Title: Not Distress Or That Dress Either
Author: Silverkitsune1
Summary: Ellen was never very good at playing damsel in distress.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Supernatural does not belong to me. No money was made from this.
Thanks to: My beta lj user justruth who also came up with the title.
Author's Notes: Written for livejournal group SPNXX's Women of Supernatural Gen Flashfic Challenge.
Ellen kicks the lock off the door her first try, the toe of her boot catching the rusted bit of metal and sending it flying. There's no clang or clatter to let her know when it hits the ground, just a muffled thump. The cement floor had long ago been torn up and carted off, and all that's left of the building now is a crisscrossing skeleton of beams that once held up the ceiling, the crumbling walls and the dilapidated door that stands before her.
The seventeen year old has more luck her next try. The ropes around her wrist dig into her skin as she swings, her toes just barely skimming across the dirt, but when she kicks her legs up and stretches, the heels of her boots catch at the edge of the door's window, and she doesn't fall back. It's not much of a relief, her arms have been screaming since the shape shifter strung her up like a dead rabbit, taking the knife she kept strapped to her forearm with it when it left, but it's enough for her to get some pull out of the ropes.
The beam the rope is connected to groans, but Ellen can't tell if that's because of her weight or the wind that whistles overhead, and skirts through the door's empty glassless windows. She's praying it's the former.
Ellen tilts her head back. The door in front of her is frail and old, and one solid kick would take it down. She's hoping it's the same for the spider web of water-stained wood above. The beams are pale and gray, and if Ellen squints they're swallowed by the equally colorless sky, and it makes the red in the brick of the wall, and the green in garden of weeds she can see through the door's window blinding by comparison.
She throws her weight back, forcing the rope to stretch and pull. The teenager hisses, but doesn't cry out. The second time is harder. Her teeth lock together, and the heels of her boots slip peeling sections of dirty paint off the door as she pulls and twists. The third time she spits out a string of curses each one aimed at the groaning strip of wood she's tethered to, but even as the pain in her arms grows hotter, lapping away at her crying muscles, her voice stays at a low growl. She's not about to let the monster know she's awake.
It's not a clean break, and bits of rotting wood rain down on Ellen as she falls to the ground. She lands on her shoulder and the white haze that settles over her eyes when she rolls onto her stomach makes her think a bone might be broken. She can walk though, and nothing fell from the sky and cracked her melon open, and those are all good things. Lucky things on what had turned into a very unlucky day.
There's a decent coil of rope to deal with now, all of it coated in fine a layer of dirt, dust and a few other stains Ellen doesn't have the time or sanity to think about just now. She goes at the knot at her wrists with her teeth, but it's too tight to get loose with anything other than a blade, and so she gathers up the rest of the rope in her arms and starts to run.
Ellen finds a cluster of buildings when she stumbles out of the house by way of a hole in one of the walls. All of them look one strong sneeze away from crumbling, and as she picks her way across the uneven ground she prays that it's only the empty eyes of these dilapidated homes that watch her as she makes her escape.
She stops at what must have been the edge of whatever sorry town this might have been once upon a time. There is a mess of thick woods to her right, and miles of empty field to her left. Both ways are dangerous, but then so is standing in this cemetery of a subdivision, and in the end she chooses the woods.
The flat silver sky is blocked out by a canopy of branches and leaves, and the wind causes the dark green blanket to ripple and shake. It's colder in the shadows, and goose pimples hurry up her arms, as she darts past trees that hold neither birds nor squirrels. There's fear coating her mouth leaving a flat brackish taste on her tongue, and sweat slides down the curves of her body and soaks her forehead. There are too many trees, too many flowers and weeds, and too many places for the thing that grinned at her using her sweetheart's face to hide. She's dizzy trying to see everywhere at once.
When she darts around the thin bent body of a young tree and comes nose to nose with the muzzle of a gun her mouth opens, but the gasp is wrestled back before it fully emerges. There is a flicker flash of light that leaves her momentarily blind, and a branch cracks under her weight when she steps back. There are still black spots dancing behind her eyes when her mama pulls her into a one armed hug. The other arm stays straight and steady aiming the six-shooter into the patch of forest Ellen just came from.
Daisy Wilson, her mama's hunting partner, picks her way forward as silent as a cat. Her own shot gun is cocked and ready.
"It's not chasing me," Ellen says. "But I don't know where it is."
A bit of the tension leaks out of Daisy's shoulders, and she glances at Ellen out of the corner of her eye. "Cynthia let your daughter breath."
"Hi, Mama."
Cynthia Morning pulls away. She scowls at Ellen's bound hands, her black eye and the dried blood on her cheek from a cut one of the wood's low hanging branches gave her.
"You bleeding anywhere I can't see?"
Ellen shakes her head. She can see Bill Harvelle, the over cocked pup that her mama and Daisy have alternated between teaching and snapping at for the last two years, standing further back. His face is pinched and pale, and his brown eyes are just a little too wide for her liking.
Cynthia's blade slides into the knot around Ellen's wrist and twists. Ellen shakes the bindings off, and scruffs dirt and pebbles over them with the side of her boot. Her hands are shaking.
"I can see," Ellen says motioning to the black eye that will no doubt puff up sometime tomorrow, but for now is just a throbbing background annoyance. Her arms are still screaming, but there's anger burning away all the fear that she had moments ago. "And I feel just fine."
Cynthia touches the side of Ellen's face, and then nods.
"Bill," Cynthia says, low and careful. "Give Ellen your extra pistol. We're finishing this."
Author's quick note: Cynthia Morning and Daisy Wilson are my own creations.