On the same island but a different beach miles away, Dean Winchester woke up.
He groaned as conscious came back to him, bringing with it the gift of sore limbs and stinging eyes. Dean rolled his shoulders, hearing gulls cry above, feeling sand give beneath him. Wait – sand? Memories flooded back, the storm, falling into the ocean, going under the waves, loosing Sam.
Sam.
Dean sat up with a jolt, wiping his face with sandy hands, trying to clear his blurry vision. He must've been knocked unconscious when the storm had tossed him around, after it had claimed Sam. His stomach clenched at the thought of Sam left helpless in a vast ocean, had he washed to shore too?
A yell of surprise broke Dean out of his mental assessment, and he jerked his gaze down where he heard the sound.
"Sam?" he questioned, trying to blink away the lingering salt water from his eyes. A small figure took shape, roughly Sam's size, and Dean felt his chest swell with hope.
Until his vision cleared and he realized the small man on the sand in front of him was not his brother.
'What the-' Dean frowned down in confusion at the man stumbling away from him. That wasn't Sam, so why was someone his size out on the beach? He looked around to assess his situation more and found the man was not alone, others were crowded on the beach, about ten of them, all staring up at him in horror. Well, waking up in a strange place only to be looked at like he was Godzilla wasn't a good way to start the day. He looked over the men again, noting with confusion they all were wearing the same type of uniform, like an army. Maybe they lived out here, like the people in the burrow outside of Bobby's.
"Uh, hey," he tried, holding in a sigh as they all visibly flinched back at the sound of his voice. He knew how he looked to them – time spent around Sam and his family taught him how to act as less threatening as possible – but he needed to find Sam and he wasn't going to dally around. If these guys could give him answers about where his brother was, he was going to cut the small talk. Some part of his brain, the hunter part, dinged loudly that something was off, but he would figure that out later. "Alright," he started again, keeping his words steady and calm. "Bear with me, I know I'm, uh, tall and all but I need you guys to help me out."
The men on the beach didn't say anything, just looked at each other nervously.
Dean took that as good a sign as any to continue. At least they weren't screaming in horror or anything. "Listen, my boat crashed and my brother is missing. Have you seen him? He's about," he held up his fingers to estimate Sam's size, "yea big. A little taller than some of you actually." Dean stared down at them, but there was still no reaction. "I know that sounds crazy but it's true, we're brothers, and I need to find him." He was getting a little agitated with nerves; flashes of the storm played in his mind's eye. The last he saw his brother he was being torn away from him. If these men hadn't seen Sam then that could mean… "Come on - shaggy brown hair, brown eyes, always carrying a bag around, probably as waterlogged as me?"
The small men were now collectively backing away from him slowly, as if he was going to lunge at them any second. Okay, maybe he should have tried to hide the edge in his voice better. But if they weren't going to help him, he was going to have to look for himself, he didn't have time to wait around. With a resolved sigh Dean tried to move his legs under him to get up and –
His legs were caught. Dean squinted down in disbelief to find small chains were shackled around his ankles, stretching out to be anchored to big rocks near the water's edge.
He frowned, finally taking in the whole setting around him. Normally as a hunter he would have assessed everything the second he woke up, but he was still a little groggy from being thrown around in the ocean and so worried about Sam he wasn't thinking straight. His head throbbed.
He was on a beach, a somewhat dreary beach slopping away from the water towards a scraggily grass covered hill behind him. The chains around his ankles didn't bother him, he could snap them easily, they had just surprised him; how could people Sam's size end up with chain that small? A quick glance showed the men had been there to tie the rest of the chains around his wrists, but he must have woken up before they could. The next thing he noticed, to his shock, was the boat. The boat that he had witnessed sinking was down the beach some ways, stuck between two rocks in the shallows as if they had simply gotten beached instead of thrown off it in the middle of the ocean.
"Okay, well," Dean turned his attention to the men who were now a noticeable distance away. "You guys have been great, really. But as much as I'd like to stay for more riveting conversation, I have to go." He leaned forward and gripped the thin metal chains in his hands. Did they really think this would hold him? And why were they chaining him up in the first place? The small people back home usually avoided conflict, they didn't go searching for it by tying up humans.
"I wouldn't, if I were you," a voice called calmly from behind him.
Dean paused and looked over his shoulder at another man in a uniform at the top of the hill; he had probably been watching the whole time. Was he, British? His accent…Dean's eyebrows rose, trying to make sense of what was going on. As the man walked down the hill and grew closer, Dean could make out his features better. The new man had grey hair cropped short, a well-groomed mustache, and a stern, prominent nose. His uniform, though similar in color, looked different than the others and he was carrying something behind his back. He walked with ease toward Dean and carried himself in a way that made the older Winchester automatically distrust him.
"Yeah, and why not?" Dean challenged, not liking the sound of where this was going.
"We all know you can snap that easily so there's no need to show off, they are there as more of a reminder," the man said, coming to a stop a little in front of his men but still out of arms reach of Dean. By the way the others stood to attention Dean could tell he was the leader. "I said I wouldn't if I were you, because we have your brother."
Dean's heart flipped in his chest as many emotions flooded through him; relief that his brother could be alive, that he hadn't drowned in the sea, the need to see for himself and help Sam, and suspicion. Being who he was, suspicion won. Dean narrowed his eyes. "You're playing a dangerous game here," Dean growled, and he saw the men behind the leader take a shivering step back.
The man just shrugged and turned to the uniformed men behind him, "Go back to your stations, you're only embarrassing yourselves." The others hesitated, throwing cautious looks up at Dean, before scattering to disappear over the hill. With them gone, the leader took the object behind his back and threw it into the sand before Dean. "Proof."
Dean glared down at him before looking at what he had thrown. His chest tightened; it was Sam's bag. He never parted with it, he needed it to survive.
"Curious thing, made with strange leather and filled with interesting items," the man was saying as Dean scooped the bag up and cradled it protectively in his hand. "Some of which being a large hook and strange, thick fishing wire type string. But of course, I shouldn't be surprised over that when a giant washed to shore with equally strange baggage of his own."
The alarm bells in his head were blaring at him to put it all together, and as Dean did another sweep of the area he saw an army vehicle pass by just in sight at the edge of the hill. It was as small as a toy. His eyes narrowed. The uniforms, the small chains, the technology – he noticed as well a soldier walked to the hill to look over at him and pulled out a walkie-talkie to murmur something into it; it was all scaled to Sam's size.
Dean was the one out of place.
He straightened his shoulders, trying not to let the General Officer below know how thrown off he was – which was difficult because he knew at their smaller size they could read every small detail of his body language. His calculated thoughts unknowingly mirrored his brothers: 'This didn't make sense… Unless I was somehow thrown into an alternate reality or something going through the storm?'
"What makes you so sure I won't just break free and go get him then?" Dean snarled, fingers curling into the sand. Sand, he now noticed, that was practically miniscule.
The man smiled, "Don't worry my men have your brother, Sam, nice and comfortable up at our camp. But the moment – the very second – they hear your thunderous movements break free they will shoot him through the skull before you even get a chance to breach the hill." He said this all calmly, in a manner that suggested he knew he had all the power in this situation despite Dean being big enough to sweep him off his feet into a crushing fist in a second. A flicker of black passed over the General's eyes as his smile grew.
Dean's hands slackened as his mind reeled both from the threat to his brother and what he saw. The man was so small it was difficult to make out, but Dean was a skilled hunter. "You know, where I come from I hunt down demons like you."
The possessed General smiled bigger then, eyes going solid black to confirm Dean saw correctly. "I've heard of realms where hunters exist – exciting." He rubbed his hands together. "But here, there is none of your kind. This place, these nations, have been at peace for so long it was practically begging me to start some fun. To cause some much needed chaos." The demon raised an eyebrow and looked Dean up and down. "And right before I make my move you happen to wash up from some other reality." He chuckled, a smile growing grotesquely across his lips. "Whether you intend to or not, simply your ginormous presence will cause mass panic before even more ensues from my troops destruction. But you don't need to worry about that, you just need to think about your brother, and how he would look with a bullet in his brain if you so much as make a wrong move."
Dean glared down at the demon, disgust rolling in his stomach as he thought of the hand he would be playing in its plan. This could all be a bluff, Dean knew and suspected deeply – the demon could have simply strewn this lie together based on what it overheard Dean saying about Sam just then, but it was a bluff he couldn't afford to act on and the man knew it. He let out a huff of anger, blood boiling.
The demon laughed, knowing he had Dean trapped. "Smart little hunter," he said with a wink before letting the black slide away to reveal normal, pale blue eyes. He turned and made his way back up the hill, whistling, while Dean stared out at the ocean with clenched fists.
