Something Almost Human

Olly unwrinkled a piece of paper from her pocket when she arrived back at her current home; an outbuilding on a bank-owned 50-acre ranch. The paper was from several weeks ago, behind that little mini mart. It seemed like forever ago, but maybe that was because she had been bored out of her mind ever since.

She stared at that receipt for hours before she got up the nerve to go find a pay phone. It took her another twenty minutes to actually punch in the phone number hastily scrawled on the back. It rang not even once, and then an authoritative female voice informed her that the number had been disconnected.She frowned at the phone in her hand and called again. Maybe that six was actually a zero? Or that seven a two, but he had forgotten the tail. None worked.

Defeated, she went back home and leaned back on the cool wood wall, staring at the dusty, unused landscaping tools hung on the shelves. The light coming in through the grimy window was meager to say the least, and cast a blurry grey haze over everything. It seemed the same haze had been cast over her life. The life she hated. She hated being a monster, an outcast. Insecure and uncertain of how to walk and look and act and breathe. Homeless and afraid and alone. Terrified just to dial the phone number of the one person she actually wanted to be near. Forced to follow him like a crazy person. Cold and hungry and, most of the time, without a proper shower. Using gas station bathroom sinks instead. Not to mention being sore and uneven after every shift, taking days and days to get used to every individual skin's dimensions, even ones she had used many times before.

Her insecurity was what got her the most, she sometimes felt. After he'd given her his phone number, she'd hidden in her outbuilding like a hermit, afraid that she would 'accidentally' run into him again and again and he would think she was even weirder. But now that he was supposedly a wanted fugitive, she felt it warranted at least a phone call.

No. It couldn't be him... Could it? It was obviously a fake. Someone wearing his skin. Then that would be a shapeshifter, wouldn't it? But why? Why would her kind want to do that to them? It was a sort of drastic plan of action, right?

Olive didn't much like to associate herself with her own kind. She had only met a few of them, but of those only a handful of them were at least partly good. The rest of them underwent the shift to play jokes on the humans, or steal their thoughts and memories for personal gain. Some even went so far as to kill the humans. That, of course, is when hunters would intervene, when things got too out of hand. 

But this spree the Winchesters were on... if it was shifters... it just felt a little bit too harsh for her kind. Granted they could be evil, malicious, extremely intelligent things. But, still. All she could say is, if it was them, then the Winchesters had done quite a bit to earn this much revenge.

She contemplated going to the cabin, to talk to their father. Or, the man they were living with, she thought, remembering a rumor she'd heard. She toyed with the idea for about ten minutes, imagining a few different scenarios. But when most of them ended in her inevitable death-by-hunter, she decided not to go. She congratulated herself on taking the smart route, something she felt she didn't do often enough.

Sam didn't return home for a long time. And when he did, he looked a little worse for wear and there was a leviathan in the trunk of an unfamiliar car. That was when she decided to boldly go into the den of hunters, if only to ensure that one of them was okay. Luckily, when she built up the nerve to make it all the way to the cabin, Sam was standing outside alone. He was facing away from the cabin, looking into the woods.

His shoulders were hunched. His shaggy hair obscured a worry-lined and unshaven face. Dark shadows blackened his hollow green eyes. Even his blue plaid shirt seemed faded, as downtrodden and lifeless as he, against the rich wood and green leaves of his surroundings. The sight made the corners of her mouth droop and her eyebrows bunch and knit together over her nose.

He took a deep breath and straightened slightly. He planted his hands on his hips and took a wider stance. A determined look graced his features momentarily. Then, his Adam's apple bobbing against his throat, he ran a hand over his face and seemed to collapse into himself once again. He suddenly looked up and fell back a step, running both of his hands through his hair, then clutching them together in front of him. Then his eyes hardened and he glared into the trees. After a second, he shook his head softly and looked away.

She said his name quietly, then, and pretended not to notice the genuine terror in his eyes in the seconds before he saw that it was her. 

"Olly?" he asked. 

"I just... I just wanted to make sure you were okay," she said. "I saw you on the news and... I didn't know if that was actually-- your phone is disconnected," she blurted. 

Sam's mouth formed a silent 'oh' and he said, "Yeah. No, those were the leviathan. They were trying to get us off their backs, but they underestimated us. We disconnected our phones so they couldn't track us."

Olly nodded "Oh." Sam nodded and thy fell silent. Olive cast around for a subject, not wanting to leave, but feeling she must if she wanted to stay. "So a Winchester," she said quietly. "That man... I heard John Winchester was killed by a demon years ago." She paused. "Who is that man staying with you?"

Sam grunted. "Yea, that's Bobby. Might as well be our dad. The man half raised us."

Olly made a small noise of understanding and turned to leave. Sam frowned and shoved his hands in his pockets, then started following her. 

"Where are you going?" he asked. 

She shrugged and stayed facing away from him. She kept walking, a smile on her face that she hoped he wouldn't notice.  "I'm leaving. I've made sure you were okay and not... A felon or anything. So now I'm going to leave you alone."

"Wait," he caught up with her, clearing his throat. "You wanna... You wanna get some coffee with me?"

She looked at him, debating a smile. "I would love to," she said finally. 

Olive lingered for a while after Sam went home. She was curious to hear what his family would say. They has only been out for an hour, but Sam's phone had gone off countless times. So she stayed, if only to hear Sam explain his absence. 

"Where were you?" The voice was gruff, but too young to be this Bobby man. The brother, she assumed. Dean. 

"I was out getting some coffee."

"With your phone off?" Dean demanded. 

"I was clearing my head."

"With your phone off?" he reiterated. 

"That's kind of the point, Dean," Sam quipped, annoyed. 

"And what if our gooey friend downstairs decides that he's done with us pokin' at him and we couldn't get a hold of you--"

"Cool it, princesses," an older voice said. The younger men stopped their conversation immediately. "Now we don't got nothin' on this sonv'bitch. So why don't you chuckleheads quit your jabbering and go try out this spell. 'Posed to kill anythin."

"Still nothing?" Sam asked despairingly. 

Something slammed down on a wood table. "We tried three kinds of wood stakes and the demon knife and two incantations, one Latin one ancient Arabic," Dean said. "Nothing. Nothing works on this bastard."

"We'll find something," Sam murmured. 

The way he said it broke her heart. Like he was trying so hard to maintain hope, but there was so little left to hold on to and it was slipping away rapidly. She decided that she would call in a favor, if only to return some of that hope to Sam.