Later on, looking back, Callie wasn't sure if she actually expected to get away or not. All she knew was that she was barely clear of the yard and into the copse of trees that stood sentry around the property when she heard Dean shouting her name. She panicked. He was still a good ways away, but her brother was not only a good tracker, he was a fast runner and a smart hunter. She'd hoped to make a little more headway before he realized she was missing.
"Callie! Come on, I know you're out here!"
He didn't sound angry, and she thought maybe she could turn herself in now and avoid big trouble, but the fact remained that she was doing this for his own good. And part of her, the little petty part that sometimes sparked with jealousy at her family's hunting experience and talent, wondered if she could outwit him this time.
"Callie Winchester, I'm counting to five and I better see your face when I get there. ONE."
Oh crap, now he was counting? He hadn't used that one since she was much younger and easier to scare. (And she had never let him get to five, or three, or whatever random number he was aiming for, because she did not want to know what would happen if he did.)
She looked desperately around herself and saw nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. Well, that would have to do. Maybe the only thing she could do better than Dean was climb trees. Sam called her Monkey sometimes because of that particular talent, although he was also the one most likely to make her come down before she'd reached the top. That's when Dean would call him a mother hen, and Sam would call him something she wasn't supposed to repeat. She'd only ever fallen out of a tree once, and she hadn't even gotten hurt, but Sam had broken his arm when he was a kid and so she supposed he'd earned the right to be a little paranoid about her acrobatic skills.
For now, though, tree-climbing was less about recreation than self-preservation. She could hear crunching branches coming closer as Dean made his way through the woods, periodically calling her name and a number. He was on three when she threw her duffel bag into a tangle of brambles to camouflage it and on four when she grasped the lowest limbs of a sturdy climbing tree and hauled herself up almost effortlessly. She was well off the ground when her right Converse slipped off one branch and, simultaneously, the branch supporting her left foot cracked and then gave way. She screamed as she suddenly found herself dangling by her hands, her feet kicking helplessly in an attempt to find purchase.
Her hands slipped a little, the rough bark scraping her palms, and she screamed again, the sound piercing the nighttime forest air like an ice pick. A startled bird flapped and squawked as it flew from a nest high above her head.
"Callie?!" Dean's voice rang out, closer now. "Callie, where are you?"
"Dean! Dean, help me!" Callie cried out. Her hands were starting to ache, and she didn't dare move her head to see how far up she was … but she knew it was far enough to be scared.
More rustling sounded in the woods below as he followed the sound of her voice. "I'm coming, baby girl," he called, and the use of that term of endearment made her heart swell.
"Dean, hurry, I'm gonna fall! I'm gonna—"
Crack. Part of the branch she was hanging onto with both hands broke off and clattered down and down and down. She was able—just barely—to adjust her grip to a more solid section of the limb, but her hands were screaming at her now, her scraped palms singing in pain and her knuckles begging to unclench, to relax…
"Deeeean!" she squealed, tears of terror stinging the corners of her eyes.
Far below her, Dean burst through a particularly snarled tangle of bushes and brambles, gun in hand, hunter instincts firing on all cylinders, big brother instincts working overtime. His eyes scanned desperately for any sign of his sister or whatever monster had ahold of her. He knew she had to be close, but there was no sign of her on the—
A flash of movement caught his razor-sharp attention and he jerked his head up. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw her hanging there, her feet so impossibly far above the ground, kicking weakly and frantically. He swallowed his fear and then shouted up to her, forcing his voice to come out strong and clear and authoritative.
"I see you, Callie, I'm right here. Hold on, you hear me? Stop kicking and just hold on. I'm coming to get you."
"You can't climb a tree!" she protested.
"Well, looks like you're not the best at it either," he said, testing the branches for sturdiness and finding to his dismay that many of them were too weak to hold his weight. "But you've left me pretty slim options here, kiddo."
"Dean, I can't hold on much longer!" she cried.
"You don't have to for much longer, all right? I'm coming. Hold. On."
"I can't! It hurts!"
"You can and you will," he said sharply, putting an extra dose of obey-or-else force behind his words.
Callie squeezed her eyes shut tight and did as he said. She could hear him making his painfully slow way up the branches toward her, but he still sounded so terribly far away. His progress was punctuated by snapping branches, scraping sounds, and cursing, but every now and then he would remind her to hold on and tell her he was almost there. She tried to believe him, but it was beginning to feel like he was never going to reach her. And then she felt a strong hand encircle her ankle, and she screamed and almost let go of the branch.
"Easy, easy, I got you," Dean's voice commanded. "Stay still." She froze and he maneuvered a little further up, until he could slide an arm tightly around her waist. Once it was locked in place, he said, "Okay, Callie, you can let go."
"No!" she said, so entrenched in the idea that holding on was her only option. "I can't!"
"You can. Come on now, I got you. I'm not going to let you fall."
She finally opened her eyes and met her big brother's identical gaze. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Are you sure, Dean?"
His heart squeezed at the little-girl fear in her tone, her intention to put all of her trust in him in that moment, and he gripped her tighter and put every ounce of certainty he could muster into his response. "I'm sure. I got you."
She let go. Dean felt a surge of relief wash through him as he hugged her small body briefly and then helped her get her feet on a solid branch. "Can you climb down, do you think?" he asked. "I'll be right with you."
She nodded with more certainty than she felt, but when Dean started climbing down, she did too. And the trip down didn't feel as monumental as it seemed like it should have. Dean reached the ground before Callie did and reached up to grasp her around the waist, swinging her down and straight into his arms. He buried his face in the side of her neck and she wrapped her arms and legs around him like a tree frog and began to cry from the collision of belated terror and rushing relief.
Once she had stopped trembling and his heartbeat had returned to something like normal, he set her on her feet. She looked up at him with dread in her eyes, knowing that this was the part where he would start yelling. She'd screwed up bad and she knew it. And running away was rarely the answer—she couldn't quite admit that it was never the answer, because she liked to hold a card out of the deck in case she ever needed it.
Dean stared at her for so long without saying anything that she started to feel uncomfortable. Maybe she should break the ice.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you and threw the remote at you and said bad things about Daddy and climbed out my window and hid in the woods and climbed that stupid dead tree," she said, the words tumbling out of her in one breath.
"I'm sorry too," he said.
She was so shocked by that she did a double take. "Christo," she muttered under her breath, and was even more surprised when Dean laughed heartily.
"I'm not possessed, Callie," he said. "I'm just … I've been a di—a jerk lately, and I haven't been what you've needed me to be, and I'm sorry for that."
"Oh. That's. That's okay." She did not know what to do with this turn of events.
"I miss him, too. I miss Sam. And I miss Dad. And I miss how things used to be. But kiddo, when something makes me sad, I don't like to think about it. So I've been pretending everything's fine, and getting mad at you when you remind me that it's not. That's not fair. This is my crap, okay, not yours." He took a deep breath. "I hate that I can't make this better for you. For both of us. But what I can tell you is that you're not hurting alone. Maybe that's not the best comfort, but it's something. And we'll be okay. We will be okay."
Callie chewed on her lip and let her brother's words wash over her. He had said Sam's name. He had told her they would be okay. He was hurting too. And no, it wasn't the best comfort, but he was right: It was something. She felt like someone had lifted a weight off of her heart.
"That does not—" he continued, and the return of his bossy, lectury tone actually made her feel better for once—"excuse you from running away and climbing the deadest goddamn tree in the whole forest here. I mean, were you trying to get yourself killed?"
"No, I just had to hurry," she said.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Why?"
"Because," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You were on FOUR."
When he laughed again, she realized she hadn't heard that sound in so very long, and how she had missed it. She launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his middle and burying her face in his stomach. "Hey, hey, what's this?" he asked, putting a hand on top of her head and stroking her hair.
After a few moments, stepped away and smiled at him. "I just love you," she said.
He made a show of grumbling the words away like he always did, too cool for chick-flick moments, but she saw the glint in his eyes that told her she'd said something he really needed to hear.
"Well, you're all right yourself," he said. "But you're still grounded till you're seventeen."
She nodded wisely. That was all right.
"Let's get you home and clean up those hands."
She looked down at her scraped, bleeding palms and felt mild surprise that she hadn't even thought about them until he said something. Now that she saw how bad they looked, they suddenly hurt again.
That didn't stop her from slipping a hand securely into her brother's as they started back through the woods toward home.
That does it for this little side trip in the long journey of A Simple Kind of Life. There will (hopefully) be more as inspiration strikes. I've been in a writing mood lately, so that's promising. I owe a great deal of that to those of you who have kept me encouraged with your kind reviews and PMs. Thank you all, and please let me know how you felt about this wrap-up of the three-part mini-story.