Work Text:
Dean hated shapeshifters. Even the dog ones. They gave him the heebie jeebies and made him angry. It’s one thing for a vamp to suck its teeth up and look human. Or a werewolf to walk around in daylight. At least they didn’t shed their skin into a pile of goo and turn into someone–or something else, entirely. He especially hated shifters on a case. As soon as you get a whiff of the shifter slime pile you’ll be chasing your own tail for the rest of the case. Sam thought they were fun. And funny because they bothered Dean so badly. Cas didn’t have an opinion on any evolution of man having seen humanity as a four-legged fish walking on land for the first time eons ago.
So when Dean pushed open the door of the abandoned silk mill in Pennsylvania on Mulberry Lane and found a pile of gooey gelatinous flesh, he groaned and slammed the door the rest of the way open. He grumbled and yelled at Sam for no reason except to start their predictable squabbling over shifters and their obvious grossness. Sammy chuckled as he stepped over the pile of goo.
“Hey! Dean, do ya think we can make something out of that–?”
“You’re disgusting, Sam!” Dean waved his finger and put his gun down, but didn’t take his finger off the trigger, “Something seriously wrong with you, man!” He shook his head. And Sam laughed harder. Sam looked over his shoulder to watch Castiel’s reaction to the goo. Castiel sauntered in and contemplated the shed goo with a cocked brow.
“Not the most sanitary evolution for human monsters, is it?” he declared. Sam scoffed and tossed his head, disappointed with Castiel’s lack of reaction. Castiel stepped over the goo and swung back around to look closer. He squatted down to inspect the slimy contents of clothing in the human gelatin.
“Those shoes have toes,” he stated the obvious. Dean and Sam who had continued their bickering over the grossness of shifters, stopped their bickering and looked at each other. Dean frowned and shook his head.
“Cas, what the hell does that mean?” Dean asked. He walked over to the angel’s bent figure, frowning, and peeked over his shoulder like a child hiding from the boogie man. The shoe was brown polished leather with the normal thin sole of a man’s dress shoe, but along the toe cap were–toes. Ten smoothly molded…toes, complete with nail beds and creases between the metatarsals in the leather. Making the shoes weirder than they already were was the size of them. The style was a cursed men’s style, but the size was closer to a large child’s size or a woman’s shoe. Dean’s eyes went from skeptical to stupefied.
“That is cursed,” he sneered. Sam walked over and knelt next to Cas. The three men stooped closer over the cursed shoe and human goop.
“That should be easy to track,” Sam said practically. Sam tightened his lips with a hint of squeamishness. He nodded to jiggly glop.
“Cas, uh, you pick it up.” Cas glared at him with dead eyes. Dean took about twelve steps back.
“I’ll, uh, go search to see if the shifter is still here and you guys, uh, deal with that,” and ghosted from the front room. Cas ground his jaw at Sam’s reluctance. Sam smiled winningly like a pillar of moral support for Castiel’s gooey charge. Cas shook his head and grabbed the slimy shoes in one hand. The men stood up and Sam took a prodigious study of the weird shoes in Castiel’s hand. Cas held them up as shifter goo dropped to the dirty floor. Sam nodded astutely with a hand on his chin and his elbow in his other palm.
“Very interesting,” he said seriously. Cas threw the goopy shoes at Sam’s chest and Sam instinctively caught them. The bundle hit his chest with a sick slap and Cas walked away to look for Dean. He shook the shifter goo of his hand and wiped it clean on his trenchcoat. Sam’s nostrils flared and he stared at the wrecked walls of the silk mill.
“OK, then,” he concluded.
Deeper in the recesses of the silk mill lurked huge dusty metal machines with pins and spools that were used a century ago. The huge stretches of bolted metal had become ghosts of an industry that modernized and moved offshore to over seventy percent of production originating from China. Castiel contemplated the blink of human life that was the silk production in America and the thousands of women and children that had worked the gothic machinery.
“So much work from such a small creature,” he said aloud to himself and didn’t bother to clarify which small creature he was referring to. He heard Dean’s footsteps further off and the sudden break of brittle wood. He quickened his steps.
“Dean!” he said urgently, but tried not to yell. More snaps and cracks. Cas started running. “Dean!” he shouted. He heard Dean’s body thump against a metal something and him grunt. Cas sprinted to where the sound came from. “Dean!” he shouted a third time. Dean spluttered and spat. His feet fell clumsily around the brutal looking machinery. The needles and spike of the weaving machine appeared very much like a medieval torture chamber to Castiel. He was thankful to not have been stationed in Europe during that time. “Dean!” he shouted and heard Sam’s footsteps approach followed by several breaks, snaps and thumps of his large frame barreling through the derelict mill.
“Aghhhhhh!” Dean hollered as Cas came around the corner of an exceptionally large metal contraption, well, two contraptions. Between the metal behemoths there was a web of ancient silks strung together for weaving, but with the advent of age the delicate tendrils hung like wisps. The merest disturbance and they disintegrated to dust. Dean had disturbed them and was now covered and cocooned in a brittle spider web of ancient silk thread. And he was destroying them. Castiel almost laughed.
“Dean,” he said quieter and walked over to him. He dragged him from the tangle of silk remnants and dusted him off. Dean spat and coughed from the dust and silk. Sam ran into the room with the slippery shoes aimed over his head and a look of sheer determination. Dean flicked his hair and screeched.
“Like spider webs!” he yelled and shivered. Sam and Cas looked at him and tried not to laugh. Dean blew a wet raspberry and straightened his shoulders self-conciously.
“Gross, man,” he twitched furiously. Sam and Cas nodded slowly. Dean spit again.
“Anyways, nothing but more goop. It must have jumped out the back door when it heard–”
“You scream like a little girl at the first pile of goop?” Sam asked helpfully. Dean glared at him and Cas waved his hand between the brothers to stop them both from antagonizing each other further.
“So, not here?” Cas continued. Dean nodded and shot his brother one more stink eye.
“But the back door was swinging open,” Dean added. The three men walked to the back door and a clatter sounded in the far eastern corner of the mill. Dean swung around and aimed at the noise. Sam armed himself with the gloppy shoes and Cas walked over to the sound with mild annoyance. Dean followed him for “cover.” Sam followed Dean because he felt ridiculous enough already. Dean eyeballed Sam for sticking so close.
“Not sure what the range of gooey toe shoes are–” he muttered. The phrase reminded Dean of the weird shoes and he frowned, horrified at them once again. Castiel approached the sound with an upraised hand, either in peace or to get the first shot off, but the shifter doesn’t necessarily know that. Cas stopped and cocked a head before Sam and Dean were in view of the source. The brothers peeked around the machinery and over Cas’ back.
It was a kid.
At least it looked like a kid, “Don’t shoot!” the kid whimpered with its hands up. Dean aimed a gun at it, unmoved, “What are you?” he demanded. Castiel shoved the gun aside. Dean bristled. Sam lowered his slimy shoe weapons. The shifter snarled and crouched as if to jump. Dean growled and pulled the gun back on the creature. Cas stepped in front of him and blasted the child-monster with a mild blast from his palms. The creature was thrown against the wall and coughed smoke from the holy blast.
“Jeepers, Mister,” the child-monster mumbled. Even Cas cocked a head at the quirky colloquialism. Dean sneered, “Jeepers? The child-monster coughed again and raised its hands, “I won’t attack, fellas. I’m just tryna get by.” Dean stepped back and didn’t re-aim at the creature.
“Fellas?” Dean said incredulously.
The kid rolled his eyes, “Gee whiz, is there an echo in this place?” he asked loudly–and created an echo. Dean squinted and frowned. Sam pursed his lips. Cas looked over his shoulder at Dean.
“What century are you from?” Dean asked. The kid’s shoulders sank and he dropped his head.
“Gee wilickers, Mister, I really tried with the lingo and all–”
“Please stop,” Dean said snippily, “I feel like I’m in some godforsaken backwater channel’s low rate send up of Lil’ Rascals.” The kid grinned enthusiastically. “Alfalfa!” he said loudly.
“Shaddup,” Dean muttered. Cas pushed him back and nodded to Sam to take over. Dean scowled and shook more powdered silk off his shoulders and clothes. Sam didn’t excuse his brother, but he wasn’t going to let him keep talking. He crouched down and settled the gooey shoes into his big palms. He looked down at them and back at the kid.
“These yours?” he asked kindly. The kid nodded. “They are interesting,” Sam said delicately. The kid smiled sheepishly, “They look like shoes,” he giggled, “But they got toes.” He smiled gleefully. Sam had to laugh. “They sure do,” he nodded and handed them back to the kid. The kid glowed, “You can get just about anything on that internet, huh?” Sam agreed with an upside down smile. “Try not to shift where civilians can see you, huh?” The kid nodded. “I panicked,” he admitted, “I’ve done good, ya know. I been sneakin’ since 1917!” he insisted earnestly. Sam nodded with patience. The kid looked down at his legs and feet, “Didn’t get around to growin’ though. I started shifting back in 1919 to work a double shift at the,” he looked around, “Silk mills.” He held his hands up, “Small hands.” He smiled crookedly. The kid leaned back with a shadow of maturity to his actual years, “Course, back then a double shift a day was eleven hours each.” Sam couldn’t help but blink in astonishment. The kid looked up, “I’ll tell you what,” he smirked like an old man, “There was a lot of work for a kid back then…doffers, sweepers, spinners. The girls usually did the spinnin’ so I did the girl thing for a bit–” the kid dropped off. Sam stared with a horrified sympathy at the old-man-but-still-a-kid. The kid smiled crooked again.
“I get by,” he shrugged, “The mulberry blight of 1844 really shoved things off for the silk spinners.” Sam huffed and shook his head with no context for the kid’s comments.
“What are you doing now?” he asked hesitantly.
“Oh! I got a hefty nest egg hid away…never did trust the banks much,” the kid frowned, “There’s still work here…assembly lines and such. I don’t got to work so hard as some.” He smiled weakly. Sam shook his head. “You can do something else. I know you can.” The kid smiled sadly, “Where’s a shifter gon’ get by in proper society?” Sam’s eyes glistened with sympathy. He shook his head, “I don’t know.” The kid stuck his lips out, “Like I said, I get by.” Sam stood up, hating any option besides taking the kid home and giving him a chance to be something besides a child laborer. The kid read his face.
“It’s fine,” his face lit up, “I got this!” He grinned with forced enthusiasm. “That’s a lingo thing, right?” Sam shook his head, “No, it’s not fine.” The kid jerked his head over to Cas and Dean who were listening in horrified silence.
“Get outta here…before I tear ya apart with my teeth,” he muttered darkly. The three grown men stepped back with a wary eye. The kid sneered, “You know I can. And then you’d hafta kill me.” Dean shook his head, but backed away and holstered his gun. Cas pushed him away by the elbow.
“You leave me alone…I’ll leave you alone,” the 116 year old kid’s voice echoed ominously against the abandoned walls of the Pennsylvania silk mill. The men walked away, hating every step they took and regretting every step taken that led the kid to this fate.
“The devastation,” Castiel mused, “The loss. Such a burden…and for what?" Sam and Dean sat heavily in the Impala and Cas slid into the backseat. They put an APB out on the hunter’s network to keep an eye out for a kid shifter in Pennsylvania near the old silk mill on Mulberry Lane. And if the kid “steps out of line” to let the Winchesters know.