( This is my entry for the @brothersapart 2016 Contest:http://brothersapart.tumblr.com/post/136391836334/brothers-apart-contest-2016 . Enjoy! )
Nothing particularly suspicious had come up on the Internet so far in Dean’s search for a potential case, but he knew something would crop up eventually. Something always did. Still, with no next destination in mind yet, he and Sam had slept in a little later than usual before Dean started packing up to vacate the motel room.
That was, until he heard a shrill sound from somewhere behind him. He reached for his gun automatically, eyes darting to the bathroom, where he had left Sam minutes prior to wash up in the sink. The sound had come from somewhere low, but not from the door.
A distant voice followed the whistle. “Hey!” Dean turned slowly, locking his gaze on the nightstand as the voice piped up again. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, long legs!”
The volume of the voice left no doubt in Dean’s mind what–or rather who –was talking to him: a tiny person like Sam. He recalled the girl Sam had confessed to meeting the night before. The one that had given him a black eye.
Mindful of his comparatively big movements, Dean walked toward the nightstand and narrowed his eyes at the space between it and the bed, puzzled that someone so small would want to get his attention. He caught a movement in the shadows, the unmistakeable figure of a person, though there was something odd about the shape. Upon kneeling down in front of the gap between the furniture, Dean realized the figure looked strange because it was two figures.
One was limp in the other’s arms.
The conscious girl had shoulder-length brown hair and looked as pale as a sheet even in the shadows. She was primed to flee, shuffling in the direction of the nightstand.
“Hey now, you’re gonna go running off when you’re the one that called me?” Dean said, trying to keep his voice mild so he wouldn’t spook her away. By the looks of it, her friend wasn’t doing so hot.
The girl pursed her lips and straightened, but Dean had interacted with frightened victims from hunts enough long enough to know she worked hard to conceal terror and uncertainty under her stony expression.
“Does it look like I’m running off?” she grumbled. “I just don’t like the way you walk and talk so loud.”
“Right,” Dean said with a small laugh that made her stiffen. “And here I thought I was getting better after being with my brother.” He watched closely, noticing how she took the bait and tensed further upon Sam’s mention. “You didn’t happen to meet my brother, did you? Give him something, maybe?” Dean knew that he had all the power in the current situation, but he couldn’t bring himself to let the incident slide just yet. “A black eye?”
Her arms tightened under her friend’s shoulders and knees as she eyed Dean with matching suspicion. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to be as far away from him as possible, but she held her ground with surprising valiance.
“I’m sorry for hitting your brother,” she said, grimacing as if the apology burned her tongue. “I saw him out here with you earlier, and I thought he was trying to trick us into getting captured.” She seemed to lose her nerve and stopped looking at Dean, focusing on her her friend’s face instead.
Dean cocked his head. “Something tells me you’re not just here to apologize.”
She shook her head. “Sam asked me if there was anything you two could do to help. Well, you can. I’m Ziana, and this is Shay. She has an infected cut, and you have some kind of medicine, don’t you? Please. She doesn’t deserve to be in this kind of pain. She… She’s a good person.”
Sympathy wormed through him as he leaned closer to get a better look at Shay’s face, stopping when Ziana shuffled the slightest distance toward the nightstand. No way he would turn down helping someone innocent, especially when these two were clearly down to their last resort. That didn’t mean he was crazy about having Sam’s attacker near Sam.
“Yeah, a good person, huh?” He gave Ziana a skeptical raise of his eyebrows. “And what about you?”
She finally lifted her head again for the sole purpose of giving him a flat look. “Me? I’m an asshole. But buddy, me and her a package deal.”
Despite everything, a smirk touched Dean’s lips. “Fair enough.”
He hesitated before reaching forward and laying a hand down just outside the gap between the nightstand and the bed. Ziana gasped and practically threw herself back against the wall, losing whatever composure she had managed to build up. Dean didn’t comment on it, trying to remind her instead why she had come out to ask for help in the first place.
“How did she get cut?” Dean asked, eyeing the crude cloth bandage on Shay’s upper arm.
“A-A nail in the wall a couple days ago.” Ziana leaned forward and then pulled back again, taking measured breaths. “She got a fever the next day and said she felt weak. Then she didn’t get up this morning, but she’s… Her heart’s still going, and she’s still breathing.” Looking from Dean’s face to his hand, she let out an agitated sigh. “What’s that for? Just bring me medicine, bandages, whatever she needs!”
“Well, you’re the one that brought her all the way out here,” he pointed out, curling his fingers in a beckoning gesture. “How much do you know about cleaning wounds?”
The look on her face said, not a thing, but he knew that she wouldn’t admit it. “How much do you know about cleaning wounds?” she challenged back.
“Listen, sweetheart, as fun as this is, we don’t have time for games. Your friend there could be fading fast for all you know, and you want to stand around arguing? I could give you medicine and bandages, but you and I don’t know how much time it’ll take for you to figure it out. Hell, I don’t even know exactly what she needs unless I see the cut for myself.”
Ziana didn’t answer this time, but he could see the mounting panic on her face as she made herself walk closer to his hand. He felt tug of guilt that he was being so pushy, but the infection could have Shay down to mere hours left, especially if she hadn’t even twitched from the sound of his and Ziana’s voices.
Stopping just short of the shadows, Ziana hesitated again, looking prepared to back-pedal to her starting point if Dean so much as breathed wrong. Even Dean was beginning to feel a slight flutter in his heart. He was getting used to carrying Sam around, but these were entirely different people he was dealing with now.
“You could just hand her over if you don’t want to be carried off yourself,” Dean suggested.
“Hand her over? To you? Like hell, long legs.” Ziana marched forward right onto Dean’s hand with as much grace as he would expect for someone climbing onto a hand for the first time. She stumbled every other step until she reached his palm.
It was then that she realized what she was doing. Her eyes ballooned as she looked up at Dean’s face and then at the lines of his palm beneath her. When his hand shifted, she dropped to a crouch and did a poor job of silencing a squeak of alarm. She knelt in the middle of his hand, tucking Shay close against her so that the unconscious girl wasn’t touching Dean at all. Ziana trembled and squeezed her eyes shut before ducking down with her face practically buried in Shay’s blond hair.
“Easy,” Dean murmured, rising carefully from the ground. “It’ll all be over in a second.”
Her head shot up. “What?”
“I didn’t mean all over, like–” Dean groaned and dragged his free hand down his face. “I mean, me carrying you. It’s over now, see?” He lowered his hand to the bed, keeping it as steady a platform as he could for Ziana to climb off.
She did so without a beat of hesitation, nearly tripping over her own feet on the surface of the bed. Rather than waste time with more assurances of his good intentions, Dean pulled his hand away and turned. Knowing that there was a nonexistent chance of Ziana allowing him lay a finger on Shay, he went to fetch Sam.
Brothers Apart 