This is how I show my love,
I made it in my mind
This is how an angel dies
I blame it on my sick pride
Maybe I should cry for help
Maybe I should kill myself
Maybe I'm a different breed
Maybe I'm not listening…
/
Kerrie was livid. First, Raziel had crashed the motel and ruined any chance she'd had at keeping her questionable story a secret from the Winchesters, and then she'd let Crowley's cronies escape. She ground her teeth together, wringing her hands nervously and pacing the floor of the diner bathroom. The guys were grabbing a booth for the three of them and Dean had not stopped talking about pie since they'd made the decision to get lunch. Kerrie was too emotional to eat, and had whispered that much to Sam, who had only given her those worried puppy dog eyes and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. God, why was he so nice? Ugh, time to face the music.
She inhaled deeply and flipped her flaming mane over her shoulder, wiping at her smudged eyeliner and running her fingers through her bangs. Wiping her shaking hands on her jean legs, Kerrie strode out and towards the back corner where Sam and Dean were inspecting menus.
"Not another salad, Sammy," Dean was saying, a disapproving tone in his voice. There was a teasing familiarity there, as well, "I'll be embarrassed to be seen with you. Be a man and eat a burger."
Kerrie huffed and smacked the back of Dean's head lightly. "Hey!" he complained.
She sat down next to him and shoved him over with her hip, sticking her tongue out.
"It's like having two bonehead brothers I never asked for," she giggled to herself, just loud enough for the boys to hear.
Sam scowled at her, and Kerrie just smiled ruefully.
Dean snorted. "Yeah, right," Dean said, leaning in super close. "Brother, my ass," he whispered, his hot breath fanning across her collar bone.
Kerrie willed herself not to flush a pink colour and shoved Dean with her shoulder. "Down, boy," she snapped, but laughed at the same time.
The waitress approached their table and greeted them with a bright grin. "You must be new in town," she chirped.
"Not for long," Kerrie replied, smiling back. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed and she stared at the waitress in tense concentration.
"Ker, what is it?" Sam asked, hesitating, worry creasing his brow.
The waitress, whose name was Celia according to the name tag pinned to her white uniform shirt, looked between Kerrie and Sam, confused.
Finally, Kerrie relaxed, and smiled once more. "I'll have an angus burger with bacon and cheese, fries and a pitcher of beer."
"We're not drinking, Kerrie," Sam argued.
"I said I'll have a pitcher of beer, Sam," Kerrie said sweetly, smiling brightly. "Didn't you hear?"
Dean whistled, a proud gleam in his eye.
/
"So what was that, back there?" Dean asked, stepping faster to catch up with Kerrie's brisk walk. The sun was shining, but a storm was brewing in her head.
"I was doing my psychic-or-something thing," Kerrie snapped, looking both ways before jogging across the street to her bike.
"What, were you like reading her mind or something?" Dean asked, shaking his head sceptically.
"Actually, yes," Kerrie said, venom dripping from her voice.
"Woah," Sam said, stopping by the side door of the Impala. "You can do that? Can you do that to us?" he asked, panic in his voice.
"Relax, Samwise, I wouldn't. Besides, you're an open book as it is," Kerrie replied, and Dean chuckled.
"So what'd you get from her?" Dean asked, skipping over his shock.
"She remembered seeing someone who looked just like the two of you two days ago," Kerrie answered.
"Shapeshifters?" Sam asked, surprised.
"Yeah, headed to the next town over, if I heard her right," Kerrie replied. She swung one leg over the side of the Kawasaki.
"You know you can leave your bike at the motel and just ride the car with us," Sam volunteered helpfully.
"How about you leave your hair behind, Sam?" Kerrie hissed back, donning her helmet.
Bitchface of doom aimed straight at her, followed by more laughter from Dean.
/
They spent the next few hours browsing various sources online and through the books the boys had brought from their Batman cave. The library was quiet, and Kerrie had grown restless.
"Alright, we know how to kill shapeshifters, so can we just go?" she pleaded, making puppy dog eyes at Sam.
He sighed, and broke his gaze, looking back to the book in his hands. "We need to try to find as much lore as we can about you," he muttered.
She groaned. The guys had explained that they needed to know what exactly they were dealing with before they marched off to a war for her. She told them that she didn't need them to back her up, but they wouldn't hear it.
"I can tell you about my abilities myself," she'd told them, but they insisted that she probably did not know much about them herself, only what she'd glimpsed during emotional episodes.
Kerrie finally pulled away from the table and made her way through the stacks, looking for a source of entertainment. Finally she found the fiction section and something caught her eye at the very end of the aisle. Supernatural by Carver Edlund.
She smirked. She'd seen this in some of her dreams.
She picked up the book and started turning the pages. She was a fast reader. 45 minutes later, Dean found her sitting on the floor, turning the last few pages, a wide grin on her face. She'd thrown her jacket across the aisle and crossed her legs, her tank top riding up and exposing a few black tendrils, the beginning of a tattoo on her left hip.
"What're you doing?" Dean asked, standing over her.
She simply showed him the cover of the book, and giggled at his groan. He sank to the floor beside her and looked at her side, noticing the ink on her hip.
"What is that?" he asked, reaching out to touch it, and pulling back at her yelp.
"Sorry," he hastily apologized.
"It's okay," she replied. "It's been a little tender, hasn't healed as fast as it should have. I got it about a week ago."
"When'd you have time to get a tattoo?" Dean asked, confused.
"I don't sleep much," she replied, looking down.
"What is it, anyway?" he inquired, lifting her shirt a bit. She allowed him to, and he saw that it was a perfect replica of the tattoo on his chest.
"Anti-possession sigil," she replied, smirking. "I've always wanted a hip tattoo, and I thought, 'what's more hip than cult ink?'" Kerrie laughed at her own joke.
Dean just shook his head, and helped her up, grabbing the Supernatural book out of her hands and tossing it across the room. From somewhere in the library, Sam shushed them.
/
The Impala pulled over about half a mile before the motel, a small dirt road down to a lake wound to one side of it. Kerrie pulled over and turned off the bike's engine, confused.
"Why are we here?" Kerrie called out to the boys, shrugging her hair out of her helmet.
"Just taking a break," Dean yelled back, grabbing a six pack out of the back seat and swaggering in his bow-legged way down the sandy path.
Kerrie raised one eyebrow and met Sam's gaze. He shrugged and followed Dean, and with a groan, Kerrie resigned herself to the inevitable probability that she was stuck with these guys whether she liked it or not.
Trudging down the wind-blown trail, Kerrie began to imagine what it would be like, always travelling with the Winchesters. The life of a hunter wasn't glamorous or comfortable, and she'd never been under any illusions about love or relationships. This life tore away any shred of happiness she'd clung to. She was constantly alone, falling asleep in gritty motel beds, cold and tired and shivering, with only her own arms to wrap around herself. They were hunters, but they had each other. Brothers. Family. Maybe that's all you needed, Kerrie thought to herself bitterly, and yet the cynicism kept her from letting her heart open.
She was snapped out of her reverie when she walked smack into Sam's hard back, and fell flat on her bum. "Shit," she cursed, moaning at the pain in her rear end.
She heard laughter and looked up into Sam's eyes, which were shining with mirth. The sun rays behind him made his face more handsome than it usually was, and his laughter lit him up from the inside out.
For a moment, she didn't breathe, and then he gripped her hand and pulled her straight up into himself, his other hand resting in the dip of her lower back.
"Ooookay," Dean said from behind them, and Kerrie snapped out of it, pushing away from Sam's muscled chest, the faint scent of his cologne mixing with the smell of the ceasar salad he'd had at the diner.
When she looked at Dean, he was opening up a beer and grinning at the lake like a crazy person. He reached over and handed her the bottle, their fingers brushing and his smile electric when she caught his eye. He turned and stretched out, his face curved up towards the pink and orange clouds, the breeze ruffling his short blonde hair.
"Have you ever seen anything like it?" he asked, rhetorically, of course, because it certainly couldn't have been the first lake or even the first sunset either of them had seen. But there was something in his voice, a catch, a note that made Kerrie hesitate, and look again, to see the fascination of the peace of the moment caught in his eyes. There was no amount of familiarity that could stifle the startling freedom Dean Winchester felt during a moment of solitude with his family. And that is why Kerrie suddenly felt in the way, somehow, and stepped backwards, only to feel Sam's hand on her back.
"What's wrong?" Sam asked, genuinely caring.
Kerrie's eyes filled up with tears.
"I…" she began, at a loss for words. Dean had sat on the ground and glanced at them, gesturing for them to join him on the ground. Kerrie silently sank to the ground, putting her beer bottle down and making eye contact with the toes of her boots.
"Kerrie?" Sam asked again, settling to her other side, the three of them forming a neat line on the shore of the lake.
"I just…" she tried again, but the lump in her throat became too much, and one lonely tear slid down her cheek.
Dean looked at her, frowning. "What's wrong?"
She looked between the two of them, both of their profiles painted by the sparkling colours of the sunset, their unconditional caring seeming to wrap around her and choke her with unexpected joy.
"Nothing," she finally managed to get out, wiping at her eyes, and smiling. "You're right. I've never seen anything like it."