"I don't even know what Kansas-" Bowman began, before he registered what he could see.

He had to blink more, and make sure his brain hadn't summoned up something in the absence of any light. It didn't make sense. A small pool of light had formed a few feet away, no more than a short glide for Bowman if there weren't bars in the way.

He just wasn't expecting to see another set of bars across that distance, surrounding Dean.

Bowman rubbed at his eyes and leaned forward, clinging to the bars of his own cage. He frowned out, squinting. It had to be a trick of perspective. It had to be. Bowman's heart did flips even as he told himself that, because what he was seeing was wrong.

The shaky pool of light emanating from the flashlight Dean held didn't lie. Bowman just couldn't understand how this had happened.

"Dean ... Dean, why in the Spirit's Dance does it look like you're sprite-sized right now?!"

Dean's mouth opened and closed a few times in disbelief as he panned the flashlight around to see what else was around, catching sight of Bowman in the distance.

No, no no nonono…

His mind blatantly refused to believe what had happened. Dean stumbled backwards, tripping over something knee-high behind him and falling into a bowl. He scrambled out, a look of horror falling over him as he recognized bowls made to feed pets, empty but huge. He could curl up in one and take a nap if he wanted.

No…

"It's- it's an illusion, it has to be," Dean stammered, backing away from the bowls. His back hit the wall of the cage and he didn't have the energy to keep standing. "We can't both be small, I can't- I can't be cursed like Sammy!" His mind was stuck in a loop, unable to see past the cage and the rising panic that wanted to overwhelm him.

In another cage, farther away than Bowman's isolated prison, Rischa winced. The rays from the flashlight didn't quite reach her, only giving her a vague silhouette of the bars of the cage that trapped her and the other young sprites. She could barely see Bowman across that distance, but her eyes were fixed on Dean.

His panic was like a heavy blanket wrapped around all of the other emotions he'd been carrying with him. To Rischa, a strong empath, those emotions were brighter than the sun.

She wished she could close the distance between them, go and sit silently with the distraught human much like she'd stayed by Nia's side. Someone to care, to exude calm and listen if she needed to. That was what Cerul was teaching her. She'd already been able to calm the nestlings enough to sleep once she realized where she'd vanished to.

"Dean, please breathe," she advised him, unsure if it would help him at this stage. She kept her voice even. "Stay focused."

Dean tried. He really did.

Remembering when he'd tried to calm Sam down during his previous panic attacks, most related to hands when Dean was around, and humans in general when he wasn't, Dean let himself lean against the cage bars, slipping down and sitting on the ground- cage floor- with his head between his legs. He closed his eyes, the flashlight slipping out of his hand to roll a foot away.

That's less than an inch now.

With a scowl, Dean fought the voice that tried to infringe on him and distract him. Deep breaths. Slow and even, like his life depended on them. One. Two. Three.

When Dean was able to reach ten without slipping, he let himself look up. The light from the flashlight pooled around his feet, not really strong enough to light up the entire cage. But Dean could imagine it, arching over his head. Bars as thick as his wrist to keep him captive, no hope of bending them.

The last cage like this Dean had seen, he'd crushed it under the heel of his boot.

Deep breaths, don't get distracted.

Dean pulled himself up, using the horizontal bars over his head to keep his balance. The ground swayed with his movements, making his knees shake, and he scooped the flashlight back up, clinging to it like a life raft. Forcing himself to stay focused, he panned the light around his prison.

"My-" he had to pause and clear his throat, hoarse from his panic. "My duffel's not here, and my phone's missing from my pocket. But I've got weapons. What have you got to work with?"

That prompted Bowman to look around his cage, but he couldn't see much more even with the flashlight on. When the light swept across his direction, it outlined the edges of things stuck with him in the cage. Something squarish in the corner earned a critical frown from him.

"I think there's just a ... a plastic box," he determined. Then, stretching his wings out tentatively, Bowman tried to feel how big the cage actually was.

"This thing isn't any bigger than my room back home, but of course it's all squares," he reported. "Is it any different in yours, Rischa? Do you have anything soft to lie on at least?"

Rischa sighed. The panic wasn't gone from the others. If anything, it had crescendoed to a steady beat in the air, and she was glad the other nestlings didn't feel it in their slumber. "There's some cloth," she said, but her voice conveyed that the cloth wasn't ideal. Soft was a generous term for it.

"There's ... we only have what we were holding. There's just a grassdoll from home."

"It's big enough," Dean muttered to himself, then raised his voice, keeping it steady and reassuring. "Look, whatever this place is, we'll get out of here. All of us, together. No matter what's going on." He stepped to the edge of his cage, doing his best to put the blackness that began where the edge ended, and flashed the light around the room, trying to search out other cages.

What he didn't say, what worried him most, was what would happen to him if they did escape. They'd never found a cure for Sam… and now it sounded like the cure was directly tied to Celeste. What if it was the same for Dean?

He couldn't drive the car like this, he couldn't even open a goddamn door. All of Sam's previous weaknesses but now they'd lost their only connection to the human world. The Winchester brothers wouldn't be able to hunt without help.

Dean tried to force the insecurities that kept creeping up on him. They needed to get out first. He panned the flashlight up, searching for the door to the cage.

The metal gleamed, reflecting the light back at Dean, but he found what he wanted, directly opposite the food cups. He hissed in triumph, hurrying over.

The quick movement set the cage swaying, and Dean clung to the side. "How high up are these friggin' things, anyway?" he demanded of the air.

There was a metallic squeak overhead in time with the swaying of Dean's cage. Bowman gripped the bars of his own and tried to shake them experimentally. They didn't budge, but the cage around him did. His was also suspended somehow. In the dark, they might as well be floating on nothing.

Rischa supplied the answer. "We never really saw your cages get set up, but ours is hanging from the ceiling," she explained. "I guess it looks like yours is, too."

From her perspective, Dean's cage was all she could see. Lit from within by the subdued glow of his flashlight, she could make out the human's silhouette inside the square shape surrounded by bars. It swayed back and forth gently.

"Cages hanging from the ceiling?" Bowman said skeptically. "Is that a common human thing?"

"For pets," Dean hissed, holding tight to the bars as the cage swayed itself to a stop. His heart thudded in time with each swing, somewhere down by his feet. "Fuck."

When the cage was motionless again, Dean began to inch his way to the door, feeling out each grip before he took another step. "Fucking bird cages, why'd they have to be so high." All he could imagine was how small Bowman and Rischa were, and how high up he'd be if he was in a cage suspended from the ceiling at their size. He was lucky to be able to move at all, as the big urge in him was to find a corner and stay there until he was on solid ground again.

Despite the growing worry in Bowman's core, he couldn't help a quiet scoff. "It's probably no higher than you normally stand," he pointed out. In the back of his mind, Bowman worried about some of the same things. Would Dean be able to get back to his giant size?

"Th-the room is a bit cluttered," Rischa explained. She hadn't expected Dean to panic more once she explained things. "I think ... we aren't supposed to be able to reach things."

She was derailed when something brushed against one of her wings and she flinched. Twisting around, Rischa finally noticed a smaller shape than even her groping around in the dark to look for her.

" 'Isha?" a tired voice mumbled. Vel. "Wha'sgoinon?"

Rischa reached out to put a hand on the boy's shoulder and guide him to her side so he could cling to her. The younger nestlings, when they weren't asleep, took comfort in having someone to cling to.

"It's okay, Vel," she cooed to him. "It's okay."

"He coming back?"

"Not right now."

"Standing isn't the same as being dangled hundreds of feet in the air," Dean replied snippily to Bowman's comment, a white-knuckle grip showing how shaken he really was. He tried not to think about the heights, shuffling along the edge of the cage, careful to have a tight grip on a new bar before letting go of his current bar.

"Vel, how you doin' buddy?" Dean called out, distracting himself as he pulled himself up the door. If he could just reach the lock, he might be able to pick it. After that, his train of thought ended, refusing to think about the height he must be above the ground, but an open cage was better than being locked in, any day.

The image of Sam and Walt trapped in their cage persisted, like an afterimage that lingered after a bright flash.

Dean's groping fingers finally brushed against the lock attached to his door, thick and bulky. He stuck the flashlight between his teeth, briefly using both hands to feel up the entire lock. Clunky, but he might be able to pick it if he had some tools to work with. Letting himself slide back down, Dean stumbled back from the edge of the cage, setting it swinging again. He collapsed in the center, seeking a distraction.

"We've been lookin' all over for you, kid," Dean kept up his call to Vel, sitting down to do a proper check of all his tools he had on hand to know what he had to work with.

"Dean?" Vel called back, surprised. His tired voice perked up, though he kept his arms around Rischa's waist in the dark. Out of all the victims, he'd spent the most time in that cage, often with no light to feed his young wings. They should have fluttered in excitement to hear Dean's voice, but the sound never came.

"I said you would come," he pointed out smugly. "I said."

"That's right," Rischa told him, maintaining her calm despite the growing worry. Dean was supposed to stand tall enough to be level with the cages. Not fit in one. She opted not to point it out to Vel for now.

"We'd never leave you hanging, buddy," Dean soothed, the sound of Vel's voice a balm to his ears after fearing the worst had happened to the small, fluttery sprite that adopted the Winchesters after meeting them. "Just had to find you, first."

Bowman's wings were agitated. He stretched them out again to feel out his own cage, ignoring the slight swaying. "Dean, d'you have an idea for unlocking these? Think I could slip out and carry everyone that needs it to ... I don't know. Somewhere not in a cage. I don't have any tools of my own..."

Dean arranged the findings from the inside of his jacket in front of him along the cage floor. Carefully guarding them if anything started to slide from the sway while at the same time he was resolutely staving off the panic that threatened at the back of his mind. His silver knife, the normally much larger twin to Sam's that shone as bright as the day he'd made it. Their father's journal, woefully small. Three hidden knives, much smaller, one from his wrist strap and two from his boots. Several salt shells, stocked and ready to go. One lockpick. The container of holy water with the rosary beads floating in it. His cobbled-together EMF meter, the red lights turned peacefully off. Wallet and car keys, fairly useless in this situation.

Almost as useless as his actual lockpick. Dean picked it up, scowling at the size of it as he glared at the huge lock hanging on his door. Fat chance it would reach the tumblers like this.

Dean found himself longing for Sam's satchel, primed and ready to go for any situation. Paper clips that Dean could use to pick the lock with a hook and thread to climb down from any heights. Compared to Sam, Dean was woefully underprepared for the situation he'd found himself in. None of his weapons or fancy gadgets were made for this.

"I've got some knives we might be able to pick the locks with," Dean said, raising his voice. "Not sure how good they'll work, but I could try coaching you through it." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "It's not much good getting me out like this." He started to replace the supplies in his jacket, unwilling to leave them where they could roll out of the cage.

Bowman frowned. He lingered near the wall closest to Dean's cage, gripping the bars and squinting across the distance. He couldn't see well at all, not with eyes that were so used to the bright summer sun. A memory of a dark metallic passageway flashed across his mind, with Sam chasing behind him inside the very walls of the human dwelling itself.

"Maybe when we get the doors open, we'll find another vent-thing," he suggested. His feet shifted anxiously. Bowman had trouble focusing with a cage around him.

He had feared this for so long, it was jarring to have it become a reality once more. For him, and for Rischa, too. He never wanted to see her trapped ever again.

"I should be able to at least get you down to the ground safely," Bowman pointed out. Dean was fully grown, and generally sprites didn't carry each other around without help, but Bowman's wings were strong. He could act like a parachute for the shrunken human. "Just need these blasted cages open."

Dean selected one of his knives, replacing the others in their places. In the jacket with the silver knife, strapping two of the hidden knives onto his wrist and ankle again. What he was left with was slender and thin, not even worth sticking a pig with, but it might be able to pick a lock.

It was the best they had, and Dean thought himself lucky he had any of his weapons after losing the phone and duffel bag.

Gotta make this worth it, he told himself as he got up, going over to the side of the cage to eye up the distance to Bowman's cage.

"I'm gonna toss you a knife," Dean warned. "If you follow my instructions, you should be able to get out of the cage, then get everyone else out." If they could get the children out of the cages and somewhere safer, everything, even their capture, would pay off. Dean could get to a phone and call up Bobby, small or not. The older hunter always came through in a pinch. He could even call up Sam's number and see what happened to him and Jacob.

"Don't stand in the center," Dean said, taking aim with the knife and the flashlight to judge the distance. "I don't want you catching this by the blade, so I'm going to aim for it to land away from any edges." He braced himself. "Ready?"

Bowman started. Knowing where the knife was expected to land didn't erase the fact that Dean was going to throw it his way. Bowman's wings folded tightly as if of their own accord. "Oh, Spirit," he muttered exasperatedly.

He shuffled to the side, and then found a corner to press his back into. "Better not poke me with that knife," he warned. He couldn't just wait and say nothing.

"I'm ready."

Dean, with his arms through the bars of his own cage to aim better, let the blade fly. Bowman could only watch its progress sailing across the distance between them by the flashlight glinting off the spinning blade. He remained as still as he could in his corner, as if moving would alert the knife to his presence and change its trajectory.

He flinched when the loud, telling sound of metal on metal rang out around him. The knife slipped past the bars, but not without smacking into one first. Bowman had to dive forward before it could slip right back out once it hit the cage floor.

His fingers almost couldn't find purchase on the handle, but Bowman dragged the weapon back into the cage. He gripped the handle, marveling for a second over the feel of it.

This was a human weapon, but at his scale. The handle alone felt strange in his grasp. The blade reflected the meager light.

"Didja get it?" Vel called out. Bowman could swear he heard at least one more nestling stirring in the third cage, but it was set too far away to see them.

"I did," he replied absently. "Dean ... what do I do?"

Dean let out a breath, relieved to hear the knife was in hand. He had others, but not enough to toss frivolously around. "Good, now's when it's going to get complicated."

Panning the flashlight around, Dean searched for the door of Bowman's cage. The stark bars and enclosed space made Dean shudder, resolving again that none of Sam's people would have to face the same with him, no matter what. It was a bleak truth that it would be all-too-easy for Dean, when he was at his human height, to trap people their size.

Now, when he needed that advantage most, it was gone. Bars he could bend with his bare fingers were solid steel rods to him, stronger than the body of the Impala.

Dean located the lock, and kept the light steady on it. "There. At the bottom is where the key goes in. We don't have a torque wrench- at least, not a useful one," he amended, reminded of the one tucked away in his jacket, bare centimeters long, "and without that, this is going to be a lot more working by feel. Stick the knife in the hole, and feel around for the tumblers. They can move up and down, and you need to find the combination that opens the lock."

Bowman nodded in the dark and his wings fanned nervously. He'd never put much stock in the many things humans made. Now, he wondered if he should have. Spirit knew he'd had the chance before.

There was no time to dwell on it now, so he stalked over to the side of the cage with the door. He glared at the lock, daring it to make excuses for causing such trouble. It was the only obstacle between him and open air, and he had no idea how it worked on the inside.

He climbed unsteadily up the side of the cage so he could reach the lock, Dean's knife clutched tightly in his hand. For a moment, Bowman struggled to balance himself up there, his wings scrabbling around him for purchase he knew he wouldn't find. Wood sprites were not climbers, by any means. He sighed in frustration and looped an arm around the bars. It would have to do.

He'd barely poked the knife into the opening on the lock when light erupted in the room and he had to flinch back. The knife stayed in his hand, but Bowman hit the floor of the cage on his back with a faint clang.

A greenish spot lingered in his vision as he sat up, but more details of the room became evident. A wide, flat workbench to the side, closest to Dean's cage. Shelves, countless shelves, lining the walls. Bowman could never name all of the things cluttering them.

The floor was far below, and above was a ceiling of wood and support beams.

A grimy light bulb hung from the ceiling several feet away, the source of the light. Bowman shielded his eyes from it so he could look across to the other cages. The nestlings were stirring, and he could actually see Rischa and Vel clearly now. "What in the Spirit's Dance, did I do that?"

Dean didn't have time to respond to Bowman, or even the urge to. He clung to the cage bars, far too concerned about everything else going on.

And the heights.

He couldn't take his eyes off how steep the drop was. The cage ended, then there was only open space. Knowing it was there in the dark was one thing, seeing it was something else. Dean might be this tall normally, a fact that was supported by the massive door and high windows, only darkness showing outside the cluttered room. Something about those windows stood out to Dean, but he couldn't stop to think and figure it out.

A rumbling echoed through the walls, and Dean's heart dropped out.

There was an impending sense of doom, like they'd run out of time for their escape and now the end had come. Dean wondered if Sam felt like this when he was trapped, and had to correct himself. Of course Sam had. He'd seen the effects of captivity on his younger brother himself, all the way down to flinching when Dean came close.

Rhythmic earthquakes, enough to rattle the cage under Dean. He clung tighter to the bars, just able to remember to shout to Bowman, "Hide the knife!" before the door started to open.

A/N:

CW for Dean and his bad language! But who can blame him in this situation?

Cowritten by PL1, the creator of the Wellwood sprites and Jacob Andris!

Beta read by creatorofuniverses on tumblr.

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Next: August 2nd, 2020 at 9pm