Collared Chapter 2, a psych fanfic

*face-palms at last episode's flashback of Henry teaching young!Shawn how to escape a pursuer* Obviously this story is AU and can be considered stand-alone from the current season. Good episode though (even though I had some trouble suspending my disbelief about certain things and if you've seen the episode, you probably know what I'm talking about). Anyway...

Thank you everyone for all of your wonderful reviews! I'm glad you're liking it so far, and I hope I don't lose any readers with this chapter (please be sure to read the author's note at the end of the chapter so that I may further explain myself.) Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, don't sue me.

Chapter Two

BANG!

Shawn's eyes snapped open and he sucked in a startled breath. All around him, he could hear the sounds of the forest; the wind, the rustle of leaves, the nearby wildlife. Cool soil sifted through his fingers as his hand curled into a fist. Gazing at the tree branches stretched out above him, he quickly deduced that he was outside, lying on the forest floor, and it was around dusk; the last few rays of sunlight shining through the trees as the sun set.

'What? How?'

He couldn't understand what was going on. Why was he outside? How had he gotten outside? He reached up with one hand and grasped at the collar still around his neck, fumbling with it for a moment to try and see if it was attached to a chain of some sort. Maybe he was being left outside again for being a bad d-

'No. Not a dog.'

There was no chain though, no leash, no restraint of any sort and he didn't feel the familiar numbing pinch from a tranquilizer dart. Still laying on the ground, he looked around himself to see that there was no cabin nearby either. Listening for several minutes, he found that there was also no angry voice calling him a bad dog faintly in the distance and there were no pounding footsteps coming his way. There was nothing. Just him and the forest.

'What happened?'

He couldn't remember and a large part of him didn't want to remember even though a small something inside of him was telling him that he needed to remember, that it was important that he did. He knew that he should be closing his eyes, concentrating, and trying to think back and figure out what was going on. He had this feeling that something big had happened and that it was important that he remember what it was. Something needed to be done about... something, but what? He didn't know and he didn't want to know because he was tired, tired of training and running in fear and wondering what was going to happen to him. He just wanted to go home.

Snap!

Shawn bolted upright, scrambling backwards, away from the source of the snapping twig, and only stopped when his back hit the trunk of a tree. Despite the fact that whatever had stepped on the twig was too light to be human, he had been expecting his captor. For all Shawn knew, the man could be light on his feet if he wanted to and could easily sneak up on the psychic. However, even if it wasn't human, the last thing Shawn expected to see standing across from him was a dog; a black lab from the looks of it, with white splotches decorating his muzzle and chest. He had to hold back a hysterical laugh, because out of all the things in the forest that it could have been, a dog was the thing that found him. A dog, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, a dog, just like him, a dog.

The dog backed up, apparently just as startled by Shawn's sudden movement as Shawn was by the dog itself. It growled at him warily before turning and bolting off into the underbrush, disappearing from view. Its collar jingled briefly before that too faded as the dog got further away.

Not moving from his spot against the tree, Shawn wondered if there were people nearby. The dog had a collar, so it must have owners. He couldn't help but wonder if they were good people or bad people though. Maybe there were no people, maybe the dog was just as lost as he was.

Using the tree for support, Shawn pulled himself to his feet. He couldn't just sit there all night, he had to go. He had to... had to do something.

'Have to go back to the cabin,' he thought. Pushing away from the tree, he took a few steps before he froze. 'Wait. What?'

Go back to the cabin? Why in the world would he do that? He was finally out of his cage, without any leashes or chains, and his captor was nowhere in sight. He should be escaping! With his captor not knowing where he was (at least as far as Shawn knew), he finally had a good chance of getting away. Maybe, just maybe, this was enough of a head start for him to reach freedom in time.

As he began traveling in a random direction, hoping that it was the right direction, his mind whined at him, 'Bad dog, running away. Don't want to be a bad dog.'

'I'm not a dog!' he nearly screamed it out loud, but thankfully restrained himself. Who knew if his captor was nearby or not?

Stubbornly forcing himself forward, Shawn bolted off into the underbrush. He was so tired of running, but he knew if he had any hope of getting away and finding help, he'd need to put all of his effort into this last run.

'No, no,' that small part of him continued to whine as he ran. 'Can't leave. Don't wanna be a bad dog.'

Gritting his teeth, Shawn held back a frustrated growl (but he doesn't-), and thought to himself over and over again that he wasn't a dog and that his mind needed to stop freaking out on him because he needed all one-hundred percent of it on his side so that he could concentrate on escaping. As if needing to further prove his point, he was so wrapped up in his internal crisis that he completely missed the tree root sticking out of the ground in front of him and went tripping over it and tumbling down a steep hill.

He landed with a thud at the bottom, startling yet another dog, a husky this time, that had been standing nearby. The husky growled at him, backing away, and Shawn actually found himself growling back. What surprised him even more than that was that he felt fully ready and willing to fight this dog if he needed to. He supposed that after everything he'd had to deal with for the past several months, he wasn't about to let this dog push him around.

A branch snapping in the distance tore both he and the dog out of their stand-off, the step that had caused it sounding much heavier than before, heavy enough to be human. Another heavy step soon followed the first. The husky turned tail and went racing off into the forest, disappearing into some bushes. Deciding that the dog had the right idea, Shawn got to his feet and took off running in the opposite direction of the footsteps. Whoever the footsteps belonged to quickly took chase, pounding after him through the forest.

"Bad dog!" the malicious voice of his captor shouted after him and Shawn's heart nearly melted in despair, for although his captor was a fair distance away, the other man was still too close for Shawn to have any hope of actually getting away. "Bad dog!"

He wasn't a dog. He wasn't. Dogs had paws and a tail and large furry ears that flopped about in the wind. Dogs also had sharp teeth they could use to defend themselves with, and dogs could run much faster than any human if they wanted to. Shawn wished for a moment that he was a dog because then he could outrun this man and escape him, and if the man somehow caught up with him, he could attack him with his sharp teeth. Being a dog would be so much better in this situation. Being a dog would mean survival.

"Bad dog!"

'Not a dog. Not a dog. Not a dog...'

But... if he wasn't a dog, then how come he had paws? He just said before that dogs had paws and clearly he had paws. How else would he be running on all fours; the wind blowing through his fur, his large, pointed ears determining where the pursuing footsteps were coming from and assuring him that he was leaving the man far behind. Only a dog could run this fast, weaving through the trees and the underbrush like the wind.

'...Not a bad dog.'

After much running that, had he been human, would have tired him out long before, Shawn finally burst free from the forest and discovered a paved road. A road meant more people, people who might be nicer than his captor and would be nicer than him. He padded out onto the road and looked both ways, but could not see a car in sight. He couldn't wait for people to come, he'd have to go find them, and he knew that if he followed the road, eventually he would find them.

His tail swishing behind him (dogs have tails, so he was a dog), Shawn trotted down the road in search of civilization. He traveled down the road for a long while, hoping to see the light of houses or streetlamps in the night, when suddenly headlights were bearing down on him. His ears flattened against his head and he crouched down fearfully as the car's brakes screeched. Thankfully, the metal menace swerved around him before coming to a complete stop. Although he was no longer in danger of being hit, Shawn still stayed crouched down on the ground. There were good people and there were bad people and he didn't know what sort of people these were, and until he was sure, he was going to stay on the defensive.

A man was the first to step out of the car, and Shawn pressed himself even closer to the ground as he was reminded of the man that had kept him locked up. As the man stepped out of the car though, Shawn could hear a woman shout, "Be careful, Jerry! It could be rabid!"

Shawn's ears perked up, because even though the woman was yelling and accused him of being rabid (which he was most certainly not, but for them to even make that accusation meant that he must be a dog), there was concern and kindness in her tone.

"I'm just going to make sure he's not hurt," Jerry said before turning away from the woman in the car and slowly approaching Shawn. He held his hands out in front of him and crouched low to the ground as he approached so that he wasn't towering over Shawn. In a voice that was just as kind as the woman's, he said, "Hey buddy. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you're okay."

Shawn's tail wagged nervously as he crept over to the man, Jerry, who seemed just as cautious as he was. Jerry held one hand out to Shawn, who looked at the hand curiously before looking up at Jerry's face, as if to ask, 'What do you want me to do with that?'

'Dogs sniff a person's hand to gain their scent, to see if they're trustworthy,' Shawn reminded himself. That was stupid though, a fact about dogs people probably made up. After all, what does trust smell like? Shawn was sure that he couldn't tell what type of person his captor was through smell alone. Instead, Shawn bumped his head against the man's hand because good dogs get pet and he was a good dog.

"Oh," Jerry said, sounding startled as he pulled his hand away briefly before reaching back down and petting Shawn on the head. "You're really cold. How long have you been out here?" While he pet Shawn with one hand, he reached down with the other and fiddled with the leather collar around Shawn's neck. "Hmm, no tags. Maybe your owners have you micro-chipped. Still, I'm worried about how cold you are."

Standing up, Jerry lightly tugged on Shawn's collar, being much more gentle than Shawn's captor had ever been, and asked in that same kind tone, "You want to go for a ride, buddy? It's nice and warm in the car."

Shawn followed Jerry a few steps to the car before hesitating. He looked back down the road where he knew the cabin lay somewhere deep in the forest. For so long, he had been wanting to get away, not because he was a bad dog, but because his captor was a bad owner, a bad person who was cruel to him. Shawn knew he deserved better treatment than that, any dog did. Yet, with freedom and a better life finally within his grasp, Shawn couldn't help but pause. His missing memories lay back there with that cabin, memories of something important that needed to be remembered, and as he thought about this, that feeling from before that called for him to do something returned.

Another light tug broke Shawn out of his thoughts and he followed Jerry the rest of the way to the car. Opening the back door, Jerry helped Shawn climb his way into the backseat of the car. The car itself didn't feel any warmer, but then again, Shawn didn't feel cold either, so he'd have to take the man's word for it.

"Is he hurt?" the woman in the passenger's seat asked.

"He wasn't limping or whining or anything," Jerry said, climbing into the drivers seat. "But he was really cold. I'm worried that he's hypothermic. I'd like to get him checked out. Plus, he has a collar, so his owners are out there somewhere."

As the two talked about bringing him to the emergency animal hospital in Santa Barbara which was apparently the closest town to them, Shawn laid his head down on the seat. They were taking him to Santa Barbara, a place where his father and his friends lived. They would keep him safe, and maybe they'd be able to help him figure out this feeling he had deep inside that made him want to return to the cabin while at the same time run away from it.

Shawn fell asleep to the soft tunes playing on the car radio.

The first thing Shawn noticed when he next woke up was that the car had stopped moving. Light from nearby street lamps shone in through the windows and from his position in the back seat, he could see the faces of nearby buildings. He didn't quite recognize the area that they had stopped in, but he figured that they were back in Santa Barbara since that was where the couple had talked about taking him before he fell asleep.

Sitting up in the back seat, Shawn realized that the man, Jerry, was missing from the driver's seat, but the engine hood was up and judging from the way the woman was leaning out the open window on the passenger's side, Jerry was trying to fix something wrong with the car and the woman, who Shawn was beginning to suspect was his wife, was giving her expert opinion on the matter.

"I don't understand why it stopped," Jerry was saying. "I can't see anything wrong."

"There are no caps missing?" the woman asked. "No wires or belts loose?"

The street lamps around them began flickering erratically and Jerry heaved a frustrated sigh.

"No," Jerry said, "and those flickering street lamps sure aren't helping the situation."

"I'll go grab a flashlight before they go out," the woman said, hopping out of the car and closing the door behind her. "Maybe there was some sort of power surge and it effected our car."

"Is that even possible?" Jerry asked, peaking around the hood of the car to give the woman a skeptical look.

"I don't know," the woman said, opening up the trunk to fish through it for a flashlight. "It's my best guess."

More and more lights on the street, not just the street lamps, began flickering. As the woman moved to the front of the car to assist in finding out what was wrong with the engine, Shawn stood up in the back seat and nervously paced from window to window, trying to take in as much of his surroundings at once. The flickering lights were unusual and he just had this bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that made his hackles stand on end.

There. Far behind them on a street corner stood the shadowy silhouette of a man. Dangling from his hand was what looked like a rope of some sort or, Shawn whined low in his throat, a leash. The man began moving toward them taking slow steps, quickly getting closer and closer to the car then seemed physically possible for each step he took. Shawn couldn't make out what he looked like, the light cast from the flickering street lamps didn't seem bright enough to reveal any distinguishing features, yet somehow Shawn knew that the man was after him. Whether he be working for Shawn's captor or be Shawn's captor himself, the psychic knew that this shadowy figure had come to take him back to the cabin, or maybe even some place worse than the cabin.

'No, no, no,' he thought with a whine, his ears flattening against his head.

He couldn't go back. He had just barely gotten away, he hadn't even had enough time to see anybody that he actually knew in Santa Barbara. He wasn't about to let himself be dragged back to that horrific cabin before he could even do that. He needed to get away, quickly, before the man reached the car. He would fight for his freedom if need be, but he knew that the leash would win out in the end, and he wanted to avoid a confrontation with it for as long as possible.

'Run! I need to run!' he thought frantically before jumping over into the passengers seat and leaping out the open window.

His paws barely hit the pavement before he took off running down the street, leaving the two people and their car far behind before they could even protest. An enraged, inhumane shriek echoed in the street behind him, the wind howling along with it, before it all faded away as Shawn ran. He felt that he ran faster in that moment than he had ever run before, encouraged by the fact that he was in familiar territory rather than that maze of a forest.

Bounding down the street, being sure to twist and turn down many alleys and streets so that he couldn't be followed, Shawn traveled past different storefronts and eventually reached neighborhoods, neighborhoods that he recognized. Deciding to go to the closest person he knew in this area, Shawn turned down another street and eventually ended up in front of a small, but decent sized house on a hill. A couple of old newspapers packaged in orange plastic lay piled up on the steps leading up to the front door and Shawn was sure to grab one in his mouth to bring up because that's what good dogs do, they bring people their newspapers.

Sitting down on the welcome mat, something that a part of him still found amusing considering whose house he was at, Shawn whined past the newspaper in his mouth and scratched at the front door. He paused and waited, occasionally casting a nervous glance over his shoulder to make sure that there was nobody sneaking up on him, before he scratched at the door again with a louder whine. He didn't have to wait long this time before lights turned on in the house and he heard the click of the bolt lock turning before the door opened.

Standing in the doorway dressed in plaid PJs was a rumpled looking Detective Carlton Lassiter. When his eyes fell on Shawn, the man frowned with a pained, exhausted look on his face.

"Spencer," he said quietly, lacking the usual bite in his tone that he reserved for the psychic.

Dropping the newspaper at Lassiter's feet, Shawn's ears perked up happily at the use of his name, his real name. His tail wagging behind him, Shawn tilted his head to the side and prodded cautiously, testing the detectives mood, "I'm a good dog?"

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Lassiter knelt down in front of Shawn so that they were eye-to-eye. The detective's frown deepened before he raised a hand and, hesitating only for a moment, pat Shawn on the head, ruffling his large furry ears. Lassiter's hand fell to his side and he stared at Shawn for a few minutes, completely silent, before he picked up the newspaper and said just as quietly as before, "Yeah, you're... you're good." Rising to his feet, Lassiter held the door open and muttered, "Come on in."

Shawn quickly scurried inside and threw one last nervous look out into the darkness of the night before Lassiter closed the front door. Not really sure what he should do with himself now that he was safely indoors, Shawn stuck to Lassiter's side and followed the detective into the kitchen. Aside from another exhausted sigh, the man stayed silent as he mixed together coffee and alcohol. Lassiter frowned and got a far-away look in his eyes as he sipped his drink.

Shawn whined as he stared up at the detective, partly because he remembered how his captor acted when he drank, but mostly because of how strange Lassiter was acting. Shawn felt like he was missing something, but he didn't know what.

"You okay, Lassi?" he finally asked.

The detective's grip on his coffee mug tightened until his knuckles turned white, and Shawn took a cautious step back.

"Yeah, I'm okay," the detective said after a moment of silence. He stared down at Shawn, a strange look in his eyes, before he moved out of the kitchen with his drink still in hand.

Shawn followed him into the living room, being sure to keep a couple feet of distance between them. It wasn't because he was afraid of the detective, it was because Lassiter was acting oddly and Shawn didn't think he'd be able to predict the man's next move, so he wanted to be cautious around him. By-passing the couch, Lassiter came to stand before a wall on the far side of the room.

With his tail wagging sedately behind him, Shawn curiously tilted his head and stared up at the wall that the detective had become so absorbed in. There were newspaper clippings, maps with X's and circles drawn on it, timelines, and all sorts of other pages of information. Sticky notes were scattered all across the wall, short sentences scribbled out on each. Padding closer to the wall so that he was standing by Lassiter's side, Shawn examined the contents of the wall more curiously. Titles and statements typed in bold lettering stood out to him most, things like 'SBPD's Top Psychic Detective Missing,' 'Still Missing,' 'No Ransom,' 'No Leads.'

Then Shawn saw a photograph in one of the newspaper clippings, a smiling photograph of him, and yet it couldn't be... because he was a dog, not a person. No, that wasn't him. That was just a random photo of some man, possibly having to do with the case. As for all of the papers on the wall about the case itself, those were about him. He had been taken what felt like so long ago, and it was nice to know that Lassiter and the rest of the station had put so much effort into trying to find him.

"I'm not missing," Shawn said happily, feeling the need to point that fact out to the detective who still seemed to be torn up about the case. "I'm back. I'm right here."

Lassiter didn't react positively to the news though. In fact, he didn't seem to give any sort of reaction at all. He merely gulped down his caffeine/liquor mix before moving back into the kitchen for more. Not bothering to follow the detective this time, Shawn watched from his spot next to the wall as Lassiter poured himself another drink, foregoing the coffee this time.

"Lassi..." Shawn trailed off, not knowing what to say. He was back, wasn't he? He was standing in the detective's home, he was in Santa Barbara, so of course he was back. Why was Lassiter acting like this though? Acting as if... as if...

"What's wrong?" Shawn asked, confused. "Lassi, what's-"

"God, Spencer, what do you want from me?" Lassiter suddenly snapped, slamming his drink down on the kitchen table. "I'm trying, okay? I can only do so much!"

Shawn's ears flattened against his head and he shrunk up against the wall.

"I'm... I'm a good dog?" he questioned, not understanding the man's outburst.

The question extinguished Lassiter's anger and the man seemed to deflate. Running a frustrated hand through his hair, Lassiter said, "No, you're- I mean, yes, but..." He sighed. "It's fine, Spencer."

Leaving his drink in the kitchen, the detective moved into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. Shawn watched the back of the couch for a few minutes, waiting to see if Lassiter would do or say something else, before turning his attention back to the wall that held clues to his... his dog-napping (because he was a dog). Maybe the wall could shine some light on the situation and explain to him something about his abduction that he was clearly missing.

The wall revealed nothing though, and as he continued to stare at it, that feeling from before returned; the feeling that there was something important that he needed to remember, and that he needed to do something about it. He couldn't just stay hiding in Lassiter's house forever. As much as he didn't want to, he needed to go back. He needed to do something.

"Lassi," he called, pulling himself away from the wall and trotting around the couch so that he was facing the detective. "I need to go back. I... I don't want to, but I need to."

Lassiter stiffened on the couch and threw Shawn another pained look. "It's alright, Spencer," he eventually said, his words sounding hollow. "You're..." he trailed off.

"No, no," Shawn said, resting his muzzle on the couch cushion nearest to where Lassiter sat. "There's something back there. I need to remember , but I can't. So... so I need to go back." Shawn whined, his ears quivering. "I don't want to, but I have to."

Lassiter rested a comforting hand on Shawn's head, a gesture that was lost on the psychic when the lights began flickering. Shawn pulled away from the detective, remembering what happened the last time the lights began flickering.

"No, no, no," Shawn said quietly, his ears flattening against his head. "How'd he find me?"

The man with the leash was back. He had somehow found Shawn and was coming to take him away. It was true that Shawn had wanted to go back to the cabin to try and figure out what he was forgetting, but he didn't want to be dragged back, not by his captor or anyone working for his captor. If anything, he wanted Lassiter to come back with him because although they had their skirmishes in the past, Shawn knew that the detective would defend him, would keep him safe.

"Don't want to go back like this," Shawn muttered more to himself than anything. His eyes darting over to Lassiter, he said, "Lassi! Lassi, we need to go. He's coming."

But the detective didn't move from his spot on the couch, and the lights continued to flicker. Shuffling from paw to paw, Shawn's eyes darted all around the room, trying to figure out how the man would get in. Would he enter through the front door, or would he come in through the windows? He was close, Shawn knew, but how close?

Turning his gaze back to the detective, not understanding why he wasn't doing anything, Shawn said, "Lassi, please."

Shawn had always been able to handle whatever cases had come his way in the past. That's not to say that he took care of every case all on his own, he had had help with each one in some way, shape or form, but he had never felt as helpless as he did now with his own abduction.

"I... I need help. I can't do this alone," Shawn said.

Lassiter didn't move though, he just held Shawn's gaze and said with a sad look in his eyes, "I'm sorry, Shawn."

In that instant, the man with the leash seemed to melt out of the shadows in a corner of the living room. Even in the room's flickering lights, Shawn couldn't see the man's face through the shadows that seemed to cling to his flesh. The man's form flickered, like a TV picture with bad reception. Shawn didnt have enough time to think of how odd that was, he barely even had enough time to yelp before the man was upon him and wrapping boney fingers around his collar, pulling him back... back... back...

BANG!

'What? How?'

He couldn't understand what was going on. Why was he outside? How had he gotten outside? One hand reached up and wrapped around his collar. There was no chain, no leash, no restraint of any sort, not even the familiar numbness of a tranquilizer dart... What had happened? He couldn't remember...

That's it for this chapter. Poor Shawn is stuck on a repeating loop. Also, if anyone's confused about this: Yes, Shawn did actually become a dog in this chapter (*purposely vague* in a way...), it wasn't all just in his head, and he can talk to people if he so chooses (and that's all I'll say about that particular subject).

Okay, so here's the deal guys: When I originally came up with this idea (the whole 'guy treats Shawn as a dog' thing), I had planned on it simply being the back-story to a short supernatural Psych fic (Supernatural the TV show is the crossover, btw. Whether or not Sam and Dean make an appearance is still up for debate).

However, as I let the first chapter sit on the interwebs for a while, I began thinking of all the other things I could do with this story (lots of hurt/comfort, messed up psychological stuff. The type of stuff that I'm sure most of you out there would much rather be reading). So, after much thought, I decided: why not have my cake and eat it too?

I feel it would be a personal injustice to myself not to have the story at least a little bit like how I originally wanted it, so yes, there will be some supernatural stuff in the beginning of this fic, but there will also lots of non-supernatural, hurt/comfort, messed-up psychological stuff, especially further into the fic, and the story itself will be much longer than I originally intended. So I hope you guys will stick with me through the rest of this fic and enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it, even if the beginning part isn't exactly your cup of tea.

Review please and tell me what you think. It'd be nice to know if anyone's still interested in reading this. *crosses fingers and posts chapter*