Looking For Space

by Cheryl W

Sam might have been the one to run away to Flagstaff, but Caleb knows its Dean they just might lose forever if someone doesn't show him his own self-worth. Ridley's Brotherhood AU. No Slash.

4. Heading for a Heartbreak

Looking For Space

Author: Cheryl W.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.

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CHAPTER 4: Heading for a Heartbreak

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For it was not an enemy that reproached me, that I could have borne it. But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and my familiar friend.

~ Psalms 55: 12-13

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"Why did we need to be here at the butt crack of dawn?" Dean asked around a huge yawn, not awake enough to appreciate the breathtaking mountains surrounding them.

Jason outpaced Dean up the embankment and stood on the train tracks, the only sign that civilization even knew this part of the world existed. Throwing his hand out to the right, Jason indicated the suspended train bridge like it was a prize Dean had won. "Train keeps to a schedule."

"We hopping on a train?" The idea of hitching a ride and getting gone was very appealing to Dean.

"Nothing so predictable," Jason promised with a ballsy smile before they heard the whine of a motorcycle engine approaching. The two turned as a dirt bike with two riders came speeding out of a trail nearly overtaken by trees. Turning back to Dean, Jason offered up a devious grin. "Hope you know how to ride a bike or this will get messy real quick."

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At first, it was a dream Caleb was caught up in. A train coming right for him and him suicidally racing toward it, a game of chicken that could end badly for everybody but the train.

The shrill train whistle just barely came to him above the racket of his own heart thudding in his ears. And the train engine's nose was closing in fast… too fast. Would run right over him before he could count to ten.

With a hoarse, terrified shout, Caleb jerked off the bed and toppled to the floor. Breathing hard, his eyes burning and his panic off the Richter Scale. He had only one thought: Dean. His vision was about Dean. Dean playing chicken with a train.

Surging off the floor, he bolted for the door, was suddenly grateful he had been too drunk the night before to undress, to even take his shoes off. But the lights in the hallway were bright, hit his liquor dulled iris' like lasers. But he ignored the pain. His pain didn't matter in the scheme of things. Only Dean mattered. Only saving Dean mattered at all.

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It wasn't the most dangerous thing, not even the craziest thing he had ever done, but it was ranking right up there. Dean revved the dirt bike, eyed up the distance across the train bridge. Goosing the gas until the bike's wheels hopped onto the rail road iron. Stopping the bike, he steadied himself and the bike with a foot on either side of the rail.

"So I have to keep the bike on the rail, cross the bridge and not get pancaked by the oncoming train?" Dean directed at Jason, ignoring the betting going on between Jason's two friends on whether or not he would chicken out and ditch the bike the second he saw the train or get killed a yard down the train bridge. Planning on getting either outcome on the video, the one kid had a video camera carelessly dangling in his right hand.

Jason smiled. "Things shouldn't get handed to us, right? Best success when we use our God given talents, honed instincts and hard won skills. That's my Dad's favorite speech.. minus his cuss words."

And it sounded like something John Winchester would drink to. Course lately, there wasn't much Dean's dad wouldn't drink to.

When Jason stepped away from the other boys, drew up beside him and the revving motorcycle, Dean thought the older boy was going to give him a way out. But instead, Jason offered up words of encouragement that apparently wasn't for the other boys' ears.

"Every hunt we're asked to put our lives on the line, to face the reality that we might die. And we do it….for our Dads, because we think it's the only way to keep their love."

Dean fought down a sick swallow, clenched his jaw instead, didn't want to even let Jason know how down to the bone his words were slashing.

Reaching out and gripping Dean's shoulder, Jason continued with more fervor, "Who says they're the only ones who get to decide how we risk our lives, how young we'll die. That decision ..it should be ours but isn't. Not in the hunt." He gave Dean's shoulder a squeeze. "But this is no hunt, Dean. The choice of why you risk your life, maybe even how you die is yours, right here, right now."

A train whistle brought all four boys' eyes to the forest ahead. Then the train made its turn, broke from the cover of the trees, headed for the bridge, a long string of loaded freight cars following obediently behind it, making it nearly an unstoppable force of nature.

Dean nodded to Jason, watched as the other young hunter cleared the tracks before he re-sighted his attention to the train. Stood there, revving the motorcycle engine, muscles primed to move, waiting for the train to pass the marker Jason had set up down the line which signified Dean's go time.

Dean held his breath as the train careened down the tracks. The nose of the train was about to cross by the marker when a scream of "No Dean!" echoed through the woods. A beat behind the physical call, Dean heard Caleb's unmistakable psychic voice in his head roaring the same command. Then he saw the older hunter on the other side of the train bridge, running toward the train tracks, scrambling up the embankment.

In fury, maybe even panic, Dean put the bike into motion, headed for the train, sped onto the narrow bridge where there was no room to chicken out, to change his mind. Ignoring Caleb's panicked shout of "Dean!", he concentrated on the knowledge that his own survival existed if he crossed the bridge before the train entered it from the other side, if he could clear the tracks before tons of steel smashed right though him and the bike.

With a white knuckled but sure grip on the handlebars, Dean kept the throttle open as he deftly balanced the bike on the rails. Applied the same logic he did to a hunt: Don't think about the million scenarios on how badly things could end up, just concentrate on doing what you're supposed to do, whether it was outrunning, cornering, or going hand to hand with a fugly. You either waited for your target to get in the sweet spot or you simply survived. That was where his world ended and began.

And right then, it was to transverse the bridge faster than a train. Randomly he thought of that stupid algebra question about two trains pulling out of different cities in the U.S, and wondering which one would get where first. But he turned that off, shut out Caleb's internal and external ragings for him to turn back before it was too late. Just bowed lower over the handlebars, tried to lower his center of gravity, to reduce his wind resistance even as he kept the bike rock steady on the rail, the bike's engine close to redlining. And ahead, nearly blocking his view, was the train's unforgiving steel engine, painted neon yellow in case some idiot missed it. It's nose was at Dean's chest level, its railing just above Dean's head and the rest of it towering ten feet over the inconsequential speck daring to be in its way and eating up the distance like it was anxious for the bloodshed.

As Caleb finally crested the embankment, the train engine whooshed by him, the wind nearly sucking him down the track with it. He had to drop to his knees to ensure that didn't happen, helplessly watched as the mammoth creature and its long line of cars barreled toward the bridge, toward Dean. His scream of Dean's name was lost in the roar of the train's warning whistle, of the engineer's horror at the bike and rider in his path.

Then the train rattled onto the bridge, seemingly at the same second that Dean reached that same location. Caleb saw Dean jerk the bike hard to the right and then all he could see was the train barreling across the bridge. Didn't know if Dean's broken body was being crushed under the train's tonnage as he sickly watched or if Dean had made it clear, that once the long line of freight cars passed, he would see Dean standing on the other side of the tracks, unharmed. Cried out in rage and frustration and raw fear and near insanity as he was forced to wait to find out if one of the people he loved best in the world was lost to him forever. "Deuce!" Again the wind of train car after train car stole away his heaving breath and he fought to make it to his feet, to hang onto hope until he knew if Dean survived.

It was an eternity in purgatory until the last car whooshed by, until he could look across the train tracks, could see….Dean standing on the other side of the tracks, the motorcycle at his feet, and his expression…exhilarated, blissful even.

"Woo hoo!" Dean shouted, hands thrown to the sky, head tilted back, the feeling of freedom, of being alive never stronger than at that moment. And he never wanted the feeling to go away, wanted it to stay, to get this high, know this …this contentment every day.

But then Caleb was there, roughly grabbing his arms, jerking him to face him, heartlessly taking away the happiness he just found, that he craved so badly and never even knew it.

"What was that?! You have a freaking death wish?!" Cabel screamed, giving Dean a harsh shake that snapped the kid's head back.

"What's the matter, afraid I'll die when I'm not on a hunt with you, that you'll get screwed out of another reward. I mean, you got your ring when I got sliced up, if I died on a hunt with you…"Dean whistled. "It's endless what you might get. Maybe even that pearl handled .45 in Jim's collection that you've been drooling over for years. But me dying, here," he stretched out his hands, "that would get you nothing, wouldn't it."

Caleb was suddenly drowning in fury, but refused to open the flood gates, to drown Dean with him.

Dean condescendingly patted Caleb on the chest. "Better luck next hunt. Maybe you can just wait a few more minutes before closing the trap, pretend you're trying to protect me. That should do the trick. I'll be nice and dead and nobody's burden anymore."

Dean's last sentence…it shattered Caleb's restraints, had his emotions spilling out of him like a tsunami of evil, overriding his instincts to protect, even his love. It was all about fear, about needing Dean to take his words back, needing to hurt anyone who threatened Dean.

Lashing out, Caleb backhanded Dean across the mouth, watched in horror as Dean legs, unable to compensate under the assault, folded, sent Dean collapsing to the ground, blood staining his lips.

Stumbling back from Dean's vulnerable, hurt form, Caleb let out a viscous curse, ran a shaking hand through his hair. "Dean…." But he didn't know what to say after that, watched as Dean got up, defiantly raised his eyes to him, his jaw clenching, waiting for another blow, daring him to strike again. Caleb's eyes, they didn't meet Dean's, stay locked on the blood on Dean's lips, stuck on the fact that Dean was bleeding…and it was his fault. Shaking his head, voice raw like he had been screaming for hours instead of minutes, his tone breaking he warned, "You can't…you can't say things like that. Not to me."

Before Dean could say anything back, Jason was there, racing to Dean's side, hands, gentle hands, reaching out, steadying the younger kid. "Holy crap! You alright?" lifting Dean's chin up, inspecting the cut, before he slid a hand behind Dean's back, started to lead him away. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"No, Dean…" Caleb hoarsely protested, started to step toward Dean, to forestall Dean leaving him. He was stunned to find his way blocked by Jason, a knife pointing at him.

"Back off, man, or get cut," Jason snarled, supporting Dean with one arm and yet still expertly wielding the knife, aiming for Caleb's femoral artery. "I usually reserve my blade work for monsters but guys who hit kids will do in a pinch."

'Guys who hit kids,' echoed in Caleb's head, had him tripping back a step, away from Dean, from the unfathomable chance he would hurt him again. 'Not so unfathomable…you hit him!? You hit Dean.' And there wasn't a world, a circumstance, save all out possession and even then…that he ever thought he would do that. Could do it. And his "Dean…" was more a grievous call for someone irreparably departed from him than a plea for Dean to turn around, to stay with him.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut, tried to block everything out, knew that Jason was supporting him, not because of the severity of his physical pain, no, what he was… was emotionally shattered. Caleb had hit him…and there was no going back from that. Was no making it better. Just like there was no cure for the way he felt knowing Sam had run away, not just from Dad but from him, of the anger, the blame that his father directed at him for Sam's action, at the reality that, when it came down to it, he had no one, was bitterly alone in the world.

In that moment, he sharply missed his mother like he hadn't allowed himself to in years. Knew that his Mom had loved him, would never have hit him, would never have willingly left him, would not have made Sam his responsibility, or, at twelve, hunting monsters his life's work. She had treasured him, like no one had since.

And it wasn't the seasoned hunter that let the first sob loose but a brokenhearted fifteen year old boy.

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TBC

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Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Have a great day!

Cheryl W.