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05: Oleander
Ollie meandered through the streets, trying not to seem hurried, trying not to seem nervous, trying not to fiddle with their hair. People were less likely to be suspicious in this part of town, but they could never be too careful. They slowed as they passed a shop, checking their reflection in the grimy windows protecting the wrecked, dusty interior. Staring back at them was a stranger: pale, with short, strawberry-blond hair, a bit narrower in the face with artificial hunger that mimicked the natural starvation of these streets.
While they watched, their features rippled and changed, cheekbones sharpening and hair going darker. They willed themself to stop shifting with a nervous glance around. But no one was watching.
This magic was why Ollie was usually the one to run errands. The risk was that they couldn’t always control it when they were nervous.
They ducked away from the shop and kept walking. A few stops later and they had everything Cas wanted; it wasn’t a long list. Some extra food and two bottles of whiskey he insisted on because “with our newest recruits, I’m either coping with alcohol or murder, and the latter’s too much cleanup.” Ollie favored art as a coping mechanism, but they appreciated the sentiment.
A flash of color caught their eye as they headed back to the Gravestar. It wasn’t remarkable, except that it was tucked into an alley where the other colors were muted shades of brown and gray. Ollie hesitated, looking toward the sea, and then ducked into the alleyway.
A figure curled miserably against the brick. When Ollie came closer, they saw it was a girl, a ripped indigo dress pooled around her. And at her back, standing guard, was a dog. Maybe a wolf. It was hard to tell when it was that huge.
The girl twitched as Ollie approached, dark eyes fluttering open. Her gaze landed on Ollie, and she gasped and scrambled back. Gravel crunched, and one of her hands came up with a large shard of broken glass. The dog-wolf-whatever growled. Ollie clumsily held up their hands in surrender and took a quick step back.
“Woah, hey, I’m not trying to hurt you!”
The girl looked skeptical. “Why not?”
What kind of question was that? “Um, because you’re already stuck hiding in an alley, and you also didn’t do anything to me?”
She dropped the glass but kept it within reach, eyeing them. “Okay."
With the immediate danger gone, Ollie took a closer look at the girl. She was bleeding, and her left eye didn’t look right.
If Ollie brought another person onto the boat, Cas would kill them. But they couldn’t very well leave a bleeding girl alone in an alley. They set their supplies at their feet and tucked their hands into their pockets, crouching down to her level. The dog growled. The girl ran a soothing hand along his raised hackles.
“Okay," they repeated. "Right. Are...are you okay?”
It was a stupid question, but what else were they supposed to ask? The girl was gracious enough not to say that Ollie was being an idiot.
“Not really,” she replied instead. Her mouth hardly moved when she spoke. Something about her felt deeply familiar in a way Ollie couldn’t quite identify. Beyond the fact that she was hurting and alone, something thrummed in their chest. It wanted to stay, to keep her, to protect her.
“Can I ask what happened?”
She shifted uncomfortably. Everything about her tried to be small, all long legs and awkward angles. “Someone got mad at me for being alive. A lot of someones.”
There was fear in her face as she said it. She wouldn’t meet Ollie’s eyes. Her entire body was braced for attack. All at once, Ollie understood.
“You’re magic." It wasn’t a question. Like called to like; they recognized it now, the deep-seated knowledge of you and I, we’re the same, I understand you.
The girl laughed, but it came out like a sob. “Am I that obvious? Everyone seems to know these days.”
“Takes one to know one,” Ollie said quietly. It was silly, the anxiety that came with the admission even here. Danger had so long been home for them, fear their baseline emotion, that they couldn't shake it. The risks of revealing themself never left their mind. Even when it was perfectly safe, part of them was convinced it wasn’t.
The girl’s eyes widened. Ollie changed the color of their hair and danced freckles over their cheeks to prove it.
“I...you’re…”
“A shapeshifter, yeah. Comes in handy quite a lot. And you?”
“I sense emotions,” she said. “It’s not very useful for anything.”
Ollie shrugged. “Maybe you haven’t found the right problem for it to solve.”
Quietly, she said, “I think it’s created more than it’s ever going to solve.”
They couldn’t exactly argue with that, could they?
“You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?” Ollie asked.
“If I did, do you think I’d be sitting here?”
Good point.
Cas was so going to kill them.
But the girl was magic. And she was in trouble. If they left her here, she’d be dead by week's end, if she even made it to sunset.
“You wanna come with me?”
She looked wary again. “Come where?”
“Away. Someplace safe. Does it matter?” It hadn’t mattered to Ollie, back then. And they hadn’t had a guarantee of safety (in fact, they’d had the opposite).
“I guess I don’t have any other options,” she admitted. “I mean, as long as you’re extending that offer to Alarik, too” She gestured at the dog, who stopped staring at Ollie to lick at her hand.
Ollie grimaced. A person was one thing. A huge, mangy, hungry, very much not-magical dog was something else entirely. “No promises. But I’ll do my best. I’m Ollie, by the way.”
“Daciana. My friends call me Daci. Or I guess, uh, they used to.”
Ollie’s heart twisted. They recognized that story, too.
“Alright, Daci. Nice to meet you. First order of business is patching you up, so I'm gonna go grab a few things. I didn’t come prepared for surprise field medicine.”
Daci nodded. Ollie gestured toward her arm, where there was another dark patch of blood they hadn’t seen at first. “Your face is the big problem, but do I need to worry about that, too?”
She glanced down, a little surprised, as if she’d forgotten about it. “Oh. Um, it’s fine. Not bleeding anymore. That’s just from when I, um, knocked the knife away.”
She was a fighter. Good. Cas would like that.
“Great. I mean, not great, but...look, I’ll, um, be right back. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
Daci smiled weakly with the one side of her mouth and offered them a small wave as they headed out of the alley. As they walked away, Ollie couldn't help but think that Cas and Inari wouldn’t have done this. Cas wouldn’t have spared Daci a second glance, and Inari was better at breaking things than fixing them. There were a lot of things Cas and Inari wouldn’t do that Ollie did, though, and so far, it had mostly turned out fine. They tried not to think about it and instead focused on getting what they needed to put Daci back together.
Daci and her dog hadn't moved an inch by the time Ollie returned. They knelt down and spread out a thin towel in a vain attempt to keep everything somewhat sanitary. They pulled out one of the bottles of whiskey and shot Daci an apologetic look.
“This is going to hurt.”
She shrugged. “It already hurts.”
As fast as they could, they poured it over her wound, washing away some of the blood. She hissed in pain, and they pulled away. “Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Just…hurry?”
Ollie hurried. Carefully. They apologized about seventeen more times as they stitched up the long gash in Daci’s face and tried not to think about the person under their hands. It was harder to be fast when they remembered they were hurting her. The wound stretched all the way from the corner of her mouth to her eyebrow. Ollie made the neatest stitches they could until they reached her eye and paused.
"I'm gonna clean this out one more time and bandage you up, alright?"
Daci made a small, affirmative sound. They poured more alcohol onto the wound and wrapped her face in bandages. Finished, they sat back on their heels, unsure of what came next.
“Thank you,” Daci said.
“Sorry about the eye,” Ollie replied.
She just shrugged again. “So this place we’re going to… How are we getting there?”
Ollie started packing everything away. “I’ve got a boat and some friends. You’ll like them. Probably. Hopefully. My captain’s a bit prickly, and the other girl on our crew can be nasty in a mood, but we’ve coexisted for a while without any permanent damage, so I guess we do alright. And you’ll have the advantage of knowing what everyone’s thinking.”
“Very reassuring,” Daci murmured. The twist of her mouth was rueful and sad. Ollie didn’t know why, but they knew now wasn't the time to ask. They gathered their supplies under one arm and stood, holding out their hand.
“We won’t know until we’ve gone there, right?”
Daci offered them a small, pained smile. “Guess not.”
She took their hand, and they pulled her to her feet.