Dean held Sam close to him, looking up at the woman with dried tears clinging to his eyelashes. Twenty-four hours. Just twenty-four hours since they’d woken up like this, and there was a small light in the dark.
He couldn’t quite remember everything. It was all a blur before waking up in the hot, humid darkness. A woman, breaking into their room and attacking them. Dean could do nothing to keep her from his little brother. She’d pinned him effortlessly to the wall, without once touching him, forcing him to watch his little brother vanish into a white light.
And then doing the same for him, the world going black as the white light surrounded him.
Now, they’d escaped from her, but nothing was the way they remembered.
Motel rooms were larger than sweeping cathedrals. A football stadium could fit on the two beds. People were giants, the remote for the TV was unmovable, and Dean was scared.
Nothing, not his dad’s training, not Bobby’s stories, nothing, could have prepared him for this.
The woman stared down at him, her eyes widening in slight surprise. Dean could see so much detail in her face, he knew the moment her pupils dilated. He could smell the sickly-sweet scent of wine on her breath when her mouth parted.
That was all the warning they got.
Her hand swept out, long fingers curling around the two tiny children. Sam cried out in surprise as Dean did his best to block her attack, but standing under four inches tall meant there was no way for him to stop her.
A fist closed harshly around them, and Sam’s cries went from surprised to pained, and then stopped.
Dean sucked in a breath as the motel room nightstand vanished under their feet, the height forgotten in the wake of worry for his brother.
What did she do to Sammy?
“Please,” Dean begged. “We just need help…”
She lifted them up, her hand opening when held in front of her eyes. There was no warmth in those eyes as she scanned every one of the brothers’ very few inches.
“Wonderful…” she breathed, that sickly smell hitting Dean in a wave. He almost retched.
Containing his reaction, Dean glared at the woman as he cradled his brother in his arms. “What did you do?” he shouted angrily, Sam’s arm limp and hanging from the socket in an unnatural position.
“Sweetie,” she said in a condescending voice, “you’re just a toy. A possession. You should remember that the next time you talk back.”
She turned from the nightstand, the long fingers curling around the two boys as she rifled through the pockets of a jacket and withdrew a phone. A red-painted fingernail winked in the light at them as it tapped out a message.
I had to double check because I was certain I put Please on the list, but then it doesn’t really matter. I got an idea anyway.
AU: None of the current ones
A nightmare. This was a nightmare.
The sound of the worn plastic ice bucket slamming to the floor echoed in Oscar’s ears, and his eyes were wide with terror. A bruise was already forming on his forehead from slamming into a wall that hadn’t been there seconds before.
He was trapped. A human had spotted him while he ran desperately for cover in the motel room. They’d grabbed the ice bucket without a second thought, and in a few steps that covered distances Oscar would have to sprint for several seconds, stomped over to him.
The ground was still shaking. No, he realized, that’s just my knees.
Tears welled up in his eyes and raced down his cheeks. Oscar stood in carpet fibers that reached past his ankles, with almost no light leaking under the rim of the bucket. A circle of dim light ringed him in, an outline for how utterly trapped he was.
He hadn’t made it. After years of getting by on his own, keeping out of sight and collecting what he needed to survive, he hadn’t made it. It only took one failure to ruin everything, and the one failure had finally arrived.
Now, he was at the mercy of a human.
Light burst in from the opposite side of the container as it suddenly tilted upwards. Oscar whirled around, his cloth bag swinging with him and slamming into his side, heavy with the spoils he’d taken from the room. A breath caught in his throat and his shoulders hitched up with a new wave of adrenaline crashing through him like stormy waves on a rocky shore.
A hand with fingers bigger than his body slipped under the opening, blocking his escape route and inching towards him. Oscar could only watch, knees still shaking, as it came closer.
The first fingertip brushed against his chest and Oscar froze. Not an instant later, the hand lurched forward and that finger pressed into one side while a giant thumb closed in on the other, pinching around him and forcing the breath from his tiny, frail lungs. Oscar grimaced with pain.
More light washed over him now that he was secure in a pinch grip. The bucket was set aside and Oscar, stuck hopelessly in the casual strength of a single hand, shot into the air at the human’s whim. Air whipped at his messy brown hair and he closed his eyes, curling into himself as much as he could.
When he came to a stop, Oscar had his hands over his face. The human hummed thoughtfully, a deep, loud voice rumbling through his entire being. It was too much, too fast, too scary. Oscar sobbed and more tears came.
“Quit that,” the human ordered gruffly. Before Oscar could parse the words enough to understand that the order was for him, another pinch grip found him. Fingertips bigger than his head pinched roughly around one of his arms and tugged it away from his face.
He yelped in pain, and his other hand automatically braced against the pinch grip to try to free his arm. It was already bruising, he could tell. The human was too strong.
The human hummed again while Oscar sobbed, and then let go at last. Oscar held his hurt arm close to his chest, resisting the urge to cover his face again. Doing it once had gotten him hurt. He didn’t want to risk even worse consequences.
He dangled in the air like that for several seconds while the human looked him over, a cold and appraising look in those eyes. One fingertip nudged at one of his legs, propping it up to stare in disapproval at the cloth wraps he used for shoes. Then, it lifted up and mussed his mousey brown hair. Oscar squeaked in pain as it strained his neck.
“You’ll take some cleaning up,” the human noted, lifting Oscar higher. Oscar squealed with vertigo, finding himself now looking down at a huge human face, one that frowned at him like he was an interesting stone found on the ground.
Suddenly, a smirk appeared on the human’s lips. Oscar trembled at the sight of it and more tears coated his cheeks. He had never been seen by a human before, and now he understood why the idea scared him so much.
He was nothing to this man. He was just an object to pick up and observe, a toy. Nothing more.
Please …
A startled cry choked in his throat when the hand pinched around him dropped suddenly. Freefall wormed into his gut for a heartstopping second, and Oscar clung to the fingers around him despite the pain they caused in his ribs. His eyes shut tight for the brief moment.
Then it was over. The hand stopped moving, and then the grip around him relented.
Oscar landed in a heap on something hard and cold. The air escaped his lungs and he rolled over as motion assaulted him again. He looked upwards at a circular view of the ceiling, partially blocked by a human face peering in at him. The smell of cheap plastic surrounded him and he hiccuped.
He was in the ice bucket. Smooth sides that would resist any attempt to scramble up, the edge was over his head. With the human looking right at him, he wouldn’t have a chance to use his climbing thread to escape.
Not that it mattered. Once the human was finished walking, the bucket was dropped harshly onto what Oscar had to assume was the table. He jolted and then scrambled back, pressing against the wall of the container.
He didn’t know what the man had planned for him. It took him a second or two to find his voice.
“Please,” he managed to squeak out. Fear and despair coiled together in his tone, a hopeful appeal to the giant’s better nature.
All he got was another smirk. “Oh, you’ll be one of Mina’s favorites, I guarantee it,” he said, the cryptic words soaring over Oscar’s head.
Then, another circle loomed into view, and Oscar recognized the lid of the ice bucket just before it slammed into place overhead, echoing loudly in his ears and shutting him into total darkness.
Oh crap, Oscar thought, practically holding his breath. If he heard correctly, they were going to come searching for people in the walls … did that human have them bringing people out that he could also capture? Oscar sidled along the nightstand and slipped behind it, hoping they’d go do their exploring of the room while he found his way to an exit and got the hell out of dodge.
He shouldn’t have come back to the room. Oscar’s curiosity had drawn him back like a moth to flame. He’d already wrapped up a handful of salt from one of the piles left by the human in a scrap of cloth. Salt was good for all kinds of things, and they’d just left it lying around like weirdos.
Jacob frowned faintly. He hadn’t expected the agent to make it this far into the woods so quickly, and normally he’d be sheepish about getting caught like this. But at the moment, he couldn’t think about that.
He’d seen just a hint of green in the man’s hands before he closed them up.
Jacob closed the distance between them, unable to stop himself from bristling a little. But, as he got closer, he forced his broad shoulders to relax a little and held up his hands briefly to show he carried no threats with him. He was cautious, but not aggressive.
Yet.
“What’s in your hands?” he asked, not bothering to conceal the ice in his tone.
She’d only noticed a shadow descending on her before something large and fast closed around her, trapping her body and her surprised, fluttering wings in a small space. The shape of the light that leaked in showed the silhouettes of fingers clamped tightly around her.
“Oh,” she breathed, her heart beating faster. The human’s feelings crashed around her in a startling clarity, and she was immediately certain that it wasn’t Jacob.
A giant she didn’t know had snatched her up, and no one even knew she was out there.
He couldn’t help but think back to when he’d first met Dean. Or rather, when he’d first caught Dean. Jacob’s hand could close easily around the small hunter, restraining his every move and keeping him in place.
No matter how hard Dean tried, he couldn’t get away.
Oh, and with this prompt you’ve stumbled onto another ‘secret’ project of mine. It’s actually been in progress for a bit now, working on a storyline with Sam being discovered before Dean ever reached Trails West. Here’s a snippet from the story, arriving sometime after summer, 2016:
In. Out. What could go wrong?
Sam knew he was in trouble the moment the shadows above shifted.
A prickle went up his neck. Shit… Sam thought to himself. He pushed his legs to run even harder, desperate to get out of sight. Either he’d overestimated his ability at staying silent or he’d underestimated the human.
Whichever it was, he was in trouble.
A shadow fell over him. Gasping, the cracker tumbled out of his hands as he tried to get that last ounce of speed that would get him behind the nightstand and back to safety. Just a little more… Like Walt always said, a bit of food wasn’t worth any of their lives.
If only Sam had listened to his advice and hadn’t been so overconfident.
A huge hand snatched at him. It was too fast for Sam to even hope to dodge. He was fumbling at his jacket, trying desperately to yank out his knife even as a thumb and four massive fingers relentlessly closed around his body.
And then it was too late.
Sam’s arms were sealed to his side, his knife inexorably out of reach the moment the hand closed around him. Desperate struggles were muffled in the thick skin that surrounded his body. It was like none of his movements could make an effect.
The world dropped away beneath him, receding into the distance as Sam was yanked into the air. He let out a desperate gasp, unable to concentrate as his surroundings spiraled around him. The human was shifting him to an easier position to see.
As the light clicked on, Sam almost went blind at first. His eyes, so well-adjusted to the darkness in the walls, had difficulty focusing in the bright light of the room, especially when it was completely unexpected. Sam tried to flinch back, then twitched in the other direction when he saw a huge thumb brush over his shoulder. He shivered, realizing how helpless he was in this human’s hands.
Sam could see every ridge, every crevice in the hand curled around him. Nothing he did could loosen up his arms. His satchel was crushed into his side, and his scared hazel eyes stared up at the huge human, afraid of what would happen to him. Walt’s voice echoed in his head, reminding him how it was almost impossible to escape a human after being caught.
They’d never been able to rescue Bree…
Any theories on who caught Sam? Any ideas for what’s about to happen? Feel free to share!
Sam and his cracker commissioned from @mogadeer. Do not get between Sam and his cracker! Do not!
Walt’s back was to the steel mesh of the cage. The wall lay beyond, towering over his head. If he was to stare straight up at where it intersected the ceiling, he would get vertigo.
Humans were that big.
He was alone at the moment. The humans that had captured him were out celebrating. They anticipated he would pull in a large sum of cash in the black markets. There was no way out for him, after all. No escape.
No hope.
Only the knowledge that his small wife would mourn him.
No one else.
She was so fragile. Barely a wisp of a girl that had taken in his sorry ass. They were even hoping to have their first child soon. Continue on with the next generation of the Watch family.
Now it seemed his family line would end with him. The last surviving son of a dead line. The youngest brother was now the last.
He prayed that Mallory would move on without him. Find someone new to share her love with. She deserved all that and more. If he wasn’t around to give it to her, there would be someone else out there that would. There had to be.
That thought was all he had to hold on to.
He stared straight ahead, unmoving. For minutes at a time he didn’t even blink. Time passed at a crawl, but it did pass. The light outside started to shift to evening and he knew his time would soon come.
It wasn’t long after the warm hue of sunset began to spill into the room that he was made aware of a new sound infringing on his silence.
This is a special prompt, inspired by several different asks I’ve received recently. Which ones will remain unknown until the story conclusion. Walt’s background has been planned out for a long time.
BA Canon: Yes
Timeline: 1980
( Part 1 of 6 )
It’s funny how silence is.
It creeps in on you, weighing you down like a tangible substance.
Every sound becomes magnified.
A creak in the wall could be the end approaching. The quiet rustle of the curtains against the window was a threat in the still air.
The silence itself will eventually become deafening. All thought is washed away in the stillness. It is like the roar of the ocean as it wears down the shoreline.
Walt sat in silence.
His eyes remained glued on his greatest enemy. His nemesis. A construct created by humanity for the purpose of keeping things they wanted to keep. A pet, an object, not a person with a mind and will of his own. Trapped inside a steel mesh cage with wires that were thicker than his fingers. A human might hope to bend them. Walt would never be so lucky.
He stared at the lock that sat innocuously clasped around the cage door.
For days he’d sat inside the cage. Trapped like nothing more than an animal. Fed a base diet of stale crackers and water almost absently by people that couldn’t be bothered to care about the person they had snatched away from his life.
Mallory must think he was dead.
It was what he’d expect if he was the one waiting. To be caught and killed. Humans thought they were pests, after all. Rodents to be snuffed out. If the careful gathering of supplies went noticed by the humans that ran the small bed and breakfast, Trails West, mouse traps would begin to appear around the kitchen areas.
Those were dark times. The small people that lived in the walls would do their best to help their only allies in the world, the mice, find food. Everyone would have to band together, and even that was dangerous. Gathering all the families in one place would put them all at risk, make them easier to find.
Brothers Apart 