I woke up slowly, smelling coffee and hearing clicking. I was confused- why wasn't I smelling the campfire, or hearing birds tweeting, or people talking outside of our tent?
I opened my eyes and sat up, looking around and rubbing my face. I was on a bed, in a hotel room. Some guy with brown hair that came down past his ears was sitting at a table across the room, looking at a laptop.
"Good morning." he said, noticing that I was awake. He had hazel eyes and was wearing a blue and green plaid shirt.
"Who are you?" I asked, and then I remembered last night, and I started to cry.
The guy stood up- wow, he was tall and huge!- and came over to the bed.
"Charlotte, I'm Sam." he said, and he sat down on the foot of the bed, facing me. "Do you remember meeting me last night?"
"Yes." I sobbed. "Where's my mom? Did you go back and get her? Are you- are you sure she's dead?" I scooted back on the bed until my back was at the headboard, and I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
A door in the room opened, and someone came into the room in a cloud of steam.
It was the other guy from last night, Dean Winchester, my father.
"How do you know she's dead?" I asked accusingly. "Did you check? Where was she? She left the tent to help my Aunt Janice! What were you guys even doing there?" My voice got louder and more panicked sounding.
"Hey, easy!" Dean said, raising his hands. He had a white hotel towel around the back of his neck. He grabbed a chair from the table, dragging it over near the bed and turning it around backwards so he could sit in it that way. He leaned his arms on the back of the chair.
"Listen, Lottie- there's some things we need-"
"Don't call me that!" I snapped.
He sat back, confused. "What? I thought-"
"That's what my mom calls me! Just her!" More tears filled my eyes.
"Oh." He said, glancing at Sam. "Sorry. Well, listen, Charlotte-"
"I don't like Charlotte either." I said.
Dean exhaled. "Well, what do you like to be called?"
"Charlie." I said. "That's what my friends at school call me."
"Why don't you like the name Charlotte?" Sam asked me. "It's pretty, and old-fashioned sounding."
"When I was in first grade, the teacher read us Charlotte's Web and all the kids started calling me 'Charlotte Spider' and 'Spider Girl', and I didn't like it. So I decided on Charlie."
"How come your mother calls you Charlotte?" Dean asked me.
"Because she doesn't like Charlie. She says it's a boy's name and I'm not a boy. Some of my teachers call me Charlotte too, but I really don't like it."
"Well, okay." Dean said. "Charlie it is." He cleared his throat. "To get back to the matter at hand- we did search for your mother, and we found her. And she was, uh, deceased."
I looked at him. "How do you know? Are you a doctor or something?"
"No, Charlo- Charlie, she was...too badly injured." Dean looked down at the floor, then up at me again. "I'm sorry, kiddo."
I sat forward, suddenly angry. "Didn't you recognize her? You should have tried to save her! You should have known who she was and seen that she was my mom, and tried to save her for me!" I shouted at him. "I need her!"
Dean looked very uncomfortable. "I did recognize her." he said. "But here's the thing, kid-"
"Dean, maybe you shouldn't-" Sam said.
"Shouldn't what?" I asked, looking at Sam and then Dean. "What?"
Dean swallowed, and looked even more uncomfortable. "Well, she was already...you knew her cancer was back, right? And they were going to try new treatments? The thing is, the doctors said that it probably wouldn't work...she was trying it anyway." Dean sighed deeply and looked me in the eyes.
"What I'm trying to say, Charlie, is that your mother was... already dying. The doctors only gave her a couple months at most. That's why she wanted you to meet me, so that you could come live with me when...it finally happened."
Anger washed over me like a wave. I balled my hands into fists. He couldn't know that!
"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.
"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!" I got off of the bed and rushed towards him. "YOU'RE LYING!" I screamed, and I threw myself at him, swinging my fists. One fist glanced off his shoulder- it was like hitting a brick wall- and the other fist hit his chest, another brick wall.
He sat back and put his hands up, trying to grab me.
"Hey, easy now-" He said, and then Sam was coming over to us, and he grabbed me from behind and held my arms down at my sides. He sat down on the edge of the bed, holding me upright in the V of his legs. I struggled against him, starting to cry again.
I knew, suddenly, that what Dean had said was true. After Mom had come back from the doctor's that last time she had spent a long time in her room crying, even though she lied to me and said she hadn't been. She couldn't hide it from me, though. And then for a few days she had been really huggy with me, holding me tightly and snuggling, but then she'd always end up crying. And then...she stopped being that way, and would sit at the kitchen table staring off into space for a long time, and spend lots of time on the phone with a lawyer. I had known that something was wrong, something was different, I just didn't know what to do. Or how to ask her about it.
"LET ME GO!" I screamed at Sam over my shoulder, then I turned to Dean, tears pouring down my face. "YOU LIE! YOU'RE A BIG FAT LIAR AND I HATE YOU!"
"Charlie, take a deep breath." Sam said. He took my wrists in his hands and then crossed my arms over my chest, making me hug myself.
"NO!" I shrieked. "I'M GOING HOME AND I'M GOING TO WAIT FOR MY MOM!"
"Charlie..." Dean said, and he looked guilty.
"I told you it was too soon to tell her that!" Sam said in a scolding way to Dean.
"LEMME GO!" I turned my head and yelled at Sam, who was still holding me tightly.
"Not until you calm down." he said.
I struggled against him but it was no use. Besides being as tall as a skyscraper, he was also really strong. After a few minutes I was panting and exhausted. I slumped against his hold on me, defeated, and started crying again.
Dean got up off the chair and came over to the bed and sat down next to Sam. He put his hand on my arm. "Can I, uh, can I hug you or somethin'?" he asked awkwardly.
"No!" I jerked my arm away from him. "I hate you! Don't touch me!"
I tried to move away, but Sam was still holding me, just not as tightly.
"Lemme go, you big giant meany!" I turned my head to glare at Sam.
He chuckled. "I've been called worse." he said. He let me go and they both looked at me. I crawled onto the bed, up to the head, and got under the covers, pulling them up over my head and curling in a ball, sobbing.
I felt a hand on my back and jerked my body. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" I shouted.
"All right." Dean said. I felt the bed shift and guessed that they had both gotten up. I laid there and cried, hearing them talking quietly every once in a while, and the sounds of paper rustling and them eating. I drifted back into an uneasy sleep.
"Charlie." I heard a voice say quietly. "Charlie, wake up."
I sat up, pulling the covers off of my head. Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me.
Dean was standing next to the foot of the bed. "It's the middle of the afternoon." he said. "We figured you should wake up. You hungry? We got you some black olive pizza. Your Mom told me before that that's your favorite kind."
At the mention of my Mom, tears came to my eyes.
"I want my Mom." I said, and then the floodgates opened. I started sobbing, and felt hands on my arms, pulling me close. It was Sam again. As I put my face against his chest I could feel how soft his flannel shirt was. He was warm, and smelled a little bit sweet, like sugar cookies or something. He put his arms around me and held me as I cried.
I heard Dean say, "Should I-"
"No." Sam said. "I've got her for now." I slid my arms around him and leaned into him more.
Once I was all cried out I sat back, and Sam let me go. He leaned over and took a box of tissues off of the bedside table, and put them on the bed next to me. I wiped my face off and blew my nose.
Dean came over and handed me a bottle of water. "You should drink." he said. "All this crying you've been doing, you're gonna get dehydrated."
"I don't like water." I said, and my chest hitched.
"You should still drink it." Sam said. "That's all we have right now."
I glanced around the room and saw a coffee maker on the counter. "Can I have coffee?" I asked.
Sam and Dean looked at each other and chuckled.
"No, kid, coffee's for grownups." Dean said.
"My Mom-" Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them away. "She lets me have coffee. We go to the coffee shop together all the time."
Sam and Dean looked at each other again. "Drink some water, kiddo." Dean said. "You want a piece of pizza?"
I sighed. "I guess." I said. I got out of bed and walked over to the table, where the pizza boxes were. Dean opened one and took out a slice for me, putting it onto a paper towel and handing it to me. He closed the pizza box and moved both of them over to the counter, then sat down in one of the other chairs, looking at me.
Sam got up and came over to sit at the table too.
"So, uh, earlier..." Dean started. He looked uncomfortable again. "Did you, uh, mean..."
I realized that he was talking about when I was yelling at them. I felt embarrassed.
"Sorry." I muttered, looking down at the table. "That was mean of me to say all that stuff."
"We understand, you're trying to process some difficult things." Sam said. "But you might want to think about how you talk to people."
"Sorry." I said again. I couldn't meet their eyes.
"I'm sorry I had to tell you that way." Dean said. "That wasn't the way I-"
I looked up at him suddenly. "Can we not talk about it right now?" I snapped.
He blinked suddenly, taken aback at my tone. "Okay, sure." he said. He and Sam glanced at each other again.
I was almost finished with my piece of pizza.
"Would you like more?" Dean asked.
I shook my head. "No thanks. Maybe later." I said. I looked around the room. It was an ugly hotel room, with two double beds and wall paper that looked like it was from an old-fashioned black-and-white tv show.
"Why are you guys in a hotel room?" I asked. "And why did you show up at the campsite in the middle of the night?"
"We don't live around here." Dean said. He and Sam looked at each other, and it was like they were having some kind of silent conversation.
"Tell us about last night, Charlie." Sam said.
"Um, me and Mom went to bed, and then we started hearing these noises- like growling and stuff- I thought maybe it was a dog at first. But then there were sounds like bad stuff was happening..."
"Like what?" Dean asked.
"Like- crunching sounds and ripping sounds and it sounded like something heavy was thrown, and something crashing around in the woods, and people started- started yelling and stuff." Tears came to my eyes. "Then someone screamed and Mom said it was Aunt Janice and she went to go look for her. Then she said, "Oh no!" and I heard more growling and stuff... and then I heard a howl, but it was- it made the hair on my arms stand up." I looked at both of them. "It didn't sound like a dog or a wolf or anything I've ever heard before."
"Then what happened?" Sam asked.
" I- I got out of the tent to go look for Mom, and I ran into the bushes after I saw some people...on the ground...I think they were- were dead." I whispered and swallowed uneasily. The fear I had felt came back to me and I started to tremble as tears filled my eyes and began to spill over.
Dean stood up and came over to me, and put his arms around me while I cried again. He patted my back, and I could tell he felt awkward. When I stopped, he handed me a napkin to wipe my face.
He sat back down and looked at me.
"Well, here's the thing, Charlotte...it probably wasn't a dog or a wolf of coyote or anything."
"Then what was it?"
"We think it's a were wolf." Sam said seriously.
"A werewolf?" I asked doubtfully. "I thought they were pretend. And how would you guys know that anyway?"
"Well, we're, uh, hunters." Dean said. "But we don't hunt animals. We hunt...other creatures, like werewolves."
"You mean they are for real?" I looked at both of them. "I knew it!"
They looked at each other again.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked carefully.
"I know stuff sometimes," I said, "and I believe in ghosts and stuff."
"You do?" Dean was surprised. He looked at me, studying me. "What do you mean, you know stuff sometimes?"
"I, um, I'm not supposed to talk about it." I said, uncomfortable that I brought it up. When I was younger I would just know things sometimes, like about people, and I would blurt them out, and more than once people got upset, because it was things that they didn't want other people to know. And I used to have dreams that came true. Mom had told me to stop talking about it and to keep my mouth shut. So I did. Eventually it stopped happening as much.
"We were in the area last night because we've been tracking this...creature. We've been tracking it for a while now. I wish I had known your mother was planning on going camping." Dean told me.
"Why? Did you know it was going to be there?"
"No, we didn't know. But I could have told her to be careful. We need to go back to the area and do some more tracking."
Sam's phone rang and he stood up and walked a short distance away. "Hey, Bobby. Yeah, we could use your help. We're tracking it, but a complication has come up." He glanced over at us and then walked out of the hotel room.
"A complication?" I asked. "Does he mean me?" I got angry again. "Why am I a complication?"
"You're not a complication-" Dean started, but I interrupted. "Why don't you just take me to an orphanage then?" I snapped.
Dean leaned forward, looking me in the eyes. "Because you're my daughter, Charlie. And your mom and I already filled out the paperwork giving me custody, so don't even follow that train of thought. Sam didn't mean it like that." He straightened, still looking at me. "He just means that it's going to be a little harder, because we can't leave you here alone while we go out investigating."
"Yes you can, I'm not a little kid!" I said hotly.
"Uh, you're only 8 years old." Dean said. "Too young to be left alone in my book."
"I took care of my mom all the time, and when she was sleeping all day and night it was like I was alone! I can handle it!"
"No, Charlie, we're not leaving you alone here." he said decisively.
Sam came back into the room. He looked at Dean. "He can be here by tomorrow afternoon."
Dean exhaled. "Okay then, I guess we're just in a holding pattern until then."
Sam's phone rang again. He looked at it and then answered it, "Agent Sambora. Yes?" He stood up and walked into the bathroom. In a few minutes he came back out, hanging up his phone.
"I've got to go over and talk to the M.E., gotta suit up again." He walked over to the closet and took out a suit jacket and pants that were on a hanger.
He looked at Dean. "They're gonna want to talk to you about her, so you better get your story straight." He went into the bathroom again and closed the door.
I looked at Dean. "What does he mean?"
Dean looked down at the table. "Well, because we hunt supernatural things, we sometimes have to bend the truth...because most people don't believe. Sam is pretending to be an FBI agent so he can find out about the police investigation. We took all of your stuff out of the campsite so it looked like you weren't there."
"Why?"
"So that there's less reason for them to be talking to you. They're going to want to talk to you anyway, because your mother is, uh, deceased, and they have to make sure you have somewhere to go. We were going to say that your mom went away on the camping trip and left you with me for the first time, so we could get to know each other. That's what you need to tell them when they talk to you, okay?"
I looked at him. "So, I have to lie? And you and Sam are lying too?"
He nodded. "Well, yes, but it's with good reason. People don't want to believe in supernatural things, so they deny evidence, and it's not worth it to argue. So we lie."
Sam came out of the bathroom, dressed in a suit and tie.
"I'll check with the police about if and when they're going to talk to you." he said. "I'll call and give you a heads up."
He put his wallet and phone in his pockets. "Be good, you two." he said, winking at me, and then he left the room.
Dean looked at me. "What would you like to do now?"
I felt shy all of a sudden. "I don't know."
"Well, this hotel has all kinds of movie channels, want to watch a movie?"
"Um, okay." I said. We got up and sat on the sofa. He picked up the remote.
"What kinds of movies do you like?" he looked down at me.
I shrugged.
"Are you a Disney princess and Barbie kind of girl?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Yuck! No!"
He laughed. "Well okay then. You said you like Harry Potter, right? There's a couple movies for rent."
"Yeah, let's watch one of them!" I said happily.
He found the second one and started it. I noticed after a few minutes that he had put his arm on the back of the sofa behind me. I shifted so that I was a little bit closer to him, leaning into his side. When my mom was feeling really sick and really tired, she didn't want to be touched or hugged, and I missed the closeness that we had had before she got sick. I let myself enjoy sitting close to Dean, even though I didn't really know him at all.
Dean had gotten a phone call during the movie, and had made plans for us to go to the police station and talk to them in a little while. I got changed out of my pajamas and into the clothes I had been wearing when we were camping. I hadn't even realized that I was still in my pjs until Sam had said something. We had had to wait until Sam came back with the car, and then Dean drove us there.
We sat down on a sofa in an office and the police detective looked at me. "Thank you for coming to talk to us today, Charlotte." he said, smiling in a fake way.
"Now, we'd like to know what you were doing this weekend."
"I, uh, was with Dean- I mean, he's my Dad. I mean I just found out-"
The detective's forehead wrinkled with confusion. He looked at me and then Dean.
"We just met, sir." Dean said smoothly. "Charlotte's mother was- sick- with... cancer, and she and I had met and made plans for me to take Charlotte in the case of her...demise."
Dean glanced at me and put his hand on my hand. I looked at him and he smiled at me.
The detective looked at both of us. "So you'd never met before and this weekend just happened to be the first time you were spending time together?"
"We met a couple weeks ago." I said. "At a McDonald's, but it was only for a couple minutes. I thought that we were just meeting 'cause Mom told me I was going to have to stay with someone when she had her treaments."
His forehead creased again. "I'm sorry? I don't understand-"
"When she had her treatments before, I stayed with my Aunt Janice when she got too sick to take care of me, but Mom told me that she wanted me to stay with someone else this time 'cause she was getting new treaments that were going to be harder on her."
I explained.
"Oh, I see." he looked at me. "So you were going to be staying with Dean- your father?"
"Yeah. But she- went away on this camping trip as a last hurrah before she started the new treatments-" Remembering her saying that made tears come to my eyes.
I looked up at him. "I didn't know she was going to die!" I said, and I realized that I didn't know if I meant this weekend, or at all. She hadn't told me how sick she really was. I started crying harder, and bowed my head.
I felt a hand on my back, and I looked up. Dean picked me up and put me in his lap. I curled up and leaned into his chest.
"As you can see, she's still very upset." Dean said. "She had no idea of her mother's current diagnosis and it was quite a shock to her."
"I'm really very sorry." the dectective said. "If I could just-"
"There's nothing more to say." Dean said. "She's been with me this whole weekend, and she's clearly upset. I think this interview is over."
I heard the detective sigh, and then the squeak of chair cushions. I glanced up and the detective and the social worker had gotten up and were standing a couple feet away, talking in low voices.
"All right." The detective came over. "Ms. Waldorf has already seen the paperwork, and she's satisfied with things. She can give you the phone number of the school system so you can get the information about where to send her school records in the fall, once you get settled. "
"Thank you." Dean said. He looked down at me and put his hand on the back of my head. "I've got put you down for a sec." he murmured. He shifted me onto the sofa and stood up. I wiped my face off and stood up as he shook the adult's hands.
They shook my hand too, and then Dean took my hand and we walked out of the building.
"Well, that went better than expected." He said. "You cried at just the right time, kid."
I got into the back seat of the shiny black car.
"What do you mean?" I asked hotly. "I wasn't faking it, ya know! I'm not like you, I can't just lie all the time!" I started to cry again. "I know she wasn't anything to you, but she is my mom! Was my mom!" I put my head down.
He had gotten in the front seat, and he turned around to face me.
"I'm sorry." He said sincerely. "I didn't mean it that way. You're right, she's your mom, and I should be a little more sensitive." I felt his hand on my head for a moment.
He faced forward and started the engine. "Want to go pick up Sammy and then go get something to eat? What kinds of food do you like?"
"I don't care." I sniffled, wiping my eyes. "Why do you call him Sammy?"
" 'Cause he's my little brother." he said.
"He's your little brother? There's nothing little about him!" I laughed in spite of myself.
He chuckled. "I know, right? Kid used to be short and scrawny, and then puberty hit, and all of a sudden, he just shot up...I had no idea he was going to turn into such a moose."
I laughed again. "Moose? Do you call him that to his face?"
"Sometimes." he said, grinning at me in the rear view mirror. "Or sasquatch."
I laughed again. "And he doesn't mind?"
He shrugged. "I guess not. He stopped kicking my ass over it a long time ago."
"He- he kicked your-"
"Not literally, no!" he laughed. "He used to get pissy about it but he doesn't anymore, not really. He knows he's a moose."
I laughed again. He looked at me in the mirror again. "It's good to hear you laugh, kiddo." he said kindly.
He pulled into the hotel parking spot and we got out of the car and went into the room. Sam had changed out of his suit again, and was wearing the same flannel shirt as before. He was once again sitting in front of his laptop. He looked up at Dean.
"I think I found something." he said. "I hacked into the ranger's database and there were reports about a couple of them finding like a nest or den of some kind."
"All right, cool." Dean said. "Want to go get something to eat? I'm starving."
Sam sighed and pushed his chair back. "Okay then, we can talk about this later tonight."
"Hey, can I play your laptop some time?" I asked Sam. He looked at me with a confused frown.
"Play?" he asked.
"Don't you have any games on it?"
"Uh, no, I use it for research."
"Can I still play on it? There are websites with games that I go on at school and stuff." I said hopefully.
"I'll have to think about it." Sam said. "I don't want anything to happen to my laptop, and I know some of those sites can harbor viruses."
"Sam's a control freak about his laptop." Dean said easily.
Sam turned and looked up at him. "And we all know what happens if it gets infected with a virus. This is our life-line to a lot of different research, man. I don't want anything to get messed up."
"I know, Sam, I was just teasing, geez."
Sam looked at me. "To answer your question, Charlie, no, you can't play my laptop right now. I'd need to see the websites you wanted to play on first and check them out, and you'd have to ask my permission before you played."
"Okayokay!" I said. "Geez, never mind!"
"My laptop is not a toy, Charlie." Sam looked at me seriously.
I stared back at him for a long moment but couldn't keep holding his eyes, so I looked down at my lap.
Dean cleared his throat. "Are we ready to go? What are we in the mood to eat?"