Bowman didn’t know which of the two to focus his incredulous look upon. Sam and Dean differed in size more than Bowman ever thought a pair of brothers could. Sam and Jacob combined hardly made an impression on Dean’s palm. They might be bulkier than any sprite Bowman knew, but they were still so small compared to Dean.
Dean, a colossal man taller than a tree sapling. He held all of the power, but he lent it to Sam by never trying to speak over him or go against what he said. Bowman thought back to the sight of that massive hand settling over the pocket after Sam and Jacob went into it, and it looked less like entrapment and more like protection as he replayed it.
He tried to writhe free, panic creeping through his veins. That glass container loomed in his vision like a gaping mouth, and his resolve almost faltered. He couldn’t even attempt to bite Dean again to get away. There was nothing to do but watch the thing get closer to him, an inevitable shift in Dean’s grip as he prepared to trap Bowman with ease.
Those knives glinted and the glass glittered and Bowman’s adrenaline had nowhere to go.
“S-stop it! I told you I didn’t–” he insisted, before the grip loosened around him and the words seized in his chest.
Bowman scoffed and squirmed again. He didn’t have time for something like this. Not when Logan looked completely skeptical of the conversation, too. Bowman was the only one on his own side, and he had to focus on getting away. He couldn’t give them time to decide they wanted to hurt him.
He almost spat out another scathing remark, but in his struggles he spotted movement on Dean’s chest. He blinked, but could have sworn he saw a couple pairs of eyes, normal sized ones, peering out of a pocket at him. The notion threw him off and he froze.
So, Oscar has been sold to the frigid Mina Chandler. Unfortunately, that isn’t the last he’s seen of troublesome changes in his life, as her job is merely to deliver. But to where, Oscar has no clue.
The roaring grew, and Oscar curled into a tighter ball. He was in the dark, but that was at least a comfort. The world around his small box prison shook with the sound of that massive engine, but he couldn’t see it at all. He didn’t have to watch the scary world that had swallowed him up and refused to release him.
He was an object. And he’d been sold.
He didn’t know where the plane was destined to go. The faint sensation of speed wormed in his gut as the enormous machine taxi’d, and he knew that wherever he was headed was far from his home. His space in a little motel in Breckenridge, Colorado was way beyond his reach now.
Oscar covered his ears with his hands to muffle the sound of that roaring engine, and thought of home. His makeshift table and spools for chairs. The shabby curtain in front of his pantry. The velvety ring box he used as a comfortable cushion while he worked on his sewing. A pile of blankets that he could burrow into to sleep at night and hide from the cold.
The plane jostled and shook as it picked up speed. Oscar grimaced and dragged the one piece of cloth he’d been given closer to himself. It didn’t hide him nearly enough.
The shaking suddenly changed. No more rumbles from speeding along the ground shook through his small body, only the engine’s roaring.
Gravity caught up as, a moment later, the world lurched upwards. Oscar cried out in fear and curled up again as an unseen force pushed him down into the bottom of the box. He was flying. It was just like the soaring feeling of a human grabbing him up, but thousands of times worse. The changing altitude hurt his ears like someone was pressing on either side of his head.
Oscar let his tears free. The pressure around his skull and concentrating on his ears hurt more than any headache he’d ever had. He couldn’t hear past the pounding in his own head as his body tried to cope with leaping miles into the air. For several long minutes, the pain drowned out all thoughts of where he was going. He couldn’t see the earth dropping away, but the terror of the very thought gripped him tight.
The entire plane shuddered again. Oscar was jostled out of his corner of the box and tossed against the opposite side by the turbulence. It knocked the wind out of him, but he didn’t take long to resume his frantic sobbing. The muscles in his hands hurt from clutching his blanket so tightly.
As the pressure mounted on his head and the fear and panic crackled through his every nerve, Oscar reached his breaking point. By the time the plane leveled off to carry him to his next destination, he was out cold.
At least in sleep he didn’t have to think. Blackness claimed him and his mind hid away from the fear of the unknown.
Timeline: After moving into 221B Baker Street and before the first story
Sam ran along the tabletop, his pulse thudding in his ears as he went.
Another day, another supply run.
Of course, this time was a little different. With Dean’s odd ability, they’d been able to track down some pencil lead for Sam to use to write with, always a hard-to-find commodity even here, in a flat with belongings strewn haphazardly about and a vast treasure trove of supplies for people Sam and Dean’s size.
It was a bit of a risk, with the humans still in the building, but Sam didn’t want to risk the snapped lead vanishing when one of them cleaned up. He’d been able to find enough scraps of paper to form a haphazard journal, but needed something to write with. His old bit of lead was nearly ground to dust.
Two shards of the tip of a pencil were nestled in his leather satchel, bouncing against his side as he ran. Sam made it to the edge of the table, peering down at the floor to see where Dean was, waiting for him to get down. They couldn’t afford them both out in such an exposed place, so Dean, the weaker climber, stayed on the ground.
Instead of using his hook and thread to climb with, Sam took advantage of the chair that was leaning against the edge of the table. A black jacket was draped overtop the chair, and offered Sam more than enough handholds to get himself to the floor. He cautiously began to pick his way down the fabric, occasionally glancing at his surroundings.
Just then, the stairs between the flat and the one upstairs creaked as John descended from his room, tugging on a jumper as he went. He needed to go to the bank, run to town for a few things, and was considering a stop at the pub later that night for a well-needed drink.
And with Sherlock shut in the bathroom preoccupied with his bioluminescent bacteria cultures, without a case on, John had a rare opportunity to slip away.
John was straightening his short, sandy hair, mussed by his jumper, as he entered the main area of the flat.
Sam stiffened, and Dean didn’t need his signal to know it was time to dive for cover. The older Winchester vanished behind one of the sturdy table legs as the floor shook under his boots, unable to do anything to help Sam out without taking an even greater risk of John spotting them.
With his knack tingling a sharp warning, Sam looked up at the table. It was too far up for him to risk climbing back up and searching for a hiding spot. The floor was too far down to reach in time if John decided to come into the kitchen.
Which left him one option.
Sam let go of the fabric he was clinging too, plummeting straight down into the dark folds of the pocket which yawned open beneath his feet.
John paused at the door when he noticed his coat wasn’t on its usual hook. It wasn’t on his claimed armchair in the living room either, and that’s when he remembered he’d left it in the kitchen. With a sigh, he rounded the corner and approached the table, never spotting the small shadow that ducked behind a table leg, only leaning out slightly to keep an eye on him.
He bent to retrieve his gloves from the pocket first, without even the slightest suspicion that there was someone inside, dodging fingers longer than he was tall.
Which, from the second John’s hand entered the pocket, Sam was.
His first warning was the cold shock that ran down his back from his knack. Sam’s eyes widened in the darkness as he saw a shadow fall over the light that leaked in from the kitchen. Hide. He had to hide better.
In the pocket with him was two black gloves, providing the cushioning for his landing. Without them in the way, Sam would have tumbled all the way to the bottom of the pocket. With John so close, that’s what Sam needed. More distance.
Squirming around the gloves, Sam put them between him and the opening of the pocket. Long fingers reached in, groping around for the gloves that were stuffed inside for safekeeping. Sam spotted them, and his breathing sped up.
Hands!
Memories of his first week cursed came flooding back, and his desperation to escape John’s grasp only grew. Sam twisted around, kicking the gloves further up in the pocket interior while he slid all the way to the bottom. His first experience with hands like that, his shoulder was dislocated. The last thing he wanted to do was relive that, and it was all made worse by the knowledge that John was a doctor, more than qualified to dissect either brother if he got them into his hands. All the experiments around the flat always drove that truth home to them when they were out.
Finding the gloves right away, John’s fingers dove straight down to achieve a secure grip on them. A knuckle brushed against Sam’s jacket, the contact going unnoticed by the human as something else caught his eye.
“Dammit, Sherlock…” muttered the doctor, straightening and placing the gloves on the table.
“I said, keep your cultures off my things!” John strode toward Sherlock’s work table, delicately plucking petri dishes from his laptop, which his flatmate had a habit of commandeering. With a huff, John tucked the computer under his arm and rushed it upstairs to scrub it and lock it in his bedroom before he found anything sprouting on his keyboard.
Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. He remained flattened at the bottom of the pocket, listening to the distant footsteps as they thudded up the stairs of the flat, waiting to be sure that John was actually leaving, even after touching Sam’s jacket, the closest he’d come to a human in years. He’d thought it was all over right then, the hand would shift position, making him tumble into the human’s grasp and sealed into a fist by fingers stronger than his entire body.
Instead, John had pulled away and stalked across the flat yelling at Sherlock, and Sam was wasting his opportunity to escape thinking about it.
Quickly pulling himself to his feet, Sam scaled out of the pocket in record time. Dean was down by the table leg, staying close to cover in case the human came back. He didn’t have Sam’s uncanny knack of knowing when someone was about to come into the room and spot them, leaving him more vulnerable than Sam.
Not that it was doing Sam any good today.
Sam used the thick threads of the jacket to climb down, dropping the last few inches. His arms continued trembling from the close call, shaken. Dean’s arm was on his back to keep him steady the moment he got down, but seconds later they were running across the floor.
It was time to get out of sight for the rest of the day. Their luck had been pushed the the limit enough that week.
“No, no, no…” he murmured, almost a moan as he stalked back and forth in front of the door. If he stopped to think, he’d curl into a ball and never come back. Trapped. No way out unless a human let him out. His pulse pounded and his breathing came in short bursts as he tried to keep from panicking. Panicking now would just make him more susceptible to his captors, easier to control.
Twisting around, Sam took in the rest of the cage. This time, he noticed the girl trapped with him, her dark skin a contrast to his pale.
“Hey, are you okay?” Sam asked kindly, seeing how terrified she looked.
Don’t let anyone ever own you, came in Dean’s voice. Sam might not be able to keep himself from being taken away, but he could fight back with everything he had.
“I should have known,” Sam said, his voice dripping with venom. “You think you’re better than me because you’re taller.” He struggled to draw in a breath. Something in him refused to quit, no matter how foolish it was to backtalk a human. The memory of cages was trying to wash rational thought away, and if that happened Sam would be curled into a ball, no more useful than a mouse pup. Just like the last time he was trapped, by Sherlock.
But this time there was no John to let him out. No Dean to help him fight back. Just Sam, more alone than he’d been in years.
Break my heart into pieces, why don’t ya (Don’t worry, I will just do that to myself). This prompt is a continuation of this other one. The AU is still unnamed and not planned out really. It’s just sad how dare.
Oscar never did adjust to the darkness inside the ice bucket. No light leaked in past the lid, giving him nothing. Even inside the walls, some light made it in. He was adapted to make use of it like no human ever could, but now even he was blinded.
He was curled into a tight ball, covering his ears to block the sounds from outside. An engine rumbled and a radio blared. Oscar’s own heart pounded. No matter what, he couldn’t protect himself from that noise out there. It was unfamiliar from so close.
Everything was a reminder that he’d been taken away from his home.
Life in the Knight’s Inn motel wasn’t easy. Oscar had to fight for survival almost every day. When he wasn’t critically low on food, the draft was enough to chill his tiny bones. From waking up to burrowing into his nest of blankets to sleep, Oscar worked hard. He spent his time collecting supplies, or sitting in his ringbox chair to weave and sew.
It was all gone now. Now he was at the mercy of a human and no help was coming.
His cheeks were dry and scratchy from the many tears that had already leaked from his eyes. He had his eyes shut tight to hold back more, but they escaped in spite of his efforts. Oscar sobbed in time with his breathing and tried to think of a silver lining. Something about his situation had to have a good side.
He couldn’t think of one.
Bumps in the road jostled him, but Oscar always found his way back into his desperate curl. It was all he could think to do to protect himself, though he knew it made him a coward. He could be trying to find a way out, but in his heart he knew there was none. It comforted him more to huddle into himself and hide in his own thoughts.
Thus he traveled for hours, leaving his home far behind. Farther than he’d ever be able to travel on his own, all while stuck in the dark confines of a stolen ice bucket. He doubted the human cared, if he was willing to steal an entire person, too, three and a quarter inches tall or not.
At length, the movement came to an end, along with the loud sounds of the engine and the radio. Oscar’s ears rang with the sudden absence, but then he choked on a yelp as the bucket moved. His captor grabbed it up and soon enough, the sound of the car was replaced by the sound of heavy footsteps.
He curled up more fervently, making himself as tiny as he could. His body quivered from the strain and the fear, and his stomach quailed. He was fortunate that he hadn’t yet eaten that day, or he might have been sick already.
The steps carried him through a new door, and when it slammed behind the human, Oscar could feel the vibration in his whole body. He winced, and then flinched again as the human shouted across the house he’d arrived in.
“Nori! Where are ya?” he called.
Another voice answered from somewhere, and the steps resumed. Oscar logged away the hollow sound of the steps. Hardwood floors, with plenty of space beneath them. Floorboards made a great hiding place for people like him, since humans had difficulty getting to them without destroying their home.
“What is it?” the other voice said, closer this time. A woman, from the sound of things.
Oscar squeaked when his prison slammed down onto a surface. His captor answered, sounding prouder than ever. “Check out what I found for us, Noriko.”
Oscar received no further warning before the lid above him lifted away at last with a scraping of plastic. Light burst in and he shut his eyes tight against the sudden onslaught. He flinched away from the face looming overhead, curtained by sheets of straight black hair.
Noriko moved even faster than her companion. Before Oscar could register that her hand was in his field of vision, slender fingers had wrapped around him. She yanked him out of the bucket and shoved the plastic container away absently.
Oscar found himself trapped in a fist before a pair of dark eyes that pierced right through him. Noriko looked interested, but as she looked him over, a frown appeared on her lips. Her grip on Oscar shifted and he suddenly found himself with a thumb against his stomach and two fingers against his back.
Once again, he was lucky he didn’t have anything in his stomach to make him sick. He planted his hands against her thumb and winced, curling up with the pain of her careless grip.
“He’s really skinny,” she pointed out critically, glancing past him at the man standing across the table. “You’ll have to make sure to fatten him up at least a little or she’ll think we sold her a sick one again.”
“I will, Nori, it’s not like she can show up instantly anyway, we’ll get him ready. This one’s exactly the kind she wants,” he replied. Oscar looked between the two of them, confused and wishing he had the bravery to ask who ‘she’ was.
Noriko smiled, a girlish expression that had no place on such a frightening face. Oscar’s breathing raced and he closed his eyes when she focused on him again. That gaze instilled in him a sense that he was little more than a fun new possession to her.
“He is a cutie,” she pointed out. A fingertip forced its way under his chin and tilted his head back. Oscar opened his eyes wide and gasped with pain. “Almost a shame to let him go, he’d look so cute in a little dollhouse.”
“Nori,” the man chided. “With the money from this one, we can get you a dozen cute dolls that you don’t even have to look after when you don’t want to.”
Noriko smiled again and lowered her hand. Oscar was released to the table in front of her with a surprised huff as he landed. The hand settled next to him, fingertips drumming the surface absently while she answered. “I guess you’re right,” she sighed.
Oscar pushed himself to his feet, his legs shaky and sore. He had his head tilted back to watch the humans, who weren’t looking at him for the moment. The man smiled excitedly at Noriko and grabbed the ice bucket from the table. “So, how’d I do?” he asked.
She tilted her head and pouted her lips coyly. Oscar sidled away from her hand, only for that dark gaze to slide down to him. Noriko’s hand casually swept him up again and he squeaked and squirmed in her grip. She ignored his efforts and didn’t release him no matter how he tried to wriggle free. A thumb pressed against his cheek teasingly. “He’s darling. I’ll have to measure him for a new outfit later. You did good, honey.”
Oscar shuddered and more tears raced down his cheeks. The human lifted him up and he sucked in a gasp, and then her grip opened up. His yelp of fear cut off as he landed back on the man’s palm. “Now go put him away for now, you got back in time for our show.”
Oscar covered his head with his hands as the fingers arced overhead until they closed in a fist around him. A voice, so disinterested in him and his fear, rumbled all around. “Be right back.”
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.
“My name’s John,” he stated, speaking only to Sam. “I’m a doctor. And I’m afraid I can’t let you out of my sight until I know for sure that neither of you needs medical attention. If you would let me examine you, then as long as you’re alright I will let you go on your way.”
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Dean said tartly, refusing to relent, “if I find that a little hard to believe that while I’m stuck in a jar.” He shot a glare back at where Sherlock was standing behind his friend. “We were doing fine before a certain someone decided to go all King Kong on us and stuff us into jars!”
Brothers Apart 