Back with the next chapter! This actually took me shorter than I thought it would. Thanks as always for all of the reviews and continued support. Enjoy reading!


From the moment Sam got up he could tell that Dean's mood had shifted from his happy-go-luckfy mood last night. Dean was sitting on the couch, where he had to have slept with a grouchy look on his face. Sam cleared his throat to get his brother's attention and when Dean looked over Sam quirked his eyebrow.

"Came back late." Dean grunted. "Didn't want to wake you up." He referred to why he fell asleep on the couch instead of the bed.

"Alright, so how did it go last night?" Sam grinned, expecting Dean to reply with some smart-ass remark; instead he seemed to get mad.

"Horrible...just...I'd rather not talk about it." Dean grabbed his blankets and threw them off of him before standing up.

Sam was shocked; this would do nothing but bring Dean's confidence down after he worked so hard to try to fix it. "I thought maybe you had gone back to her place since you were gone so long."

"Yeah?" Dean scoffed. "That's what I thought would happen too."

"Then what went so bad? Did she stand you up or something?"

Dean glared at Sam. "That would've been better. No, she used me."

Sam was confused. "What? It's not like you two were going to date or something..."

"No, but she was supposed to be with me. It was supposed to be me she was interested in. She acted like it the other day. But you know what she did today? She faked being attracted to me just because she wanted to make her ex-boyfriend jealous who was there with his friends. That's it; she was never interested at all."

Sam felt like his heart had dropped into his stomach. "Oh Dean..."

"And then she had the guts to ask me if she could borrow money when she was going to leave with the ex! So needless to say I stayed at the bar for practically the whole night trying to forget about it."

"Dean, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Sam shook his head, wondering why people didn't see just how amazing Dean was.

Dean shrugged as he pulled out a box of cereal. "Whatever." He mumbled.

"Just remember, it's only one stupid girl. Just like you told me about my bad date, don't let it get to you Dean." Sam then noticed something. "Dude, are you eating cereal?"

Dean paused before he turned around. "Yeah, what's the big deal?"

"You never eat cereal especially when there's a box of donuts left over in the fridge." Sam laughed but suddenly bit his lip. "Dean, you aren't trying to go on a diet are you?"

Dean rolled his eyes as he turned back to the cereal. "Maybe she would have thought twice about dumping me if I would have looked better."

"Dean you don't need to go on a diet because of some stupid bitch."

Grabbing his cereal bowl, Dean got up and moved Sam's wheelchair out of the way as he sat down at the table. "Apparently I do. I don't plan on never getting laid again."

Sam rubbed at his eyes in frustration at loss of what to say next. It seemed as nothing he could say would fix Dean's bad mood. Luckily John chose that moment to get out of the bathroom from his morning shower.

"Really Dean, cereal?" John comically raised his eyebrows as Dean slammed his spoon on the table.

"You two are so freakin' annoying; I don't know how I can stand it. Can't a guy eat?"

Yikes. Sam grabbed his father's attention and shook his head, letting John know not to press the issue any further.

"Okay. Well hurry up and get ready boys. I've got us an appointment with the deceased girl's parents."


Sam figured the last thing Dean needed to make him feel better was listening to a sobbing-overemotional mother and a very angry father.

"I just don't get it!" The man yelled for a third time causing Sam to squirm. "She was just here the other day! Then she goes out for a walk and vanishes and her body was found rotted and weeks old? She was just here!"

"Are you sure it was your daughter?" Dean asked, sounding irritated and Sam flinched for his brother, knowing the man was just going to get angrier.

"What the hell do you mean 'are you sure it was your daughter'? Of course it was her! Don't you think I know my baby girl when I see her? Are you on drugs? How could you ask that question?" He glared at Dean.

"We're sorry sir; we're just trying to make as much sense of this as we possibly can. We're trying to find an explanation just as much as you are." Sam tried to save the conversation.

"Was your daughter acting strange at all? Any behavior that was out of the ordinary?" John asked, trying to get some information out.

That got the father to hesitate, if only for a minute. Then his angry face was back on. "Sure, she was acting a little bit off. Like she was upset and she was moodier. But nothing major."

The mother let out another sob. "I should have tried harder to find out what was wrong with her! It's all my fault! I could have helped stop this from happening!"

The man wrapped an arm around his wife. "Don't think like that honey. For all we know she's still out there. You saw her just like I did; she was perfectly healthy how could she have rotted like that? We can't give up hope that she's still alive."

Sam's heart clenched at the sight in front of him. The poor couple just lost their only child and was just living on false hope. There would be no way for them to know the truth; they would never have peace over her death, always wondering if she's still out there...

"Can we check out your daughter's room?" Dean asked and earned a shocked glare from the father. Dean looked flustered. "Just to see if there might be any evidence. You'd be surprised by some of the things we find."

The father continued to glare at Dean before his wife sobbed again. Distracted, he simply nodded. "Make it quick."

Sam turned to John who waved for them to go on their own. He was going to try to talk to the parents and Sam thought that might be a good idea. John was a father who had thought he lost a son; maybe he could help them in a way since he lived through that pain.

Sam followed Dean into a room decorated with photos of friends and posters of movie stars, the typical girl's room. But if something had been living here in her place under a disguise, who knows what it could have left behind.

Sam wheeled over to the low windowsill checking for any signs of sulfur or forced entry. There were none but the other window needed to be checked as well. Problem was that it was way too high for Sam to reach. Sam turned around to ask Dean to check it only to find that Dean had dug under the girl's bed and pulled out a diary and a little locked box.

"Geeze, creeper much?" Sam laughed as Dean gave him a confused look.

"What?"

"How'd you know to look down there?"

Dean shrugged and starting flipping through the pages of the diary. "Doesn't every girl have one of these? All her little secrets she keeps under her bed?"

"Yeah I guess, it's pretty stereotypical anyway." Sam picked up the box that Dean had left on the bed and examined the little lock holding it shut.

"I really hope Henry will notice my new outfit." Dean started reading from the diary in a girly sing-song voice. "I think it makes me look really cute, maybe he'll finally take his eyes off of Miranda for once and realize that I'm better for him." He threw the diary back on the bed. "That was in her last entry. It was dated two and a half weeks ago."

Sam flipped through the pages as well. It was true. "And what's even weirder is that she had been writing in it every day or every other day since she got the thing. She wouldn't just stop...what would some creature want to do posing as this every-day girl? I don't get it..."

"Maybe they're bored." Dean pointed out.

"Bored?"

"Yeah, hey I don't know. We've seen monsters do crap for fun before with no pattern. It sounds like it might be that kind of situation again. Maybe you're right with your theory, it's probably not a shape shifter, and they usually aren't this messy."

Sam nodded as he grabbed his lock pick to unlock the little box. "Leaving bodies behind, and not killing off one of it's victims in Greg? That is weird. But I wouldn't rule it out yet. Maybe if it is a shifter it realized there were hunters here and got scared and quickly left. That's why it didn't bother to hide the girl's body or kill Greg because it was in a rush to get out of the town?" Sam thought it was a valid possibility.

Dean shrugged once more, watching as Sam worked on opening the box. "I don't think it would run away because of hunters. They're braver than that. They'd probably want to stay and fight them off."

Sam sighed as his lock pick was just too big to open the tiny but very firm lock the girl had put on the box. "Dean, do you have any idea where the key to this thing might be? The lock is too small."

"Let me try to find it." Dean said as he got up form the bed. He walked over to the girl's dresser and shuffled through a few things before picking up her jewlry box. He opened it up and to Sam's surprise, pulled out a tiny silver key.

"Dude, you really are a creeper." Sam told his brother as Dean handed him the key.

"Hey, it seemed like a decent place to hide it. Somewhere where it's easy for her to get to but where her parents wouldn't dig through."

Sam just rolled his eyes and finally got the box open to find it full of notes about Henry and even drawings of the two of them holding hands or dancing. Dean let out a chuckle at the drawings but Sam sighed and shook his head, before putting the stuff back.

"I think this confirms it. Remember when I told you that Mr. Culler said his wife saw this girl abusing animals? He said she was a rich girl and probably thought she could get away with it. I thought maybe we might find something in this box that would let us know if she is a trouble maker but from all this..." He mentioned towards the papers. "She just seemed like she was an innocent sweet girl with a big crush."

"So what do you think?" Dean asked.

"I think if it is a shifter, it had already morphed into her when the animal abuse happened. When Mr. Culler's wife confronted the shifter, she made it angry. So then it turned into Greg and killed her."

"Why didn't it just stay as the girl when it killed her?" Dean questioned.

Sam thought for a moment before he came up with an idea. "Well, think about it. Would this small teenage girl be able to kill Mrs. Culler? I think the shifter's strength depends on the person it poses as. When we talked to Greg the other day he did say he passed her on the streets. It probably bumped into him and the contact could have been enough for it to be able to shift into him. It used Greg's strength to kill her. And Greg killing Mrs. Culler would be much more believable so the shifter thought it was safe in doing so."

"But little did it know that Greg was at the bar with friends." Dean pointed out. "Since he was seen at two places at once, he couldn't be convicted."

"Exactly." Sam smiled; glad they were finally resolving the case a bit, figuring a few things out. "And Mrs. Culler died days ago, and there have been no other sightings of multiple Greg's. Which means it's shifted again, probably right after the murder."

"So it's been in someone else this whole time." Dean said. "The only question is who is it posing as and when is it going to kill?"

"It's been posing as someone for a while now, days. So I think that it will probably be soon." Sam sighed, wondering if they could save someone else in time before the monster did its work.

"And that could be anyone. How are we going to find it?" Dean asked, as if Sam knew all of the answers.

"That's the problem. I don't know. I remember when I was back at the library that there had been a few other deaths. Back then I assumed they were also connected to what's going on here. Now...I'm not so sure. I don't think that a shifter would stay here so long. I think this has just recently been happening, which means less victims and less leads."

"So let's say it is a shifter." Dean said as he tossed the girl's belongings back under the bed. "The last person it shifted into was Greg and it never killed him. Like you said, it probably re-shifted right away...maybe into a neighbor of the woman it murdered?"

"That's a long shot though." Sam sighed. "Come on, let's go back out, we can tell Dad on the ride back and sort things out, try to come to some conclusion."

Unfortunately they couldn't figure too much more out. Although they had a good idea on what exactly happened, neither the brothers nor John was positive it was a shifter or what poor soul it was now posing as. After a few hours of headaches and endless research they decided to call it quits for today and pick up again after Sam's try at walking at the rehab center the next morning.


Sam couldn't believe it was really happening. He looked down and watched as Nicole, the physiotherapist fastened the leg braces onto his legs. She was explaining in great detail every single step she was doing and how the braces worked to keep his legs from buckling but Sam wasn't listening much. Not because he didn't want to but because he was way too nervous to focus on anything other than standing on his own. And by the looks of it neither Dean nor John were paying any attention to the woman as well.

There were some patients and other workers that had gathered around to watch and Sam couldn't help but feel a little proud. Usually he wasn't one to want to draw attention to himself but right now he felt like he wanted to whole world to see him walking. He wanted to show off and most importantly, he wanted to do it right.

Sam looked over at the custom-made crutches that were adjusted to perfectly fit his arms and height. They looked so...small...no not small but thin. How could those little things hold up his entire 6 foot 4 frame? They looked as if they would snap even though Sam knew better. He swallowed hard when the trainer walked over.

"For our first time, we're going to have you standing already when the crutches are given to you. Usually you would use them to transfer yourself from sitting to standing but we're not going to worry about that now and just focus on the basics." Nicole turned from Sam to face his brother. "Dean, you were so good with Sam the other day, do you want to help me get him standing?"

Dean looked just as nervous as Sam felt. "Uh, sure." He said and walked over. The two of them stood Sam up and the trainer made sure Sam's feet were firmly on the ground while Dean kept him upright.

"Alright, Dean you keep holding your brother steady and I'll grab the crutches." She left for what felt like only a second and then she was back, placing the cuffs of the forearm crutches over his biceps. Sam grabbed the handlebars, feeling awkward and not sure what to do with himself while Nicole kept him balanced.

It was a very strange feeling, he was so high up! And there were no bars around him to limit the places and directions he could go. He could go anywhere now without sitting. Sam looked around the gym, wanting to explore every last inch of it while standing. He knew he wouldn't be able to, at least not today but the possibilities were so exciting even if it felt like he had two giant weights hanging from his hips. It was weird standing but not being able to feel himself standing, he almost felt like he was floating in mid-air. He looked down to make sure his feet really touched the floor.

"How's it feel Sammy?" Sam turned his head and looked down...down now that was weird...at his father who was grinning like a child on Christmas Day.

"It's weird, I can't deny that but it's so cool." There was a little voice in the back of Sam's head saying you might want to wait until you start walking, you might not enjoy it so much then. Sam shook his head though, he couldn't focus on that or he would for sure end up failing.

"You're not feeling light-headed or dizzy?" Nicole smiled when Sam shook his head. "Great, that's great. Geeze, I knew you were tall but not this ginormous. " She laughed. "But really the taller you are the more you have to focus on balancing. Your upper body is much more muscled than your lower body. While your strong arms will help you in holding yourself up, all that weight in muscle will have you leaning forward and you'll have to watch that."

Nicole lessened her grip on Sam's arms and he felt his heart leap into overdrive as he began to lean forward only for Nicole to straighten him with surprisingly strong arms.

"It's okay Sam. Just take a deep breath and try to balance like you do on the parallel bars." Nicole rubbed Sam's shoulder in support as he looked over at his brother and father. Dean was biting his lip and John gave him a thumbs up. He could do this, he had to do this...he wasn't going to let his family get excited for nothing.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to calm his shaking hands as he found his balance. He then lifted up the crutches, only to feel as if he was about to land flat on his face. He quickly put them down a few inches ahead of him, afraid to move them any further.

"Can't you move further than that?" Dean asked and Sam was about to respond with 'it's not as easy as it looks Dean' when Nicole spoke up.

"Dean's right, you know. Don't worry about falling Sam. I know it feels weird as it seems like you're going to topple over but if you continue to go slowly you'll be fine. You have the crutches there that will keep you from falling once you place them down. Now go ahead, use your arms to swing yourself forward."

So Sam did. He used his arms to lift his feet off the ground and swung forward.

He was still standing. He looked over to his family and had to laugh at the looks on their faces, they were so tense with nerves, it was almost as if they were concentrating on this more than Sam was himself.

The youngest Winchester offered them a huge grin, and continued on.

Repeating the process a few more times, Sam was starting to understand how he would have to balance. He wasn't graceful by any means and often swung himself a little bit too forward but he was getting the hang of it.

"Well, look at you. I don't even think I'm needed for the moment. Dean, why don't you take over in watching out for your brother? You were a pro at helping him the other day; you practically know more than I do in some respects." Nicole looked over at Dean who looked caught off guard.

"Me? But I've never done this before."

"I know but just do what I've been doing. Hover over him like you did on the parallel bars, steady his shoulders if he wobbles."

"But this is different...it's...bigger..."

Nicole offered Dean a warm smile. "I know it is, it's a huge deal, your brother's walking. I know it's a lot to take in but you're so good at helping him out and I know you can do this. Plus, Sam would probably want to share this moment with you other than me." She laughed and turned back to Sam. "Wouldn't you Sam?"

Sam grinned, feeling elated. "Nothing against you Nicole, but yeah. I know it's different Dean because there's nothing really supporting me but I trust you man, you know that."

Dean looked back and forth between Nicole and Sam. "Yeah, okay."

At Dean's words Nicole walked away and John flashed his camera yet again.

"Can't he stop doing that?" Dean grumbled. "It's getting on my nerves."

"Heh, tell me about it. I know he wants to capture 'my first steps' but does he really need a whole album full of it?" Sam pointed out as he moved forward again, startling Dean.

"Hey, wait a minute. Geeze. What do you want me to do? Give you space? Hover? What?"

Sam was shocked and actually a little glad that Dean was giving him an option other than automatically breathing down his neck. "Just watch but stay close, I don't trust myself yet. Don't get me wrong this is really really cool but I kinda miss my wheelchair, you know? I couldn't imagine being on these the whole time without being able to really use my hands."

Dean nodded, looking around. "Kinda a bit slower than I thought, with moving around."

Sam cocked his head to the side at this. Dean had been so hyped up about the crutches that Sam assumed Dean had gotten this image in his mind. An image of Sam racing down halls on crutches, being able to navigate through crowded halls and steep stairs. He didn't realize that while it was similar to walking, it just wasn't walking. He had probably gotten his hopes up so high and now maybe felt bad for bugging Sam to use crutches all these years when it wasn't what he thought.

But the thing was, even if it wasn't what Dean had expected, it was what Sam had. And Sam liked it, he really did. And he wanted to show Dean that he was happy and glad that his brother had pushed for him to use the crutches. So he decided to pick it up a notch.

"Hey, slow down! What are you doing?" Dean called out and Sam thought that was funny. He was going at a snails pace compared to what Dean could do. Ignoring his brother, Sam pressed on.

He quickly found out that he shouldn't have though. He just wasn't used to balancing enough for the pace he was going and swung himself way too much forward and was left at an awkward angle with his arms behind the rest of his body.

"Dean!" Sam called out, certain in the five seconds it would take him to hit the floor that Dean would catch him like he always did.

Sam fell backwards and hit the floor.

Dean had been standing right next to him.