Hey guys! I am so sorry about the super long wait, I had a really busy couple weeks because school let out (finally) and for a week we went camping without my computer! But when I finally got home, I wrote a chapter, hated it, and rewrote it. I am not even at home now; I'm supposed to be being sociable with a bunch of drunken relatives with fireworks. NOT JOKING! Let's hope I survive to tell this story. ::Sniff:: Basically a fluff chapter.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except Gwen and Shwu.

Gwen was the first one up, awoken by a cool breeze that blew in through the window. She had gotten up and shut it, but found after half an hour of trying that she couldn't get back to sleep. So she pulled out a book and tried to get herself comfortable in the bed. I was difficult because last year in winter, she'd slipped and cracked her tailbone, and you couldn't just fix a tailbone; put it in a cast or something.

The book was one she'd found when browsing randomly, and when she had saw it, the librarian had come up behind her and scared her into checking it out. Librarians had always creeped her out for some reason. It was a good book anyway, though, she had been right, but it was long and had difficult passages, as it had been written by Shakespeare. She didn't get most of the story, but she got the general story line.

The other book she'd gotten was an old one, one that was about monsters and stuff. Gwen had checked it out anyway, because it had had something about Shwu. Just a quick snippet about them on the back and she'd decided to pick it up on a whim. On the inside, however, it had several pages. Gwen had shot most of it down as folk lore, but she still had to show it to Dean and Sam, which she planned to do that day.

After several minutes of trying to read Shakespeare, Gwen gave up and put it away, hiding it deep in her suitcase, for she knew that she couldn't let Dean see it, or else he would probably embarrass her about it. She couldn't tell with Sam yet, but she would take no chances.

Gwen rolled out of the springy sofa and got up, seeing that it was nearly seven thirty and the boys would be up soon. She grinned, knowing that she would get all the hot water.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Dean pounded on the bathroom door,

"Gwen, Gwen!"

"Hold on!" She yelled back. Dean heard the water turn off and Gwen opened the door, dressed in a black Nickleback tee shirt and cut off jeans. Her black hair hung in clumps, soaking wet and dripping into the towel she held around her neck.

"Nice shirt." Dean said, and Gwen grinned happily, seeing as it was the only shirt that Gwen and her mother had been able to afford that wasn't in tatters.

"Thanks." When Dean and Sam had gotten dressed, Gwen pulled out the book she'd found on monsters and showed it to them.

"I found this at the library and picked it up just for the hay of it, and found…" She opened the page to the Shwu, "This. Maybe there's something in it?" She asked then handed it to Dean, who read it aloud to his brother. They concluded that most of it was fluff, but at the bottom of the page something they thought they would give a try.

"'When Shwu make a kill, they sometimes leave behind a residual evidence of where they live, sometimes of their children.'" Sam looked up saying,

"It's worth a shot. Where did you live?" Gwen immediately looked at her feet, eyebrows furrowed in frustration. She looked back up at them and reluctantly told them.

"Let's go then." Dean said, and they all packed up their things, ready for a day trip.

Sam had picked up the reaction that Gwen had had to showing them where her mother had passed, and he wasn't sure if Dean had noticed it or not. His first thought was that she just didn't want to go back to the old home, but he reran the memory in his mind and soaked in every detail and realized that it wasn't only that she was scared to go back, she didn't want them to see where she had grew up. Sam straightened up and looked over at Gwen, who was busy packing her things in that old, worn suitcase.

Sam thought back to all the clothes she had worn since they'd gotten her from the orphanage. They'd first seen her in the orphanage uniform, but when she'd found them in the old motel, she worn a pair of too big jeans and a baggy, ripped tee shirt with a rain jacket that had holes in it. The next morning she'd put on the same jeans and a long sleeved shirt that was a faded blue that had been obviously worn before her, the day after that she worn the pair of jeans again with the orphanage shirt. Yesterday she had worn the shorts she had on now with the shirt she'd worn when they'd found her. Today seemed to be the only day she'd worn anything that wasn't in ruins.

Gwen straightened up and put her wet hair into a messy bun with an elastic band and saw Sam looking at her and Sam went quickly back to packing up. He wondered if they'd been poor, but then pushed the image of Gwen begging for spare change on the streets out of his mind.

Gwen sighed quietly after two hours of driving, the knots in her stomach getting worse, not wanting them to see that the place she'd grown up in was just a shack that had a tarp with holes for the roof. Gwen ran her finger along the soft, worn spine of Hamlet and looked at it slowly, wishing that she could snap her fingers and make her old shack a palace.

"Wait, turn where?" Gwen looked up and saw her old neighborhood. The butterflies ate the inside of her stomach and she said,

"Stop here." Dean looked back at her, confused,

"But there's nothing back-"

"Stop here." Gwen insisted, and Dean did as he was told.

They got out of the old car, Gwen leading the way down an old narrow alley, trash bags and dumpsters on the sides, rats scurrying frequently among the rubbish. Once they had to step carefully over the legs of a sleeping hobo, holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand, snoring and muttering in his sleep.

The brothers looked at him and then at Gwen, not being able to believe what their minds was telling them. Sam's stomach twisted and he looked sadly at the back of Gwen's lowered head, his worse fears coming true. Dean stumbled over a group of broken glass bottles, causing them to bang together and echo menacingly off the grimy brick walls. A creepy fog hung over the alleyway, and with each exhale the three could see their breath in a billowing cloud of steam appear in front of them. Gwen stopped at the end of the very long alley, and when they looked back at where they had come from, they could see only a few feet back, the fog was so dense.

Dean and Sam couldn't see what they were looking at for a moment, but when Gwen pulled back a heavy, dew soaked blanket, they saw what was a very small shack, one built out of flimsy cardboard and rotting pieces of broken wood. Inside the one room shack was a mattress stripped of all blankets and a simple bedside table with a blown out candle that had wax drippings on the sides.

Dean stared at the mess and looked, horrified, at Gwen, who had her head hung low, looking about ready to leave. She glanced up at them, willing them to just go in and stop staring at her; she was about ready to start crying as it was. Sam and Dean went in the small shack, stooping so their heads wouldn't disturb the torn blue tarp stretched to make a roof. Gwen stood outside, not able to squeeze in there herself. It did not take long in the cramped conditions to find a burnt in symbol in the one good piece of wood.

"Gwen, was this here before?" Sam asked, showing her the odd symbol. She shook her head, remaining outside, not looking at either one of them.

It was a simple circle, and in it was more circles and complicated shapes and lines, there was one line that went through the middle of the circle and out the other end, cutting it in half. It had a squiggle in the center, and another one stemming from that. Dean awkwardly pulled out his phone, and took a photo, putting it away for later inspection.

Gwen was silent the whole ride back to the motel, not even looking up from her palms, not daring to say something, for she thought she would burst into tears if she opened her mouth from embarrassment. When they pulled into the parking lot, the brothers started to get out without a word, but Gwen finally found her tongue and spoke up,

"Wait," The brothers paused, wondering what she could say to make them feel better, to stop feeling bad for her, they had thought nothing was worse than their childhood, but seeing where Gwen had been raised had completely changed their perspective. "I don't want things to feel all awkward now, so can we pretend this never happened, please?" it was almost like she was scared that they were going to alienate her now, think that she was something that wasn't even human. They nodded and got out of the car, and Gwen spent the first hours of the night trying and nearly failing from crying.

She had thought that maybe if she didn't say anything and pretended that she had grown up like a normal person, she would never have to tell them her secret, hoping that they would just forgive her from living on the streets the first twelve years of her life, stealing food and creeping around dark alleyways at night, just to be alone. She thought the worst case scenario would be that they would find out somehow, but them having to actually go back… Well, worse things have happened. Gwen closed her eyes and only hoped they didn't care.

So… so, so, so, so, so. Blah, crappy chapter I know, but it gets better, I promise. Leave me an awesome comment on what you awesome people thought. And the next installment will be out ASAP. I promise. Review, pretty, pretty, pretty please, with a cherry on top! Ooh, now I'm hungry.