A/N:
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Jacob was too sluggish to startle awake completely, but the call did bring him to awareness faster than usual. His eyes opened and his shoulders tensed in the first second of not knowing where he was. The arm he'd rested on tingled from low circulation, so he had to use his other hand to push himself up.
He scanned his surroundings with exhausted eyes, and it took him a few seconds to actually spot Sam. When he did, he smiled tiredly. "Hey, Sam," he greeted.
Not seeing the others nearby, Jacob thought it was safe to push himself up the rest of the way so he sat. The trees arched overhead, but he still had to hunch to keep out of sight. He flexed the fingers of his still-sleeping hand and tried to ignore the pang in his stomach. The lack of consistent food was probably to blame for his lingering fatigue, but he'd take care of it when he could.
"Looks like I slept most of the day away," he murmured when he noticed the color of the sky beyond the leaves. He rubbed at his eyes once more before giving Sam a sheepish grin. "Figure anything out?"
Sam nodded. "We've got a good idea of what's going on with you now, and we might have a way to get you back to normal."
He took a step back and gestured for Jacob to lower a hand, unconcerned by his proximity to the giant. "I can fill you in once we get back if you want. Bobby and Dean got some supplies for you but we can't get the pickup truck this deep in the forest. They're waiting just outside in the field. Bobby found some good info for us, I've just been going over it to double check."
That lifted Jacob's mood. "All of that sounds awesome." His shoulders lifted from the usual slump and he had a hopeful look in his eyes as he offered Sam a hand.
He might be getting used to that feeling of tiny boots walking onto his palm, but he had a way out. He could be normal again. He made sure Sam was secure, as always, before curling his fingers slightly and lifting the hunter away from the ground.
Opting to leave his backpack where it was for now, Jacob got his feet under himself to start the trek back to the edge of the woods. What might take Sam a while only took him a few minutes, and the trees shook with each step to warn Dean and Bobby of his approach.
With the edge in sight, he lowered his hand yet again for Sam to step down, and knelt just within the treeline to see what the others had brought.
The old blue pickup truck was sitting a dozen feet from the edge of the forest, clear tracks behind it showing the path the hunters had forged through the field. Dean was leaning on the side of the truck, arms crossed and disgruntled over running errands the entire day with Bobby as the taskmaster.
Bobby was standing right in front of the car, eyebrows raised in surprise at the sight of Sam calmly getting down from Jacob's hand. He wasn't sure what he'd expected when Sam volunteered to drag Jacob back out of the forest, but that certainly wasn't it.
Dean slapped the side of the truck, making the door to the truck bed fall open. "All food courtesy of Singer Catering!" he cracked with a wide grin at Bobby's newest deception they'd pulled at the food warehouse.
Jacob's eyes skated over the overladen truckbed. His hunger reared its head and demanded that he retrieve the food there as soon as he could, but he held himself back. His battle to avoid intimidating everyone was always uphill; he had to be careful how quickly he moved when one errant motion could knock a car over.
"That looks awesome," he said gratefully. He leaned down on his hands to put himself at a closer level to the people on the ground, and still felt like he loomed. There was no getting away from it. "Sam also told me your books had something that might help, so, thanks for that, too," he told Bobby. "Just let me know if there's something I can do to help pull my own weight."
"I think I'll let Sam do the honors here," Bobby said. He and Dean stepped away from the truck to give Jacob space, flanking Sam on either side. "He's the one who's been fact checkin' all day since we left."
Sam had a wry grin on his face, since Bobby had done all the legwork of the research before they even got to the house, but he didn't waste any time leaping into the facts.
"You have to go way back in history," Sam said. "Back in the days of the Old Testament. Giants used to be seen in those days, often against the people of the Bible. Take David and Goliath, for example. Giants like that would lead the armies against their foes.
"Giants are seen as those who bring chaos. They stood for the natural order and fought against the structures that man created. This is why they were wiped out whenever they appeared. The source of the giants, however, is a spell, cast by a pagan priest."
"A priest of chaos," Dean chimed in helpfully.
Sam shot him a glare for being interrupted on his speech. "Right. And the spell itself is supposed to enhance any inner anger. It's designed to make a person lash out at the people they used to love. In ancient times they'd harness that anger and turn it on their foes. Now, we're not sure why the spell was cast, but we do know that you weren't supposed to vanish into the forest. Whoever did this wanted destruction."
He gestured up at Jacob's looming form. "There should be a mark on your body that proves this is the spell that was used." Sam pointed at his back, between the shoulderblades. "A brand."
Jacob frowned with concern. One hand reached cautiously up to the back of his neck and slid past the hem of his shirt. When his fingertips brushed across the smooth, barely-stinging skin where he was indeed branded, the others could see the surprise overtake his face. His hand retreated hastily. He never would have noticed such a thing if Sam hadn't told him about it.
"O-okay, so, that's there," he confirmed unnecessarily. His voice rumbled overhead, though he tried to keep it down for their benefit. "And... inner anger?" He pursed his lips thoughtfully. Aside from frustration with building a campfire once or twice, Jacob hadn't really had any angry moments since he grew.
Mostly he'd felt fear and uncertainty and loneliness. But not anger. "I guess that's one bit of good luck, I try to stay chill most of the time."
"That's good," Sam said, internally musing that they were all lucky the curse had gone for Jacob instead of most everyone else. Anger hovered close to the surface for most hunters; they needed to use it when they hunted. It could focus them and turn them into a weapon.
However, anger like that also meant it could be turned on themselves. It was self destructive and could drag a person down into a dark hole they couldn't climb out of.
"Hold onto that," Sam said absently. "If you get angry, you might end up like the giants of legend. We need a few more ingredients to finish off the cure, and then the blood of the person who cursed you."
"How are we going to get that?" Jacob asked before he could stop himself. As far as they knew, the person who did this to him could be anywhere. They didn't stick around to see what might have become of him, and they'd heard nothing about something like this happening to someone else recently. "Does that mean ..." he knew the answer, and so the question died before he asked it. If they couldn't find the guy, they were at a dead end.
He took a breath and tried a hopeful grin. After all the work they'd already done, it wouldn't help to worry about that now. "Guess that's why I've got the experts helping me," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck.
"Don't worry," Sam soothed. "We're planning on luring him out. Chances are, he's going to want to know why his giant didn't rampage through town after the spell took effect."
"And when he does, he's ours," Dean declared, grinding his fist into his other hand. "Our counterspell will put an end to everything he's ever cast that's still active, including you."
"While those two go fetch what we need," Bobby said, slipping unobtrusively into the conversation, "you'll stick here with me. I've been needing some help around the scrapyard, and I think you're just what I need."
Jacob's eyebrows went up and he scanned the scrapyard in the fading sunlight. At first, he couldn't imagine what help he'd be with any of the junked cars. He'd be more likely to tear a salvaged part in half than actually take a car apart properly.
Then, he noticed a pile off to the side of crushed metal, a stack of cars crushed flat by a machine sitting nearby. "I see," he replied, looking back down at the three on the ground. He wondered if the brothers had told Bobby just how qualified he was to crush cars like the ones over there. "At least it's a chance to earn my keep for once."
"If only Dean was as easy to keep out of trouble," Bobby said in an undertone.
Dean drew himself up indignantly. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said with a sniff.
Sam had to hide a smirk. "Anyway, that's the plan," he said, pulling them back on task. "You'll stick here with Bobby, we'll grab what we need. Once we draw this guy out, all we need is some blood and it's all over. You might as well eat what you can for now. We'll be heading out in no time."
Jacob nodded in understanding. He didn't try to keep his hopes down; even with the odds arrayed against him, he was closer than ever to getting back to normal. He might be able to get his life back.
Before he reached for the food they'd brought, his hand lowered to the ground again. With one huge fingertip he nudged at Sam's arm, the closest he could get to a clap on the shoulder. "Thanks, guys. Without you I'd probably just be twiddling my thumbs up in the mountains still."
"We saved you from becoming a hermit in the mountains then," Sam said, grinning as he slapped the finger away. Jacob was getting good at managing his size, and didn't even knock Sam a little bit off balance.
"A boring existence like that is now the least of his problems," Dean said.
"One week around here is enough for a lifetime," Sam shot back.
"Alright, are you two gonna stand around here arguin' all day?" Bobby shooed the brothers away from the truck, getting them started on their way back. "Winchesters. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile." He sized Jacob up, narrowing his piercing blue eyes that were shadowed by the grungy old trucker cap he wore. "Don't know how you made it this long without getting angry, puttin' up with those two all day an' night."
Jacob glanced to the retreating forms of the Winchesters, consigned to walk back to the house thanks to the truck being full of food for Jacob. Even as they went, he got a feeling they were continuing their good-natured banter in voices too quiet for him to hear.
He shrugged and looked back to Bobby. "I dunno. I was just glad to have somebody listening instead of running and screaming," he mused, leaving out the fact that the brothers certainly hadn't started off their interactions that way. Then, "Guess I better have what you brought, since you went through the trouble," he added, thinking that his stomach might start pining at him soon. "Then I can get to work."
Bobby stood out of the way and watched as Jacob took the food they'd brought him. He didn't flinch at the sight of a giant's appetite, no more than he flinched at watching the scrapyard dogs fight over any scraps he tossed out the door. It was all too soon before the few offerings were gone, and he knew they'd have to make sure the deliveries from the food warehouse kept coming until they could cure Jacob. No one deserved to starve and waste away, especially not a kid mellow enough to put up with the Winchesters' bickering without argument.
Once Jacob was done, Bobby and his old pickup truck lead the way back to the scrapyard. The few dogs that had begun to make their homes around the area vanished fast when they felt the echoing earthquake of Jacob's footsteps, and Bobby felt a tug in his heart for the loss of Rumsfeld a year back. That dog had kept all the others away, guarding the yard against all comers but Bobby (and occasionally Sam and Dean).
The rest of that afternoon was spent with Bobby directing Jacob around. The giant was hard-pressed to keep up with the demands of the much smaller man, and found himself not only crushing cars but also rearranging some of the older rows so Bobby could reach the wrecks that were formerly on the bottom of the piles. In this way, his mind was kept off his own circumstance and he didn't have the time to fret over the 'what ifs' and 'maybes.'
The next few days that passed by were the same. Sam and Dean drove from state to state to gather up the ingredients, slowly amassing their completed stash at Bobby's house. Each morning, the food warehouse would deliver food to an address given by 'Singer Catering,' and Bobby would collect it, sometimes with the help of the Winchesters, sometimes on his own while they were out.
The junkyard dogs watched forlornly as Jacob ate enough food to feed them for a week, and barked happily when they were tossed a few scraps as Bobby allowed it. The giant was kept hidden out back in case any hunters happened by, but from the sound of things over Bobby's multitude of phones, there was a merry hunt going to find the location of Vincent's attackers. He'd finally gotten his truck back up and running after being rolled, and was out for blood.
It took three days for the spell ingredients to come together, but they were running out of time and didn't know it.
A call from some hunters a few towns over had Bobby out of the house one night, realizing if he didn't come they might bring the party with them and find out what was hidden behind his house. Sam and Dean were left in the house working out the words to the incantation and discussing strategies to draw out Jacob's attacker.
And Jacob had a visitor.
Soft footsteps through the underbrush near where Jacob was resting for the night went unheard. The browns of the man's robes served to blend into the dark background, with occasional flickers of other colors seen mixed in. Dark eyes that were almost black stared out of a cowl, and the man raised a clawed hand in the air, mumbling an incantation that sent a pulse radiating outwards.
The brand on Jacob's neck began to glow, sending a fiery impulse through his body with a hint of command.
A/N:
Next: October 3rd, 2018 at 9pm est
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