A/N:

**Please see Chapter 1 for all warnings!** Don't like it? Don't read it!

Thank you Christine, ANerdWhoWrites, goldacharmed and Kajensen07 for the great reviews!

Shit. I'm in the walls.

The realization came to Jacob after a few moments of cautious stumbling in the dark. His hands trailed along a horizontal beam of wood that had to be an inch tall. Another was arranged above it, with a cottony substance easily felt behind them. It took only one brush of it for Jacob to flinch back. He was feeling wooden slats that ran within the walls to hold towers of cheap, fluffy insulation at bay.

He had a feeling that fiberglass would be a lot more than just scratchy and irritating at his current size. He could slice his skin open easily if he got the stuff on him. Jacob inched away from the slatted walls that he couldn't see, his boots shuffling over a layer of collected dust thick enough for him to sink into it. His hands groped cautiously until he managed to cross the space that seemed both claustrophobic and absolutely cavernous at the same time.

His fingertips finally brushed across a dry, gritty surface. Drywall. Jacob blinked heavily, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness that surrounded him with a suffocating intensity. With no light leaking in, that was impossible.

Jacob walked along for several steps, feeling like his breathing might wake up whatever humans were in the room adjacent to his current position. He kept his hands on the plaster, knowing that just beyond it were enormous rooms full of furniture that dwarfed him and people that could step on him- or even eat him- without realizing it.

Somewhere in the massive motel, assuming he was still in the same motel, his friends would be looking for him. Sam had to be freaking out. He'd been looking right at Jacob when he vanished. Jacob remembered looking at the hunter nearly three times his size with a helpless expression before everything shifted and he was in the dark, frozen by the change.

He wasn't far from his starting position when he stopped abruptly. Though his heart pounded from the knowledge that this space yawned far above him, unfathomably high, and far in either direction, providing a straight path to nowhere, he had to think. Jacob had been told that he was supposed to survive at this size. Learn lessons about what it was like to be tiny.

He'd already had plenty of views of what seemed like an impossibly large room stretching all around him, the floor a landscape of several square miles to his reckoning. Somehow, knowing that much space was around him now but being completely unable to see it caused much more trepidation. He crept forward again, his hands becoming coated in dust from the drywall as he went.

Sam grew up in spaces like this. He was probably even accustomed to moving around in the dark at a confident pace instead of Jacob's cautious, wary one. He tried to remember what Sam had told him about it. Hearing about it from him always made the inside of the walls seem like some fascinating trek through a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. The four inch hunter was completely chill when he mentioned the interior of the walls, accepting them as a part of his world.

Actually being there, with no way of knowing what was around him and no way of finding a way out while the dark bore into him accusingly, was more like a scene from a horror film.

With one of his senses completely deprived, Jacob's other senses were going haywire. He could hear every miniscule scrape of the dust under his shoes as he walked, and he could hear creaking in the distance as someone absolutely huge moved in the room next to him. An enormous door slammed, the sound muffled by the wall even as the vibrations still trembled through him. Jacob smelled the dust and felt the stale air.

When he reached a corner created by the wall and a two-by-four support beam, Jacob stopped. One hand planted on the wood, still rough from lack of exposure, helped him keep his sense of place as he assessed his situation.

Survival.

The name of the game was survival. An infuriating smirk filtered into his mind's eye with the memory.

Jacob may not have the first clue about surviving as one of Sam's folk. The tiny people who lived in walls eked out a place by repurposing forgotten items they found and scavenging for any dropped food available. He did have survival skills for living out in the wilderness. Some of them had to apply here.

For one, he determined to stay near the support board. It was his point of reference and one of the first pieces of advice always given out to people on a hike is, if you get lost, to stay where you are. The search party has an easier time finding you if you remain where you got lost. Jacob knew he couldn't have wandered far from where he first arrived in the walls for it to matter. His legs were less than an inch long; his timid, shuffling strides hadn't taken him more than a foot, he guessed.

Another tip was to consider potential animals that might attack and prepare for them based on their strengths. Things like wolves and mountain lions tended to avoid attacking threats that seemed too big for them. Jacob almost had to laugh. There was nothing that he could scare off by looking too big.

But then his thoughts drifted back to more of what Sam had told him. Particularly about how he and his adopted dad occasionally fought rats to make sure the motel staff had no reason to call an exterminator and endanger every person living in the walls.

Rat. The thing that is now the size of a mid-sized boat to you, Jacob reminded himself.

Rats would eat anything, and their strengths were in their keen senses. Rats could see, hear, and smell better than Jacob could ever hope to do in this exact environment.

Fuck.

He rubbed his thumbs across his fingertips thoughtfully. Jacob had just been eating some relatively greasy breakfast food. To the sensitive nose of a rat, he might as well be a tidy portion of scrambled eggs just sitting on a plate, waiting to be eaten. Jacob clenched his jaw and looked around frantically in the dark.

His ears were playing tricks on him, turning the very distinct creaking of the air ducts into the sound of snuffling, slinking rat footsteps.

But that didn't mean he was in the clear. Wasting no more time, Jacob dropped to his knees on the dusty floor and hastily rubbed his hands in the dust before brushing it onto himself. He needed to mask his scent. If he didn't, it would lead any resident rats straight to him. He brushed dust into his hair, even on his face. When his hands didn't feel like they were getting the job done quickly enough, Jacob dropped and rolled over, making sure his back was well covered in dust.

It was one of the oldest survival tricks in the book. Make himself smell like the environment he found himself in. In this case, Jacob would smell like the walls.

Once he felt sufficiently covered in dust, Jacob scooted himself into the corner by the drywall and the support beam. With his knees drawn close to his chest, Jacob kept his widened eyes darting around despite seeing nothing.

He waited.

Bowman looked over his shoulder, his wing still caught in between Dean's massive finger and thumb. Thankfully the pressure wasn't enough that he had to gripe at the human. He focused instead on Sam. "In the walls?! Like where your folk make their homes?"

Dark, dusty halls, constantly assaulted by muffled noises from the humans came to Bowman's mind's eye. Jacob, all alone in a space like that, could get hopelessly lost. He could get hurt and have no way to get himself any help. "Do you think anyone else lives here?"

Sam frowned. "It's impossible to know for sure," he said in reply. "They could live anywhere in the motel, and keeping out of sight is key to their survival. Considering we've always been here with Dean or Jacob around, the last thing they'd do is come anywhere close, even though we're the same size."

Dean and Jacob were two of the most intimidating humans around. Jacob simply from sheer size, and Dean from the keen look of concentration that he got. It made him look far angrier than he was, and getting caught in his line of sight wasn't for the weak of heart, especially if they didn't already know him. If others lived in the motel and caught sight of Sam or Bowman hanging around with the two humans, they'd avoid them on principal. It was a common assumption that a little that was with a human had been trained to find other littles in the walls.

The ground under Sam twitched, reminding him he was still standing on Dean's forearm. He took a few steps forward, passing over the wrist to stand next to Bowman on his palm. Dean's hand released Bowman's wing and lowered away to give them room as they stood there together. "I doubt anyone lives here, though. I've seen no sign of any extra occupants, and I did check out inside the walls once or twice. If you know what to look for, it's usually pretty obvious."

His hazel eyes sought out Dean's worried greens. "We need to find him now. For all we know he got dropped next to a rat. Remember the library? Straight next to a kid without any warning. He got lucky that he didn't get crushed. A rat won't give him that kind of chance."

Dean glanced around the room, searching out any possible openings that would lead into the walls. Sam and Bowman had to brace themselves when he stood without warning, the hand swaying in midair as he turned. Sam leaned over to peer off the edge as Dean prowled around, checking every corner of the room.

"There has to be a way in," Dean growled. If he wasn't afraid of Jacob being in the way, he'd be tempted to just kick a hole in the wall for Sam. Unfortunately, with the way their luck worked, that would be exactly where their friend had been dropped.

Actual luck graced the three of them when Dean passed by the dresser on his second run through of the room. "Dean! Wait!" Sam shouted. He pointed down next to the leg of the dresser. "That should work."

That happened to be a peeling piece of the old wallpaper that covered the walls of the room. Under the curling corner at the bottom, instead of drywall, there was a blackness that almost seemed darker than night.

Dean knelt down, holding his hand out for them. Sam hopped off, darting over to the opening without delay and opening it up. Sure enough, between the support beams was an entrance into the darkness that lay inside the walls. Sam vanished without a second glance, his satchel bouncing against his side.

"Hey, hold up," Dean said before Bowman could follow. "Here, this should help, since you're probably like me and can't see a thing in there." He held out a flashlight, clicking it on for the sprite. It was made for a keychain, leaving it only two inches in length and small enough for the sprite to use it. "Watch out for yourselves in there, okay?"

Bowman took the bulky plastic light-stick in his arms, careful not to look right at the shining end. The worn plastic thing fit somewhat clumsily in his grasp, but it was lightweight enough that it wouldn't slow him down.

He nodded, grateful for a source of light. Bowman's wings were still tense and shuddering occasionally from the bizarre sensation of something writing on them, but he did his best to tuck them close as he moved towards the hole in the wall. He wanted to help, in any way that he could, but he wasn't equipped with eyes that could see in such total darkness. Bowman would have been a liability without the light-stick.

"We'll be right back," he quipped, shoving the light into the opening first before pulling the wallpaper back enough to admit him. With his wings tucked close, Bowman followed Sam into the wall.

The sprite almost immediately had to suppress a cough from the dust stirred up by their entrance. He picked up the light, aiming it in one direction along the wall. Abandoned cobwebs, dust, and bits of some kind of colorful cotton littered the floor between the towering support beams.

Bowman was discouraged by how much open space there actually was in the wall. It was no wonder people chose to live in there, but it didn't bode well for their search patterns. "How do we even start?" he asked, hoisting up the light to aim it clumsily in front of himself.

Sam glanced back at Bowman and had to look away immediately. "Careful you don't shine that in my eyes," he warned even as he led the way. It was a welcome addition to their trek but one good flash from it would ruin any hope of him being able to see in the dark corners that lurked around them. His eyes were better adapted to the darkness than Dean or Bowman's were. If their situation wasn't so dire he might actually welcome the visit into the walls, as he returned to the world he felt most comfortable. "The good thing about this type of motel is the rooms are laid out in an easy-to-follow pattern. All the walls are connected to the rooms by one main passage that divides the two sides of the motel, then you have parts that shoot off into each room."

He pointed overhead. "If we can't find him down here, the vents above are the next place we'd need to search." His lips tightened. "Hopefully we don't find him there. The fan isn't strong enough to blow me or you over, but he's a lot lighter. He could get tossed out a vent near the ceiling of a room, or at the very least, knocked around a lot more than he already is."

When they reached the end of the passageway to two more that opened up to either side, Sam judged from what he could see. "Normally, I'd say we should split up, but I'm not seeing any sign of people like me." He gestured at the sawdust that was scattered on the ground along with a heap of dust bunnies. There were no footprints. "A place like this should see traffic if anyone is nearby. We need to stick together in case there's anything lurking around."

He slipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out his knife. It gleamed in the light of the flashlight. "Even a spider could cause problems for us, and Jacob isn't big enough to deal with the smaller pests and rodents. His only hope would be if he found a mouse. They never bother people our size, and they love children. He should fit right into that category for them."

He had Bowman shine the light down each side of the passage, and picked the direction that darkness lurked further away from them. "We'll start this way and check the wall of each room as fast as we can. Just stick close to me." With his knife held at the ready, Sam lead the way into the bowels of the motel.

A/N:

I got to go to a hibachi for my birthday P: Everyone have a good week!

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Next: January 24th, 2018 at 9pm.

NOTE: There will be a blog/story update hiatus from January 25th to February 3rd! Brothers Apart will be the only story that posts during that time, and all excerpts/asks will be paused for the duration.

If anyone is looking for night or neon during those weeks, we'll be very deeply involved with Monster Hunter: World for the duration.

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