ghosts and angels are one thing, but we’ve been unwitting characters in God’s stories our whole lives. And just when we’re free, we’re thrown back into a different story, are you kidding me?” Dean said. “I don’t mind indulging the kid, especially when it’s harmless, but I don’t want to be stuck here like some dancing monkey forever.”
“It’s Jack,” Sam reminded him. “He needs time to cool off. He… he’s different now. He has his soul, he has his grace, and yes, though he has god power now, he’s still the same kid we know. If there wasn’t any human part of him left, why would he have asked for a bedtime story to begin with? I mean, there’s something kinda reassuring in the fact that he feels like he can still come to us for things like that, isn’t there?”
Dean assented. “And he did bring Cas back, when Chuck wouldn’t, so there’s that.”
Cas tweeted in the air above them, then landed on Dean’s shoulder.
With the two of them mounted on Baby, seated on her Coleman-covered tack, they rode off into the woods together.
And they kept riding.
“Isn’t… isn’t the story supposed to be over by now?” Dean asked warily after a few awkward beats of silence.
“I thought it was… maybe Jack wants an encore?”
“I’m not getting your hair in my mouth again. Your hair may smell like fruit, but it does not taste like it.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea of you cutting my hair off again,” Sampunzel said, rifling a hand through the choppy edges Dean left him. “I swear, if this is how my hair looks in real life…”
“Shh, hey, you’ll get to fix it,” Dean reassured, eyes peeled as they traveled through the dark forest. The gnarled branches gave way to a hazy, meadow-like clearing. “I’m hungry,” Dean said. “You getting hungry? And I think Baby needs fuel, soon, too. I see an apple tree up ahead.”
Dean stopped, tying Baby down. Baby chuffed and grazed on the lush technicolor grass, while Dean searched the tree. He had just spotted the perfect apple and was just about to bite into it when Sam slapped it away.
“Hey!”
“In fairy tales, it was never a good idea to eat anything, but especially apples. You of all people should know that.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do?”
Cas-tweet-el flapped his wings in an excited flurry, circling their heads, then hovered mid-air.
“I think he wants us to go into that castle that wasn’t there like two seconds ago,” Dean commented.
Up ahead, a dark castle loomed on a hill.
“That castle look a little familiar to you?” Dean asked as they approached on Baby.
“I think I know what story we’re in now,” Sam commented, looking down at where his chemise had changed into a travel cloak.
“Oh man, does that make the dad? If I were the Beast, I think I’d already be inside, wouldn’t I?” Dean asked.
The heavy doors opened with a creak, revealing stone walls and ancient furniture that looked suspiciously like a lot of the fixtures they had in the bunker. Then, the grandfather clock broke out into song.
“Just when I thought I’d gotten the song out of my head,” Dean complained, while a chipped red-rimmed cup cuddled up to its mother coffee pot in front of him, and green library lamps ushered them to the kitchen.
“Be our guest, be our guest! Put our service to the test…” the furniture sang. The taller lamps sat them down at a wooden table, serving up burgers, salad, and— “Try the grey stuff, it’s delicious!”
Both Dean and Sam grimaced at the offering, but they did their best in playing along. No Beast came to join them for dinner, though, and after some exploration, they found a room with a massive plush bed.
“Big enough for two and one bird, I guess,” Dean commented, collapsing onto the mattress with a sigh. “Hey, this reminds me of my memory foam mattress, it’s not so bad.”
Sam eased into bed as well, taking off his cloak. Dean fell into a deep sleep, his snores filling the room; however, Sam couldn’t get comfortable. He kept tossing and turning, checking his clothes for the little knot he felt in the bed, but couldn’t find anything. Sam tried to relax, running through the stories of Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast in his head, but couldn’t settle down, finally getting out of bed to search for the marble he swore he felt.
“Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dean exclaimed, annoyed to be woken from his slumber.
“You don’t feel that? There’s something inside the mattress,” Sam said.
Concerned, Dean got out of bed, grabbing his demon sword to tear the mattress open. “Think it might be a hex bag or something?”
“I dunno…”
Dean searched the mattress, finding nothing. He stripped it of its sheets, its comforters, its pillows. It wasn’t until he turned it over that he found the culprit and started laughing.
“What, what is it?”
“Dude…” Dean bent over, raising something tiny to the moonlight. “You just pulled a Princess and the Pea.”
Sam grumbled, swiping the tiny legume from him.
“Well. our mattress is ruined, but I don’t care. I’m tired. You should get some shuteye while you can.”
Sam rolled the pea between his fingers as he relaxed on the mattress, sinking into a meditative thought. He already had a thesis ready by the time the sun rose over the kingdom and came streaking in through the window, with Cas-tweet-el singing birdsong. “So get this.”
Dean groaned.
“Okay, so The Princess and the Pea is sort of about discernment, right? How the smallest things lead people to eke out the true nature of another person.”
“I have no idea what you just said; I need coffee,” Dean mumbled, rubbing his eyes. On cue, the sentient bunker cups and coffee pot came dancing into the room, pouring piping hot coffee out into themselves. “Do not start singing again,” Dean snapped at the chipped mug, who slumped over in sadness. “Man… I’m gonna feel weird drinking out of you all now that I know you all have personalities,” he said, patting the sad cup. He drank out of it anyway, sighing in relief. “Discernment, eke, go on,” he gestured to Sam.
“And everyone thinks that Beauty and the Beast is a lesson about true beauty, but the real lesson is about change, right? And what it says about everyone’s capability to do so. The Beast changed; Gaston didn’t. That’s what makes them foils. Belle was always her own person, but even she has her viewpoints changed.”
“So what are you saying, you think Jack’s tryin’ to say somethin’ with these stories?”
“All fables and fairy tales do, in a way. Though I genuinely think he just likes Rapunzel and Tangled… but yeah.”
“So what’s he saying here?”
“The story didn’t end with Rapunzel when we expressed doubt. Or when you did, anyway. But… I think Jack’s trying to reassure us he’s not like Chuck.”
Dean put the pieces together as his coffee kicked in. “So… Chuck is Gaston, and we’re all the Belle to Jack’s Beast? In terms of change, anyway.”
“Exactly!”
Below them, the castle doors creaked open loudly.
“Something tells me that’s our cue to leave. Come on, Cas,” Dean said, packing up his armor and sword, giving the cup one more pat of apology before leaving.
They exited the castle, finding the way out was blocked by a gigantic beanstalk which had grown in the night.
“Of course,” Dean mumbled. “You got your balance back yet, or do you need my help again?”
“I got it!” Sam snapped, grabbing onto one of the vines in demonstration. Cas showed off by flying on up ahead.
One arduous climb later, and the two brothers pulled themselves to the top of the beanstalk, where a now-human Cas and Jack were waiting.
Jack gave a shy wave, eyes shining with tears.
“Hey, kid,” Dean greeted.
Sam hugged him with no preamble. It was just how they were. Dean always needed a little more time, but he came around eventually.
“I’m sorry for putting you through this,” Jack apologized. “I didn’t mean to, not completely.”
Dean waved a hand. “You kidding? I got to be a badass knight and cut Sam’s hair; it’s better than any of Chuck’s stories.”
Jack gave a weak laugh. “I just… whenever you read stories to me, or watch movies with me, it’s the only break I get from all my responsibilities. When I was born, I forced myself to grow up, because that was what was needed, and it only intensified when I took Chuck’s power. Being with you guys and having you tell me stories, it’s the only time I ever really felt like a kid, and in a way, it made me feel close to my Mom and close to you. So when you said no to reading me another story, I… I threw a fit. All I heard was a painful reminder of the way things had changed since I took Chuck’s power and got Cas out of the Empty. Everything… It’s just all work all the time."
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Dean agreed sympathetically. “I get it. And I'm sorry, too, for what it's worth."
“We didn’t see it that way. But… if there’s anything we understand, it’s what it feels like to have to grow up faster than we’re supposed to.”
There was a reason Dean, at over forty years old, still retreated into cartoons, and why Sam liked reading his own fairytales every once in a while.
“You don’t have to be like Chuck, Jack. We know you’re not him. ‘Cause the difference between you and him? You care about more than just the stories. You care about us, and you can feel sorry about it. Right?” Dean asked.
Jack nodded, wiping a tear.
“And we don’t know the first thing about being God, but that doesn’t mean you have to shoulder the responsibility alone. You have Cas, and you’ve got us. I mean, you’ve even got Rowena and everyone else who knows you. All you have to do is ask for help,” Sam said.
“And if you ever need a break, just come and ask. We’ll get it from now on. Just… maybe not one right after the other. And maybe keep it to books and TV only, yeah?” Dean asked.
Jack laughed, nodding again. “I promise.”
“Good. Now let’s blow this fairytale land.”
Jack created a portal, letting Cas and the Winchesters exit the fallen storybook and back into the safety of the bunker.
And if that evening, after everyone had gone to bed, Sam settled in the library to read a bedtime story of his own from a Brothers Grimm anthology, running a hand through his luscious chin-length hair as he did, idly wondering what it would be like to grow it out some more, it was no one’s business but his own.