Mission Voyager (Part Five)

[soulmatecest]

-Part Five-
(Jared)

Jared wakes up feeling strange. He’s dizzy and his eyes are barely getting used to the light and all he wants to do is turn around and nuzzle against the pillow under him until he falls back asleep. He’s so comfortable, feeling like he has been sleeping on a damn cloud for days, body relaxed and muscles slack. Whatever he’s covered into smells nice, it makes Jared want to press his nose against it and take a deep breath. He’s confused, slipping in and out of consciousness as he moves under the soft blankets, still trying to put his finger on the weird sensation surrounding him.

That’s when it hits him. He’s comfortable.

He’s sleeping in a soft, warm bed that smells nice. He’s not in pain, he’s not hungry or uncomfortable from sleeping on an old dusty mattress. His body doesn’t hurt and he’s not tired or waking up from a horrible nightmare. He’s fine.

He feels perfect.

It rings all the alarm bells in Jared’s head immediately, making him sit up, instantly startled and feeling out of place.

This is too good to be true. Jared hasn’t been completely fine in more than two years, that’s what makes it strange. Jared can’t comfortable and safe anymore, he can’t have the luxury of it since the world went to shit.

He rubs his eyes with both hands, pressing his palms against them as he tries to remember something from before. Anything beyond the warm bed in what looks like a common room. There are a few shards that flash in his memory, small parts of an entire puzzle that come and go the more Jared tries to get  his act together. Jared can still feel the ghost of the fever and intense stomach ache from days without any food. He can see Chad and Sandy, sneaking into a house and Chad shooting the gun. There was a horrible smell and splatter of blue. He remembers running. Crying and running from the hunters in white, thinking there was nothing else he could do. And then he was trying to get past a fence, and got hurt in the process.

Jared brings his hand to his right shoulder immediately, suddenly remembering the sting of pain when he stabbed himself on the harsh metal. He pulls the short sleeve back so he can see the wound, hoping it’s not infected. He was too freaked out to pay much attention to it then but it hurt severely and he kept on bleeding. It can’t be good. And they don’t have any medicine back at the factory. But there isn’t a wound on his arm anymore and insteadJared can only find a small, pink line across the skin, completely healed by now, resembling a little scratch more than a stab wound after a piece of metal pierced through the flesh.

He rubs his arm over and over again, finger ghosting over the small line as he tries to remember.

There’s no way Jared imagined that amount of pain. He did stab his arm, he was bleeding and it hurt too much to move at all. Just to test it, Jared presses down two fingers on the small scar, but there’s only a slight tingling feeling. No pain. Jared presses harder, convinced that he did some fucking damage on his muscle when he pulled forward to get past the fence. Nothing. Jared could be pressing down on any other part of his body and it would feel just the same. It’s like the wound the never happened.

How is that possible? Jared could barely hold the rifle when-

The rifle. Jared had to hold it up and aim because he had broken into a house. It had been raining and there was a mess in the living room, one of those things had been gotten close to Jared, and he had responded with aiming the rifle at it.. There was an alien in the house. And he looked like a man with green eyes that reminded Jared of his mother and the night she died. Jared didn’t shoot. He couldn’t have killed the thing even after Chad told him to do so of anyone got close.

He looks around the room again, pressing himself further into the bed. He passed out in that house and now where the fuck is he? This doesn’t look like one of the facilities that Jeffrey had been describing. He’s not sitting down and he doesn’t have anything connected to him. There only seems to be a bed, a lamp and a closet in the corner. Furthermore, Jared is awake. Jeffrey kept talking about Hilary being passed out, impossible to bring back. Jared pinches his hand, just to be sure, and he feels the little sting of pain right away.

Okay. Alright. This is not the time to freak out no matter how badly Jared wants to. He has stay level-headed and think. Jared’s awake and he’s somewhere. Not a facility but also nowhere he has been before. And the wound on his arm is gone along with his fever. What the fuck is going on?

He has no idea how long he’s been out. Probably a long time if his arm is completely healed by now, right? Jared brings his hands up to touch his hair, trying to measure if it’s gotten any longer. It feels almost the same length like before, so unless someone had gone through the trouble to play barber shop with Jared while he was asleep, it doesn’t seem like he was out that long. There’s also the fact that he’s not clad in his own clothes anymore. Now that he has kicked the blankets off and he’s looking down at himself, Jared is realizing that he’s wearing a random shirt he has never seen before.

It looks baggy on him, like it’s a couple sizes too big, and it’s clean and fresh. Like it came right out of the laundry room. Jared only wears old shirts that he can barely clean with water down by the creek close to the old factory. This is not his shirt and those are not his pants. A quick check lets Jared know that, alright, at least he’s wearing his own damn underwear.

Did someone make effort to cure him and play human-sized Barbie with him? Things are starting to get beyond weird. Jared is kind of used to the world being populated by aliens that look like humans, so this has to be really strange for Jared to find anything weird by this point of his life. A quick check makes Jared realize something he didn’t notice before:here is some weird metallic bracelet wrapped around his wrist. It’s not heavy nor too tight, but a few thugs reveal that  it’s impossible to take off. Jared tries to pull it off of him, but it’s almost glued to his skin and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t take it off. Jared curses under his breath and gives up after ten minutes of trying, skin around the band already turning red from his desperate attempts to scratch the thing off. The bracelet looks harmless enough, he can worry about that later.

There isn’t much to see in the room. It doesn’t seem to be a single window in there so Jared can’t tell if it’s day or night, the only light coming from the bedside lamp. It’s obvious that this place can’t belong to a human. People don’t live in houses anymore, at least not the surviving ones. It doesn’t seem to be the kind of place Jeffrey had described either. He said it had looked like  the setting of any Star Trek movie. This isn’t it. So, where the hell is Jared?

He gets out of the bed slowly, approaches the only door-besides the one on the closet that he can’t seem to be able to open-and tries to listen if there are any noises coming from outside. Maybe those hunters in white are waiting for him to wake up to finally take him away. Is he locked down? The door doesn’t seem to have a handle, just like the closet. Maybe he won’t be able to push it open, but he has to try.  is better than waiting in that damn room to be taken down. He at least has to put up a fight. Jared might not be able to kill those things but he has to try to escape.

He’s about to push the white door with both hands when he hears a sound coming from behind it: somebody is coming. Jared stumbles backward, almost falling down as he stares at the door in terror. There is a sudden, horrible beeping sound that starts to go off in the room. Jared gasps, looking down at the bracelet around his wrist when he realizes there are small red lights blinking on what was a harmless silver bracelet a second ago. And it’s beeping impossibly loud, going off like a car alarm. Jared groans, freaked out as he tries to claw the band off of him again. Did he activate it by getting too close to the door while trying to escape? What is that thing going to do to him if he attempts to get away? It could be a tracker, like a futuristic handcuff that keeps him in check. For a second he imagines the thing will electrocute him or even kill him before he realizes: the more freaked out he gets, the harder that thing beeps, making the sound almost maddening. There’s another sound outside of the room and the door slides open.

“Holy shit!”

Jared screams when he sees the alien from before walk into the room, making Jared jump backwards and press himself into one of the corner of the room, terrified. It’s the same one from before, Jared remembers his face. He’s still in the same house he broke into. It seems that thing kept Jared locked down in one of its rooms all along.

And the alien is there. It’s right fucking there and Jared doesn’t have the rifle or anything to defend himself this time. Not that the firearm would have done any good, Jared knows by now he wouldn’t be able to put it to use anyway.

.The thing seems to have stopped in its tracks as soon as Jared cursed out loud, standing frozen in the door as it stares back at him. Jared swallows and bites down onto his tongue, the beeping of the damn bracelet still going like crazy. He wonders for a second if he should apologize for trying to escape or swear that he wasn’t doing anything bad, that he has no idea why that bracelet is beeping. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to talk though, so Jared just presses his lips together and stays hunched against the wall, waiting for whatever the alien is planning to do with him now.

There’s a long silence in which they only stare at each other, with Jared starting to shake as the wait for any reaction is driving him out of his mind. If that thing is going to do something to him, it should just go ahead and do it instead of torturing Jared by making him wait for the hit.

Then, to Jared absolute surprise, the alien takes a deep breath and starts to talk.

“Are you feeling any better?” It asks in a soft voice and perfectly pronounced English. Jared’s eyes widen and he bites back another scream, throws his arms around himself in a futile attempt to shield himself instead.

After another minute of silence and after it became obvious that Jared isn’t going to reply, the thing picks up the conversation again.

“I didn’t meant to-” and then it stops, giving Jared a weird look for a second. “I thought you were still asleep, but then I heard the beeping,”

Jared jumps out of his skin when the alien looks at the band on his wrist and then takes a tentative step into the room. If Jared was a cat he would have been scratching the walls and trying to climb them at this point. The pseudo-human must have heard Jared’s little whimper and probably noticed the way he tries to almost blend into the wall-pressing impossibly close to it-because he steps back again.

“It’s fine. The alarm will wear off on its own in a little bit,”

What is that supposed to mean? What will happen when it stops beeping? Jared looks at the bracelet nervously but doesn’t dare to ask. Why is that thing talking to him anyway? Why is it keeping Jared in here?

There are so many things Jared wants to ask but he won’t. He doesn’t dare to make a sound, even less reply to the shifter. He’s well aware he has talked to some of them before. Brock back at NYU and some cashiers at small stores. They understand English, they are fluent in the language like this guy is proving right now. They understand it, Jared could communicate if he wanted to, but fucking hell he’s not going to try. He’s too scared to consider responding at all.

Another long silence passes and there’s a small sigh from the alien.

“I’m Jensen,” It says while it crosses its arms and leans against the door frame. “What are you called? I know humans use first and last names, I have a last name of my own but it’s only for organization and data purposes. You can only give me your first name if you prefer, too.”

Jared swallows and doesn’t say a damn thing in return. Jensen. Of course, they would have names too. Brock had a name and a last name, right? For organization and data. That doesn’t seem to make much sense but Jared is not about to question the way those things want to call themselves. The last thing Jared wants is to piss it off.

Jeffrey said they were a pacifist race but the fact that this one kept Jared prisoner with some kind of freak bracelet that goes off as soon as Jared tried to escape says otherwise. The bracelet makes another high-pitched sound and Jared lets out a  strangled noise as the thing that called himself Jensen tries to step into the room again. There’s another sigh, but this time it sounds a little bit more irritated than the last one.

“Fine, alright. I won’t come in,” Jensen puts his hands up in a small gesture of surrender. “But at least tell me if you’re in pain or maybe hungry,”

Nothing.

That thing might want to play friends with Jared-something he can’t understand-but Jared is not going to reply to him. Why does it get out of its way doing this with him? All Jared wants to do is be left alone, far away from any of those aliens who took his family and probably his friends, too. He glares back at the alien in silence, almost waiting for it to try and come back in.

After what feels like forever, Jensen clicks his tongue and shrugs, like it completely gave up.

“Let me know if you need anything,” And then he turns on his heels and leaves, door closing behind him.

As soon as Jared is alone, the tears start to pour out. Within the span of a  second he’s sitting on the floor, still pressed into the corner of the room, hugging his knees as crying silently. All this time trying to run, always trying to survive and not let the hunters catch him just to end up here, prisoner of one of those fucking things. And he’s probably not the only one. He has no idea what happened to Chad and Sandy after they got separated. Did they make it to the empty house where they were supposed to meet? Jared hopes they did and that they also left when they realized Jared wouldn’t make it back. Ever. Trying to not think of the most likely possibility that Chad and Sandy got caught too makes Jared cry even harder. It was his idea to come into the city to look for food after all. He said they should risk it and come to Dallas and now look how everything ended. It’s all his fault. And maybe he got what he deserved.

If Chad-the one who helped him survive all along and has been his best friend all his life-ended up in one of those facilities then Jared will never be able to forgive himself. He tries to clear up his tears, hiccupping and ignoring the constant beeping of the bracelet. He leans his head into the wall and looks up, hoping he could see the ruined ceiling of the old factory. Or even better, he wishes he could see the sunset and hear Chad and Sandy laughing next to him.

-

The next time Jared wakes up, he’s not sitting in the corner of the room anymore.

He’s back on the bed. And when he opens his eyes, he sees the alien right there, next to him while checking something on his arm. This time around, Jensen seems to react before Jared even has a chance to panic, stepping away almost as soon as Jared wakes up and keeping a big distance between them. Jared presses his back against the headboard of the bed, looking down at his exposed arm, trying to find if Jensen had been doing something weird to him. It doesn’t seem to be the case.

“You shouldn’t fall asleep on the floor,” The thing, which Jared is having a hard time thinking of more than that thing or the alien” even if he has a name now, says. Somehow, thinking of it with its name gives it a familiarity Jared doesn’t want to feel. “You just survived a severe pneumonia, doing that won’t help you get better,”

Jared doesn’t say a thing in return, bringing the blankets up to cover himself, like they will keep Jensen away. It stares at Jared for a long moment and for a split second, Jared thinks he can see disappointment in its expression. Like it was expecting more out of Jared. It confuses Jared as much as it pisses him off.

He doesn’t owe that thing anything. If it wants a thank you for curing him then Jensen has another thing coming. Jared didn’t ask to be cured, just as much as he didn’t ask for his family to be taken away and being forced to spend the rest of his life running away.

The silence goes on for minutes, until Jared turns around on the bed, facing the opposite side of the room while covering himself with the blankets. After a few seconds, he hears the door open and close again.

Jared slips in and out of sleep throughout the day, hearing the thing walk in and out of the room every now and then, but never getting as close as he did when Jared woke up. There’s nothing Jared can do except for pretending to be asleep, letting the feeling of being completely defeated take over him. What’s the point of trying to escape anyway? At this point, if Chad and Sandy made it back to the house, they won’t be there anymore. Jared doesn’t know the way back into the old factory-Chad was the only one who had been in and out of there and he’s the one who guided them into Dallas. Jared could easily get caught trying to find his way back. And that’s considering the group will still be at the factory if Jared is lucky enough to find the place again.

If Chad and Sandy made it back-and Jared prays they did, they idea of his friends getting caught too horrible to handle-and they informed the rest that Jared was caught so close to where they have been living, Jeffreywill want to move them immediately. A human being caught at Dallas stealing food would make the hunters in white want to check the perimeter to try and find out if there are more of them out there. It’s a risk too high to take. They had a whole life figured out back then and because of Jared they will have to get on the move again, risking their lives by leaving the factory. He presses his face into the pillow and wishes the damn thing out there would just kill him already.

The fact that the room is closed up all the time and there aren’t any clocks or windows doesn’t let Jared know how long he has been in there. He’s either sleeping or sitting on the bed, staring at the walls and thinking of everything and nothing. He could have been asleep for days or only hours every time he wakes up, there there’s no way for him to know that. He’s silent every time Jensen walks into the room, not answering no matter what it says. The alien seems to have given up on any kind of communication and learned to stay away from Jared so he won’t start freaking out again. The bracelet on Jared’s arm hasn’t beeped anymore, but there has been blue lights flickering for what Jared guesses have been hours.

One time the alien comes back inside the room, it brings three bags of weird looking liquids inside plastic bags. He also has a bottle of pills that make Jared snap out of his constant haze as he starts to press further into the headboard.

“You haven’t had anything to eat since you woke up.”

Jared stares back, not even making a gesture to indicate that he understood.

“You had an IV in while you were still asleep and the liquids  helped for the moment,” The thing leaves the three bags over at the end of the bed and Jared eyes them suspiciously. “You need to at least drink these if you’re not going to let me get close enough to do anything else. These are drinking supplements and these-” He shakes the bottle of pills in the air-“Are to make sure the pneumonia doesn’t come back. Take them with the liquids.”

If he’s honest with himself, Jared is starving. But he knows how to handle hunger by now. He has survived days without eating before and he can take it now. There’s no way he’s drinking anything the alien brings him. Jared doesn’t even know if those are real supplements. They could be poison or something to make him fall asleep again. He has no idea what those bags have inside. He would be crazy to drink them.

The alien sighs, already guessing Jared won’t touch them. Jared watches it rub its hands nervously before taking one of the bags and extending it towards Jared.

“You were in such bad health when you broke in,” It whispers, and Jared has the feeling it’s saying it mostly to itself. “You will get sick again can you just-” It bites its lower lip and holds the bag in the air, right in front of Jared. “Please? Please take it. It’s killing me to see you slowly starve yourself.”

For what can only be a second, Jared feels a sting of guilt in the middle of his chest when he looks into the perfectly human features, the worry all over the alien’s face. It looks desperate. Jensen looks desperate, keeping the bag in front of Jared with a slightly shaky hand. If Jared didn’t know better, he would think the alien is really concerned for him. Truthfully, one hundred percent concerned for his health and the fact that he might get sick again. It did cure him. It took away the fever and made the wound on his arm completely disappear. And it has done nothing to Jared just yet. Maybe it’s not lying about wanting to help.

Without thinking, Jared extends his hand to take the bag but stops himself at the last second, pulling back and looking nervously between Jensen and the bag.

“It’s just supplements,” Jensen pleads, and the hope of Jared taking it must make it forget that it’s better to keeps its distance, because t sits on the bed right next to Jared. “I’m a healer. I told you, it’s like I’m a doctor. I would never give you, or anyone, something that could do them any harm.”

Jared is so hungry, and he feels so stupidly weak. Maybe that’s why he’s tired and sleeping so much. He doesn’t have the energy for anything.

“Okay, let me-” The alien opens the lid at one side of the plastic bag, holding it with both hands before it takes two long drinks of the strange liquid. Jared watches it finish the drink in less than a minute, putting the empty bag away and offering a new one to Jared. “See? I drank it. It’s safe. It won’t do you anything bad.”

It’s monkey see, monkey do. Which is a learning technique to use with little kids or even animals. Shifters do think humans are some kind of animals compared to them, don’t they? Jared would be offended if the dizziness and stomach ache weren’t killing him.

Who cares. The shifter just proved there’s nothing wrong with the liquids by drinking them itself. Jared takes the bag from Jensen’s hand, slowly, both hands shaking around the bag once he’s holding it up. He ends up drinking the whole bag even faster than Jensen did, only realizing how thirsty he is once he takes the first gulp. It doesn’t taste like anything specific. It’s like drinking water with a little bit of salt and sugar.

Once he puts the empty bag down, Jared realizes the shifter has been staring at him the entire time, a relieved expression on its face now. Jared extends his hand, eyeing the other bag. Might as well go all the way if he started with one, right?

He ends up drinking four of those bags and the shifter is delighted, looking at Jared like the sun has been shining out of his ass his entire life. It’s incredibly strange to say the least. What does the shifter care if Jared eats or not? They don’t have any trouble chasing them down when humans try to steal food from stores or houses. They didn’t have any trouble hunting all humanity down and locking them away like they were nothing more than cattle. What does this one care what the hell happens to Jared?

“Thank you.”

Jared looks up at the shifter, watching him pick up the empty bags, confused beyond belief. It’s giving Jared medicine so he doesn’t die of starvation but it’s the one thanking Jared for drinking it? Those things must really be insane. But hey., it did just help Jared. Again. So Jared gives it a little nod in return right before he turns around on the bed again, facing away from Jensen and waiting for it to leave the room like all the other times. The only difference is that Jared doesn’t go to sleep as soon as he’s alone, too confused about what just happened to be able to even feel tired.

After Jared accepted to drink those bags of weird water, it seems like Jensen took it as an invitation to keep on bringing them to him every other hours. They are different colors but they taste the same, so Jared guesses they must be for different things. Whatever, they haven’t killed him yet and they take away the pain in his stomach and the constant dizziness, so Jared drinks them all without saying a word. It takes Jensen a little bit longer to convince Jared to take the pills, yet the second demonstration of swallowing down a couple of them himself takes Jared’s worry away.

The new energy from the drinks the shifter brings him gives Jared the opportunity to get out of bed and walk around the room, trying to check the closet doors to try and see what else is in there. He has seen Jensen open them when he pretends to be asleep sometimes, yet whenever Jared tries to open them it’s like they are glued to the wall. His inspection of the room also lets him discover that the only door that does open doesn’t take him into a closet but inside of a bathroom. There's only a sink and a toilet inside but considering Jared hasn’t had a decent bathroom in over a year, it feels like a pretty big luxury. The bathroom also lights up when Jared walks in, just like the room with the bed. There doesn’t seem to be any switch anywhere so they must activate with movement.

As time passes by and Jared gets used to drinking the weird liquids in the funny plastic bags and taking a pill whenever it’s due, he slowly starts to get used to calling Jensen by his name or just the shifter in his head, rather than the alien and it like he did before. It’s impossible not to when all Jensen has been doing is, somehow, take care of Jared.

Jared has no idea why that is or the reason behind the white hunters not being there to take him away, so at first he tries to not think about it. But the more time he spends alone in the room without anything to do but sleep and stare at the four falls, it slowly starts to piss him off. Why is he in there? Why is the shifter helping him instead of just calling for the hunters? Why does he insist on making Jared eat as though he cares? He obviously doesn’t care-none of them gave a rat’s ass about humanity since they got to Earth. Is he keeping him alive so Jared can get healthy and he can start doing freaky experiments on him? What is that thing he put on Jared’s wrist? It doesn’t sound right. It can’t be right. Jared is not an idiot. He was able believe people helped others out of the goodness of their hearts once, but not anymore. Not after two years of hiding and running away. Not after losing his family and his friends. Not after waking up terrified day after day, scared of the idea of being taken away.

And they are not even people. They are something else, that came to Earth and took it as their own. Jared can’t fucking believe this shifter doesn’t have some shady reason to keep him alive. Maybe feeding him like one feeds a turkey before Thanksgiving? Must be it. e gets so fed up with thinking about nothing else that Jared ends up opening his mouth one time Jensen is about to walk out of the room with another set of empty bags in his hands.

“Why are you helping me?”

The shifter stops right in front of the door and then turns around to look back at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, like he can’t believe Jared is finally talking to him. But Jared doesn’t give a shit anymore. He wasn’t going to make any communication with Jensen at all but what does it matter at this point? Jared is not going anywhere from here.

“Why?” Jared hisses, closing his fists in his lap. “What are you getting out of making me better, huh? Why are you doing this?”

“I’m a healer,” Jensen answers after a long pause, standing still in the same spot and still looking at Jared like he can’t believe his eyes. “This is what I do.”

“Yeah, a healer. Big fucking deal,” That doesn’t mean anything to Jared. It doesn’t make any sense. They are not out there curing all the other sick and starving humans, are they? “When are you going to stop playing hospital and just kill me already? I’m done lying in this bed waiting for the moment you decide to go for it. Just do it!”

He can’t believe he’s talking like that, that’s he’s saying those things without stuttering or starting to cry. It’s probably because the fear and confusion has been eating him alive for days and Jared can’t take it anymore. But Jensen takes in a sharp breath and looks back at Jared like he just said the most awful thing Jensen has heard in his life.

“What?” Jensen says, shaking his head and closing his eyes for a second, like he didn’t understand Jared properly. “What? Kill you?” And for the very first time since Jared crashed into the shifter’s house, he sees sparkle of anger in him as he raises his voice like he has never done before. “Why would I ever do such a thing! All I have been doing is help you so you can get better! I wouldn’t do anything-”

“Oh sure,” Jared snorts and Jensen gives him an even more astonished and frustrated look. “I bet that keeping me hostage is helping me so much!” He yells, pointing at the bracelet around his wrist, who has stopped flickering those blue lights for a while now. Yet Jared hasn’t been able to take it off.

The shifter rolls his eyes, a thing Jared hasn’t seen him do so far, before crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head.

“You’re not a hostage. Have I ever told you that you couldn’t leave or something like that? No,” Jensen snaps before Jared can answer. “I was helping you after you broke into my house and almost shot me.” It seems that from all the things Jared had done so far-refusing to talk, not thanking him for the help and trying to escape whenever Jensen gets close-accusing the shifter of wanting him to murder him has finally made him decide it’s enough.

“Then what is this thing?” Jared shakes his arm in the air, pointing at the silver bracelet. “It beeped like crazy the first time I tried to leave the room! It’s some kind of tracker that will probably electrocute me if I try to leave.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Jensen snaps again, and this time he sounds so incredibly frustrated it makes Jared shut his mouth immediately . “Are all humans like that or is it just you? That’s not a tracker, it’s a medical bracelet! It helps me knowing when there’s something wrong with your body. If your heart rate is too high it starts beeping, which is what happened that day. It lights up different in colors if your blood sugar or pressure is low or too high, if you haven’t had any food or if you have fever.”

With his mouth hanging open, Jared stares at the bracelet. If he thinks about it, he was freaking out because he heard steps outside of the door before the thing started to beep. And it has been lighting up in different colors, which then stopped when Jared took the liquid supplements and when he started to take the pills regularly, too.

“Oh,” Jared whispers, looking down at his wrist. He hears Jensen huff, clearly offended by Jared’s accusations, but Jared is not done yet. “Alright then, why can’t I take it off? Of course I would assume if it almost feels like some kind of futuristic handcuff.”

Jensen looks for a moment like he might as well lose his patience, squinting at Jared for a second before moving closer to the bed. This time Jared doesn’t move away, but he sure tenses up at the sudden closeness between them. Jensen takes his arm and holds the wrists with the bracelet around it. And then, all he does is pressing down on one side of the bracelet for three seconds before it makes a soft click and loosens up, letting Jensen take it off of Jared.

“Well, fuck,” Jared mutters, feeling like an idiot. “I had no idea you could take it off like that. It’s not my fault that I don’t know any better, you never explained what it was.”

“Yeah, because you were so talkative before.”

It’s only then that Jared notices has much he has been going on and on, like he couldn’t stop himself from arguing back as soon as they started. It’s hard not to. Jensen looks so much like a human. He resembles a human, he speaks like a human and even has reactions like a human would. He got frustrated and offended at what Jared said, he even rolled his eyes at him, for god’s sake. It’s like Jared’s brain just forgets at moments that he’s not dealing with a human anymore. That’s why he kept talking and arguing back, completely blocking out the fact that he never meant to communicate with the shifter at all.

“You still haven’t told me why,” Jared whispers, looking down. He already broke the silent treatment, might as well ask Jensen all the things that have been eating him alive from the inside. “Why are you helping me?”

Why do you care?

There’s a long pause in which none of them says a word. Jared pretends to be distracted by the blanket in his lap, even if he takes keep peeks at Jensen from time to time. He seems lost in thought at this point, leaning against the wall and staring intently at the floor.

“I have no idea,” Jensen says at last. It’s an answer Jared didn’t expect at all. “Honestly? I’m not sure. I mean, yes, I wanted to help you because you were sick and hurt. I’m meant to do that cure every creature on all planets I visit. I teach them how to stay healthy, I can make the pain stop. It would have been wrong to not do that for you.”

Jared’s fingers ghost over his arm, reaching the little line across his shoulder, the only thing left after Jensen fixed up the gaping wound. There’s no muscle damage, no pain, no scar. Jared has no idea how he could have he done that so fast. It would have taken a surgery and months of therapy for Jared to recover under normal circumstances.

“But-why keep you here? Why not saying anything? I’m still not sure myself,” Jared looks back up, swallowing as he hears Jensen talk. What does he mean not saying anything? It’s a good thing that weird bracelet is off of him or it would be beeping away in that moment. “We have protocols, you know? Things we have to do when we run into humans and I have followed none of them. And I keep asking myself why and I…I don’t know. I look at you and I don’t know why I haven’t called the Collectors yet.”

Jensen lets out a sigh and shakes his head. “I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

The Collectors. Jared has never heard that title before but he doesn’t need long to understand what it means. Jeffrey and everybody on the websites about conspiracy theories had the name wrong all along. They aren’t hunters, like they all thought. Because hunters kill, and Jeffrey said that shifters like Jensen don’t kill. They collect and take back to the facilities, and that’s the end of it. Collect, like kids collects stamps or postcards.

Like humans are nothing but things they can store away after they have taken them down. Just as they did with Osric, and Chad’s dad and Jared’s family. Just as they are going to do now that Jensen has made sure that Jared is, in fact, okay. That’s why he was curing him all along, soo he wouldn’t feel guilty once he handed him over to the goddamn Collectors dressed in those white clothes?

Of fucking course.

Why would something like Jensen care for someone like Jared, when they all consider humans nothing more than cattle that learns with monkey see, monkey do?

It crosses Jared’s mind before he has fully thought about it. He doesn’t consider what he’s really about to do, images of him and Chad running through the neighborhood they grew up clouding his head. Jared remembers the fear coming off Jeffrey driving the car and telling them how Hilarie didn’t wake up no matter how many times he screamed her name. How humans don’t come back once they are taken away. And Jared really has no real reason to keep on fighting, not when he could be all alone. But the idea of being taken away by the things that have been tormenting him day and night for over two years makes him snap.

He jumps out of the bed, snatching the bottle of pills from Jensen’s hand and shoving him away, trying to make it to the bathroom door. He doesn’t know if it locks from the inside, but he has to try. Death would be better than having to live with the nightmare of being hunted down.

“No!” Jared hears from behind him, the scream almost desperate as Jared tries to push the door open.

He doesn’t make it to the bathroom. One second he’s almost there and the next one he’s being pressed against one of the walls, wrists pinned down as Jared clings to the bottle of pills for dear life. Jensen is holding him against the wall, keeping Jared from moving or pushing him away like before. He looks desperate, breathing hard and applying more force on the hand that Jared is using to hold the pills. Jared takes a shaky breath, eyes filling with tears as he stares back into the green eyes he had been trying to avoid whenever Jensen walked into the room.

“Please don’t,” Jensen pleads with a low voice, his own hands shaking as he keeps Jared pinned to the wall. It must mean he guessed what Jared was planning to do with the pills. Jensen said he was a healer, didn’t he? Yeah, a doctor would know. “Give me back the pills You don’t have to hurt yourself, please.”

Jared shakes his head, starting to cry. “You’re calling them,” He whispers, feeling the tears on his cheeks. “T-They are going to take me away.”

Gripping the bottle of pills harder than before, Jared squeezes his eyes shut and let’s out a sob, not caring that he’s showing weakness and fear in front of one of them. What does it matter at this point? Jared lost everything. Giving away whatever he has left of his dignity before losing himself won’t change a damn thing.

“No. No, no.” Jensen whispers in front of him only pulling another sob out of Jared. “Please don’t cry. It’s-it’s going to be alright. You don’t have to do this.”

But Jared doesn’t stop, crying bitterly and ignoring the shifter’s words. He only keeps on mumbling about being hunted down and taken to one of those places. He cried about running away and never stopping, about always being scared of the hunters dressed in white and the fact that Jeffrey’s wife never woke up after they took her. And now Jared is going to end like her too. And he shouldn’t give a damn, because he’s all alone and unable to survive on his own anyway. But he cares. He’s weak and scared and he cares so much he can’t stop crying.

“If I die… if I take them.” Jared says between sobs, holding the bottle tight. “They won’t-they can’t.”

“No, you don’t understand: I’m not calling them,” Jensen says, raising his voice so Jared can hear him over his own sobs. “I didn’t call them before and I won’t call them now! I swear to you, I swear-”

“Everybody called them!” Jared snaps back, looking at Jensen’s worried face through teary eyes. “Everyone called them on u-us! They chased us down! I won’t let them-”

“I promise. I promise I won’t,” Jensen softens his grip around Jared’s wrists but keeps him from trying to run into the bathroom again. “Remember the drinks and the pills? I said they were safe, and it was a true. I swear, I promise I won’t call the Collectors if you let go of the pills and don’t hurt yourself. I’ll help you get better and let you go. Please.”

Jared sniffles, breathing hard and looking back into Jensen’s face. So much like a human and yet so different from all of them. He’s not behaving like any other shifters Jared ever ran into. Jensen has had all his time to call the Collectors and he didn’t.

“I promise. I swear on everything I won’t call them and you can leave when you feel better,” Jensen nods, sliding one of his hands up to take the bottle of pills. Jared lets go just for a second, lower lip trembling.

“You could be lying,” Jared whispers, even if he really wants to believe him.

“But I’m not,” Jensen whispers back. “Shifters don’t lie. Except I did. I lied to someone so I could miss work and stay here and take care of you. I haven’t lied in all my life and I did to keep you safe, even if I didn’t understand why.”

Jared loosens the grip around the bottle pills, letting Jensen take them from him.

“I could lie like I did with them, but I won’t. Because I want to help you, ” The only choice Jared has at this point is believing him. He can trust what Jensen is saying or fight to get the pills back and go into the bathroom. Jensen could be lying, Jared doesn’t know him. But his fever is gone, his shoulder is healed and Jensen is staring him with so much worry in his perfectly human face that Jared simply nods in return.

After minutes of them standing there, with Jared pressed into the wall and Jensen holding his wrists to keep him in place, Jensen finally let’s go of him and steps back. Jared brings his hands up to his face right away, cleaning the tears from his cheeks and rubbing his eyes. There’s nothing else to say after that. Jensen promised to let him go once Jared is healthy and Jared believed him. So now they have some kind of deal, and only time will tell Jared if he was right or just made the stupidest mistake of his life.

“You are free to go whenever you want to,” Jensen whispers after a while, bottle of pills secured in both his hands. “I recommend you wait until you’re all better. You’re still weak and recovering, so just wait until your body is ready. Then you can leave, but you’re not a hostage in here. Alright?”

Jared nods, looking down at the floor and sniffing again.

Jensen nods in return and mumbles something about Jared getting in bed and trying to sleep before he steps towards the door. He only stops once he’s at the doorframe, turning to look at Jared over his shoulder.

“By the way, you don’t have to stay in the room all the time. You can come out, this is not a prison. You’re in my house, and from now on, you can think of it as your house, too.”

| Part Six |