A/N: Slightly revised from what I posted on the latest hoodie_time comment-fic meme, but based on the following prompt from i_speak_tongue: A boy/girl scout troop helps an injured Dean out of the woods. And the shape Dean's in, they're going to get ALL the badges.
Do a Good Turn Daily
by San Antonio Rose
"Mister?"
Nngh.
"Mister, can you hear me? A-are you awake?"
Mm.
There's a little hand on his chest. He peels one eye open as far as it'll go, which isn't very, and makes out skinny arms, blue shirt, gold neckerchief. There's a freckled face with wide brown eyes and short brown hair.
There's a question. He should know this language, but the words won't make sense. He hurts.
There's a rustle, a crunch. "I don't think we should move him," says another voice. Little older. Not Sam. "Not for a few hours, anyway. He's hurt really bad."
No kidding. Dean snorts, but that hurts his chest and his face both. He lets his eye close again.
"Mister?" says big kid.
Mm?
"I sent the other boys back to the campsite, to get our скоутмастэр and some supplies." Big kid says something else, but the words go weird again. "We'll do what we can, though."
Okay.
There's more jibberish, and the hand leaves his chest, and then some rustling and snapping and stone against stone and wood against wood. More rustling. Metal against stone... Smoke!
"Hey, hey, take it easy, mister," says Big, and hands stop him from failing to get up and run.
He gets his eye open a little way, enough to see the fire. It's in one place, like a... like a campfire. He relaxes with a sigh and lets his eye close again.
"Mister?" That's Little.
Mm?
"You thirsty?"
Mm. Yeah, kind of. His throat feels like it's stuffed with cotton.
One little hand goes under his chin as something metal presses against his lips. He opens his mouth a bit, and cool water flows into it. He gulps the water down, and the cottony feeling in his throat goes away.
"Not too much," says Big, and the—canteen, that's the word, disappears.
Thanks.
"You're welcome, sir," says Little.
Where's Sam?
Pause. "What?" says Big.
Where's Sam?
"Allagoddaz Sam."
Huh?
More jibberish. Well, at least the campfire's really going now, warming things up nicely. Maybe... Sam'll... see...
"Mister?"
NguuUUuh!
"Sorry." Right, that's... that's Little. "I hafta ƿake ʒou up 'cause you've got a head ινϫυρη."
Dean's eyes open better this time. There's a blanket tent overhead, and although the campfire's outside in front of it, the fire's putting out enough heat that the tent's plenty warm. Or maybe that's because there's another blanket over him. Feels like there's something soft between his head and the tree trunk he's been propped up against for... well, since Big and Little found him. Soft but scratchy, so if it's like the blankets he can see, it's Army green wool.
Little's hand pops into his field of vision and swims in and out of focus. Dean can't quite understand what Little asks, but he knows procedure well enough to guess. He peers at the hand for a second, trying to get it to hold still.
Um. Two?
Whether that's the right answer or not, Little starts doing something to... a bandage? on Dean's head. Dean shifts a little, feels stitches pull slightly here and there. Kids must have patched him up while he was out.
Another kid crawls in, dark hair and... green eyes, maybe, uniform like Little's except in Army green. "How is he?" Big's voice. He looks... eh, maybe twelve, thirteen.
"I think he's a little better," says Little, but Dean doesn't understand much after that.
Big sighs. "Can I get you some aspirin, sir? We don't have anything stronger, but it might help."
Okay.
Big ducks out of the tent and comes back with a canteen and a pill bottle. Dean tries to hold out his hand to take the pills, but his arm won't move. He glances down to see the sling and the splint peeping out the end with his fingers. So he sticks out his tongue, and Big drops two bitter tablets onto it. Dean swallows them and accepts the drink of water Big gently offers him.
Thanks.
"You're welcome."
Doing good.
"Sorry?"
You kids. Doing good.
Big smiles. It's a familiar smile, somehow, but Dean can't place it.
Little asks something, and all Dean gets of Big's reply is, "... stay here for the night."
Little sits down where Dean can see his worried face. "What about the rest of the troop?"
"They have to stay at the..." Dean loses everything after that except a word here and there that leads him to conclude that a responsible adult will be coming to pitch another tent here so the three of them aren't alone. In the woods. At night.
Little bites his lip. "I'm scared," he whispers.
That gets Dean's adrenaline going.
"Why?" asks Big.
"There's stories about these woods," says Little. "Like... people who don't come back."
Dean cannot for the life of him remember what hunt brought him here and messed him up so badly, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that however much these kids have taken charge of him, he is also in charge of them when it comes to all things supernatural.
Where's Sam?
The kids turn to him at once. "Sam—is that a friend?" Big asks.
Brother.
"Was he supposed to be with you?"
Yeah.
"We haven't seen anyone else out here."
Dean bites back a curse and tries to reach for his sidearm, but everything hurts too bad.
Little squeezes his hand into the gap between Dean and the tree as if feeling for injuries, but he gasps when he hits the 1911. "He's got a gun!"
Take it.
"What?"
Take it.
Big tilts him forward a bit so that Little can get the gun. Unfortunately, just that slight amount of movement makes the world spin and his stomach turn. It's a relief when Big leans him back again, but the world won't stop spinning. His head hurts.
"Here," says Big and takes the gun from Little, then says something else Dean can't understand. Whatever it is, Little crawls out of the tent for a moment, and Big shifts closer to Dean's ear and whispers, "Sir? A-are you a... a hunter?"
Yeah.
Big says something that sounds like My dad's in the Men of Letters, but that can't be what he's really saying. What comes after doesn't make any sense, either—Dean hears the sounds, but they won't make words. Big must realize that Dean's not following him, though, because he stops in mid-sentence and sighs. "We'll be careful," he concludes.
Okay. Dean can go back to sleep and hope that gets him off the Tilt-o-Whirl.
It's a spike of pain that wakes him this time, brought on by something warm and shaky stuck to his side. He grunts.
"Mister?!" comes Little's quavering voice, barely audible.
Dean opens his eyes to dark. Like, too dark. The campfire's gone out. The shaky thing is Little, who's tucked himself under Dean's unsplinted arm. Big's pressed against Dean's other side, though he's not clinging; he's got Dean's gun in both hands in his lap, fingers off the trigger but still ready.
He looks back at Little, who whispers, "There's somethin' out there."
"Our friend never came back," Big adds, avoiding consonants that could carry. "But the wind picked up, and then..."
Dean can hear it now, the wind sighing through the trees and the rustle of something on the ground, circling the campsite. The longer they listen, the more distinct the crunch of footfalls becomes, along with the occasional low grunt or growl and the brush of fur against bark. He closes his eyes to try to listen for other clues, like muffled giggles or conversation, that might hint at this being a prank. That's not what he hears. What he hears is big, possibly hairy, and definitely not human—or friendly.
"Get ready."
Big inhales slowly and lifts the gun, bobbling a little as his arms compensate for the weight. A .45 is way too big for him, but Dean doesn't have anything smaller. And since his vision's still intermittently blurry, he doesn't trust his own aim. He just hopes whatever's in there—consecrated iron, maybe—is the right ammo for the threat.
Something moves past the tent opening, and Dean clamps his hand over Little's mouth to stifle a gasp. There's more rustling around their tree, sniffling, snarling—
—and then whatever it is rips the tent away with a roar, and Little screams, but Big, braced against the tree, aims Dean's gun at the center of the huge dark shape looming over them and empties the magazine into the creature. The creature roars again, staggers backward, falls, and dies. There's a pause where even the wind dies away and everything is silent, except for the sound of Dean's own heart pounding in his ears.
But the creature's well and truly dead, and there doesn't seem to be another nearby, so the normal sounds of night in the forest start up again. Big lowers the gun with quaking arms, and Little buries his face in Dean's shoulder and cries.
Dean's hand and arm still aren't working too well, but he gets his hand up to cradle the back of Little's head. "It's okay. It's okay."
"Wh-wh-what was it?" Big asks, still staring at the corpse.
"Dunno. Hey."
Big looks at him.
"Good job."
Big smiles shakily and presses himself against Dean's side again.
Little's just about cried himself out when Dean hears noises again—running feet, fast breathing, more than one person, clattering and clanking. The three of them look up to see bouncing spots of light.
"Cavalry's here," Dean murmurs, and the adrenaline crash hits hard.
He hears shouts but can't make out the words. Big sets the gun in Dean's lap, and both kids jump up to start calling back, but he can't understand them either. He notes with morbid fascination that the creature's body burns when the flashlight beams fall on it. But then the place is crawling with Scouts, and the kids aren't his responsibility anymore. His eyes close.
"Sir?" asks an adult, but that's about the last thing he hears.
"... see that stretcher." Grown-up. "Good, good."
"But it's too little!" pipes a small voice. "He won't fit!"
Dean doesn't even bother opening his eyes.
He's horizontal. He's bouncing. Everything hurts. He can't think what...
He's been captured by hobbits, that's what. He's got little hands pawing all over him. And he can't stop a yelp when one brushes his stitches the wrong way.
"Careful!" cries Little. "You're hurting him!"
"Thorry, mithter." Santa forgot somebody's front teeth.
"Here we go." Different grown-up. Then there's a prick—and ah, sweet, blessed relief. Somebody found the good stuff.
"Mister?" Little's shaking his shoulder.
Mm?
"It's almost time for breakfast."
Dean opens his eyes to beige canvas. A real tent this time, and he's flat on his back on somebody's bedroll. Morphine, or whatever they gave him, hasn't quite worn off yet, but he doesn't feel stoned, either. And sure enough, he smells wood smoke and bacon.
He smiles at Little. "Thanks."
Little's smile is kind of sheepish. "Since your head hurts, I thought you might want to wake up before—"
The sour notes of Reveille rip through his skull. Seriously, even Hannibal Shirley Dobbs got more of the call right than this kid.
"You were right," Dean says, rubbing his forehead, when the last cracked note fades.
"He's new," Little confesses with a grimace.
Big comes into the tent then. "Morning. Think you can make it out to the campfire, or would you rather eat in here?"
Dean tries to sit up, but the kids have to help him get vertical, and then it takes a moment for his head to stop spinning. "Uh. Maybe we'd better take it slow."
"Gotcha." Big leaves and comes back with a tin plate loaded with eggs and bacon and a tin cup full of coffee.
It might be the best breakfast he's ever had that wasn't cooked by a Winchester.
He's only a couple of bites in when the kids have to leave him to it and go eat with the rest of the troop. He doesn't pay much attention to what's being said outside—most of it's kid-chatter anyway, at least until the meal's mostly over and the scoutmaster starts whatever rigmarole they do at these things every morning. But then he hears the scoutmaster start reading off some list, and a few of the boys gasp several times.
"... Camping, First Aid, Marksmanship, Pathfinding, and a recommendation for a Meritorious Action Award."
That last gets the loudest gasp of all.
"But sir," Big objects, "all I did was—"
"All you did," the scoutmaster interrupts, "was save a man's life, and Jeremy's, and your own. I think it only fitting that you receive some recognition for it."
The boys all applaud and cheer.
Then the scoutmaster says something about breaking camp, and Dean checks out again as best he can without lying back down.
It isn't long, though, before one of the adults pokes his head into the tent. "Sir? We'll be heading out in a few minutes. May I take your dishes?"
Dean hurriedly finishes his coffee, but the other man has to come in and get everything because Dean's still not up to leaning forward. Then Big and Little—er, Jeremy—come back, and between the three of them, they get Dean outside and standing.
"Are you all right?" Jeremy asks.
Dean sighs. "Yeah, but I can't tell how far I can walk."
"Not to worry," says the scoutmaster, coming over to join them. "A park ranger lent us a horse, and the boys are making a travois for you to ride down on."
Dean nods, unsure if he remembers right what a travois is. "Thanks."
"Oh, and..." The scoutmaster holds out Dean's gun. "I expect you want this back."
Dean smiles and accepts it with a nod. It goes back in its usual spot the second the scoutmaster turns away to do something else.
Big helps Dean over to a tree he can rest against without having to sit down again, and the kids get the camp torn down in record time. Then one of the adults brings a big buckskin horse—seriously, thing's big enough for Sam to ride comfortably—out from wherever it had been tied, and the kids take a triangular thing of poles and rope they've been working on and hook the top over the horse's rear, behind the saddle. The adults make sure the ropes are secure and then start laying blankets over it.
So that's a travois, huh? Awesome. He'll probably get bounced off before they go five feet.
They do a little fiddling to get the angle right before they call Dean over. Despite his cynicism, though, the thing's fairly comfortable, and his heels won't drag the ground. They put another blanket over him, too, and tie him down securely but not too tight. Big and Jeremy station themselves on either side, and the rest of the Scouts fall in behind, which gives him his first real look at all of them—about twenty in all, and it looks like about half of 'em are Cub Scouts.
Then there's the creak and thump of someone getting into the saddle, and they're off. And the ride's not too shabby. The morphine wears off, of course, so he hurts, and where there are bumps or tree roots in the trail, he gets jostled—but Big and Jeremy make a point of clearing away any stones in the path, so at least he doesn't get jostled as badly. The horse has a pretty even gait, too, which helps. As for the kids, they while away the time singing old marching songs—like, songs that were dusty when Dad was a kid—and occasionally chanting a few cleaned-up jodies. Somebody tries to start an "I don't know, but I've been told," but the scoutmaster shuts him down.
Dean dozes as best he can until they finally get down to a ranger station. Most of the kids and adults take off for the restrooms or the parking lot at that point, but Big steadies him while Jeremy gets the knots undone, and they help Dean to his feet. He's pretty woozy and sore, but he'll make it, he thinks. Jeremy shakes his hand and goes to catch up with the other boys, and the scoutmaster shakes Dean's hand and goes off to return the horse. Dean gives his thanks to Big, too, and Big ducks his head and rubs his neck, and if that kid's not a Winchester, Dean will eat his hat—Bobby's—Baby's distributor cap.
Then Dean turns around to try to get his bearings, and he thinks he recognizes where he is... apart from the dirt road the scoutmaster's riding down.
"What's wrong?" Big asks.
"This road. It's supposed to be paved."
"Y-es, sir, we heard it's on the WPA's list for next year, but we don't know when. Mr. Grimes is worried they'll start the construction so late that we won't be able to come out here next year."
Wide-eyed, heart pounding, stomach churning, he turns to look at the parking lot... and it's full of vintage cars, all late-'30s, that all look brand. spankin'. new.
"Sir?"
Dean turns back to Big. "What did you say your name was?"
"Henry, sir. Henry Winchester."
Dean's vision swims. His head spins. He falls.
"DEAN!"
Strong arms catch him before he can hit the ground, and his eyes focus on the sweetest sight in the world. "Sammy."
Sam swears, and it's twilight behind his head. "What the hell happened to you, man?"
"Boy Scouts," Dean murmurs and passes out.
Henry's still staring slack-jawed at the space where the hunter used to be when he hears a shout and sees his father running toward him from the parking lot. "Pops! I thought you were in London!"
"We came back early," Pops replies, "and I wish we hadn't gone at all."
"Did—did someone..."
Pops nods. "John Sands."
Henry's heart sinks. Poor Josie.
Pops reaches him and puts his hands on Henry's shoulders. "Never mind that. How are you? I told Grimes these woods weren't safe—"
"Safer than they were, sir," Henry reports, squaring his shoulders and looking his father in the eye.
Pops stares. "There's a creature out here, some kind of beast we haven't seen before."
"Not anymore, sir. I helped a hunter kill it."
But Pops doesn't react the way Henry expected. "Kill it?! When we don't even know what it is yet?!"
"Pops, it attacked us! The hunter was hurt bad, and me and Jeremy were taking care of him when it showed up and tried to kill us! What was I supposed to do?!"
"Jeremy and I," Pops corrects before running a hand over his mouth with a sigh. "Well, do you at least know what weapon you used?"
"Yes, sir. Handgun, Colt M1911. From the weight, I think they were consecrated iron rounds. And the flesh burned in light."
"Daylight?"
"Any kind. Flashlights worked."
Pops sighs again. "All right. I'll see if Sinclair and Haggerty can get anything from the bones. But you're not camping in this forest again, understand?"
"Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Why not, if the creature's dead?"
Pops looks around and lowers his voice. "Did anyone disappear on this trip?"
"Not of our group. I thought Mr. Tinker had, but he'd just been held up talking to the ranger. But... the-the hunter did, just now. I was talking to him, and... he just vanished."
"Did he give you a name?"
"No, sir."
"You're sure he was human?"
"Bled like one, if that's what you mean."
Pops snorts. "Must have been a Campbell. Foolhardy idiots, shoot first and don't even bother asking questions later."
"But what—"
"This place is riddled with temporal distortions, holes in time that appear at random. We're still studying what causes them, but we don't know where they come from, where they lead, anything. It might be fae; it might be latent natural magic. The creature might be connected to it somehow—we just don't know. But until we do, until we can get it stabilized, I don't want you out here, running the risk of falling into one."
Henry nods, not understanding everything but getting a better sense of the cause of his father's concern. "Yes, sir."
"All right. Let's get you home."
Pops will want him to forget this whole incident, Henry knows, and maybe he will eventually. But right now, he can't help wondering whether he'll ever see that hunter again.