A gaping hole tries to drag him down, the darkness itself reaching for him, coiling dark tendrils around arms as weak as a newborn calf.

No!

Such was not the will of my father.

Conflicting thoughts and memories pull and twist, but through them the same silver vein of moonlight drifts through a dark sky.

Sammy!

Then Sam is in a cage and Dean is on the outside looking in, reaching for him saving him desperate-

As he reaches for the door to save the trapped figure lying crumpled on the floor, his hand balloons out of proportion, only good for crushing no grabbing don't touch can't risk.

He can never save Sam from that cage.

Don't touch can't risk.

An icy wind breaks over Dean and the nightmare shatters.

Dean woke up with a gasp.

The air was silent and still as his eyes opened, and he shoved himself up from the ground. "S-Sammy?" he croaked, his throat dry.

No answer came.

Dean's hands flew to his shoulders as his memories began to return, and he frantically patted himself down. No Sam.

Groping along the ground like a blind man, Dean shifted himself infinitesimally, determined to not be a hazard to Sam if he'd fallen close by. The last Dean remembered, his little brother was on his shoulder. He'd stumbled, but for some reason his hands wouldn't rise up and cup around Sam to keep him on his perch. It was like a thick blanket had fallen over his senses and his limbs.

Then there was nothing, and the nightmares came.

Dean blinked fiercely, trying to clear the persistent darkness that clung to his vision. He couldn't see anything, and the ground didn't feel right. The grassy forest floor was gone, replaced by cold, hard metal. From the crick in his neck, he'd been lying on that surface for a long time.

"Sammy?" Dean called out again, the hush in his voice rising with panic. "C'mon kid. We both know I can't see in the dark like you. Just give me a sign, anything… Sam?"

"Whuh ... Dean?"

The tired voice replying to Dean's panicked calls wasn't Sam's. It was Bowman, coming to in the sluggish manner he usually did.

Blinking several times, Bowman took stock of what he could around him. His skin was cold, and his head throbbed dully. He remembered lapsing into a kind of trance, worried about Rischa right after she disappeared.

His wings were sore, stuck under his weight and pressed against cold metal.

Metal?

Bowman sat up, still blinking. The darkness that met his gaze was almost tangible, like he could see if he just managed to swipe it out of the way. "Dean?" he said again, confused.

That had been Dean's voice, hadn't it? Something had drawn him out of his unexpected slumber. Bowman had thought he'd wake up still curled under his wing on Jacob's hand. He tried to stretch his wings behind himself, and they brushed against metal.

"What?!" he blurted, startled by the cold touch of the unfamiliar material. He twisted around but still couldn't see.

Bowman's heart pounded in his chest, blood pumping in his ears. "I can't see at all," he pointed out, wondering if it was loud enough for Dean. The human sounded ... far away. His voice didn't rumble like it was supposed to.

Dean was thinking the exact opposite. He perked up at the familiar voice, a small amount of hope in him at the sound of Bowman nearby. The sprite didn't sound far off, but Dean had already brushed his hands almost reverently over the nearby ground while looking for Sam.

Sam had to be close by. Dean continued feeling his way along the ground, but looked towards where he thought Bowman's voice was coming from.

"Bowman!" he called, only raising his voice a little, still worried he'd hurt Sam's ears from close by. "Have you seen Sam? Or Jacob? I can't find my brother over here." He tried to disguise the rising panic in him, unable to think straight with the way his head pounded from the nightmare and the reminder of being unable to get Sam out of his cage.

Bowman almost scoffed. The only thing that kept the snarky sound from emerging was the weirdness of the situation. Instead, he let words convey it for him. "I haven't seen anything yet," he groused, flicking his wings pointedly. "Like someone turned the sun off."

He felt along the ground, crawling on his hands and knees. If he could bring himself closer to Dean, he could possibly help find the others.

Confusion grew and grew as he inched forward. If Dean was nearby, he should feel the human's movements rumbling beneath him. He wondered if he was up on a shelf somewhere, far enough away for the giant's earthquakes to taper off before they reached him.

His thoughts were derailed when he found the wall of the space he was in. His hands shook as he brushed them over it, a grid of metal bars.

A cage.

"D-Dean, I think I'm in a cage," he said. It planted a seed of panic in him to match Dean's. Trapped. Bowman had been in a cage before. It had never ended well for him. "There's bars. I don't know if ..." he trailed off, looking around and wishing he could just see. There was a chance Sam was in there with him.

"Bowman?"

The third voice that joined them was softer, quieter. It was raw from strain, but it sent a flood of relief to every nerve in Bowman's body even though he was trapped in a cage. "Rischa! You're here?"

"I-I ... we're all in a different cage." Rischa's voice was weak. She sounded exhausted. "The other nestlings are sleeping. But they're all here."

"Everyone?" Dean keyed right in on that. "Okay, just hang on. I'll getcha all out, once I get my bearings here."

There was no way he was going to leave his friends in a cage any longer than they had to be. The thought of Bowman and Rischa and Vel locked up like that hurt as much as the memory of Sam and Walt. Dean wanted nothing more than to shred the cage to pieces, the perfect opportunity to vent some of his bottled-up rage.

Then, his slow and halting efforts to find some sign of Sam, or even just bump into Bowman, found something.

It just wasn't what Dean wanted.

The smooth, cool metal gave way. Dean brushed his hands to the side, and ran into a bar. Then another in the other direction. He followed it up, discovering more and more bars, stretched horizontal and vertical, too close for him to slip through.

Dean's blood ran cold.

His attempts to feel around his surroundings tapered off. Dean groped blindly at his jacket. A hand brushed over his knife, his handgun, passed over the empty pocket where his phone used to be, and finally fell on the cool cylinder of a small pocket flashlight he always had on him. Sam usually teased him for how blind he was when it got dark out, the little guy seeing perfectly in the dark walls of motels.

Yanking the flashlight out, Dean blamed his scattered mind for not thinking of it in the first place. He flashed it over his head, turning on the beam to reveal bars that stretched far higher than he was tall, meeting in the middle in a point. Dean stumbled back a foot at the sight.

"Bowman, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

A/N:

Dean and Bowman wake up at last, in a very different place from where they were before, but they've found Rischa and the children...

And Dean has a few unresolved issues tumbling about in that head of his right by PL1, the creator of the Wellwood sprites and Jacob Andris!

Beta read by creatorofuniverses on tumblr.

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Next: July 29th, 2020 at 9pm