SPN FIC - Savior (Part 1 of ?)
She stopped by the sheriff's station just to say howdy to an old friend. Had no idea there'd be a four-foot-tall perp sitting there, ready to go ballistic.
CHARACTERS: Ellen (age 28), OCs, and one 8-year-old boy
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1282 words
SAVIOR
By Carol Davis
They don't get a lot of what you'd call hardened criminals out this way, Ellen Harvelle observes as she stands leaning against the visitors' counter at the front of the Custer County sheriff's station. Most of what does go on, out here in the Middle of Nowhere, Nebraska, has to do with boredom, or jealousy, or frustration - sometimes with a little genuine stupidity mixed in. (The mobile home that blew up a few months back, for instance.) There's a murder now and then, when a bar fight goes off the rails, or somebody's been caught in flagrante. But for the most part, the sheriff doesn't have a whole lot of big-time wrongdoing to deal with.
Even when the shit does hit the fan, he doesn't generally get mixed up with perps who stand maybe four feet tall.
"The hell's goin' on there?" she asks quietly when Tom returns to the counter.
Tom, Sheriff Bonwell's chief deputy, glances back into the bowels of the office. He doesn't ask what she's talking about; there's only one thing back there she could possibly be talking about. "Runaway," he murmurs. "Third time. Folks are at their wits' end."
There's a boy back there, sandy-haired, dressed in jeans and a wrong-sized flannel button-down over what looks to be a St. Louis Cards t-shirt, perched on the chair alongside one of the deputies' desks. He's got his feet pulled up onto the chair, head tucked down against his knees, hands clasped tight at the back of his neck. Looks pretty much like he's doing that "duck and cover" routine nobody's bothered with very much since Ellen was in grade school.
Since she was the age of this kid. He's eight, she figures. Give or take.
"Local?" she asks.
"Broken Bow," Tom says, then adds, "Foster family."
"And he bolted?"
"Every time they turn their backs. Said they can't lock him in all the time. They don't know what to do."
The kid's silent, but he's not still. It's some distance from her side of the counter to that chair, but even so, Ellen can see him trembling - vibrating, really. She's had enough years with Jo to understand that when a kid does that, he's either scared blind or getting ready to blow. Just like that mobile home. And sure enough, when Ginny - the station's combination dispatcher/secretary/errand runner - approaches him bearing a big yellow mug of what's probably Swiss Miss from the box they keep alongside the coffee machine, and nudges him, figuring she'll get him to take a sip or two, a hand shoots away from the kid's neck, hits the mug square on and sends it flying across the room.
Kid's got good aim, Ellen thinks.
That's about all she's got time to think, because an eye-blink later, the kid's exploded up from that chair like a scalded cat, flailing and screaming. Ginny stumbles back out of his way, missteps, and ends up on her butt on the floor in a puddle of hot chocolate, leaving pretty much an open path between the kid and the front door. He's almost there, is only three or four steps from the dust of the parking lot, when Ellen flings an arm around his middle and hauls him in, his back to her front, giving him no good way to hit her.
She's been dealing with drunks for a dozen years, and a feisty daughter for four. He tries to stomp on her feet, but the toes of her boots are sturdy. He dips his head to bite her, but a tight fistful of his hair keeps his teeth out of range of the arm that circles his belly - and prevents him from jerking back and delivering a head-butt to her throat or chin.
"LEMMEGO!" he shrieks. "LEMMEGO!"
It's a frantic sound, terror and rage and pain in equal parts. What in God's earth've they been doin' to you? she wonders.
"I can -" Tom offers as he circles around the counter.
She knows better than to loosen her grip. A moment of distraction will cost you, every time; she's learned that the hard way. "I got it," she says.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" the kid screams.
There's only one good thing to be done, just the one option that'll prevent him from busting loose and tearing out of here hell-bent for leather. He might or might not have considered that there's nothing outside the sheriff's station but a long, dusty road that eventually ends up at the I-80; he's too small to drive, and you could fry half to death standing out there in the midsummer heat waiting for somebody willing to take their chances with a hitchhiker. Yeah, his being a kid might make him a less threatening passenger, but nobody's gonna pick up a kid who's got no destination in mind, particularly one who's hitching right outside the cop shop.
So they thrust him into a cell and lock the door.
Predictably, he's not happy.
"This here," Tom says from a couple of yards away - well out of biting distance, though he's already got teeth marks dug into the meat of his left forearm for his troubles - "This right here? Is just so frigging typical."
It's not. Of course it's not. Unless Tom's kids are in the habit of erupting like that. Of going what Bill likes to call completely frigging apeshit.
The three of them stand considering their prisoner, Tom nursing his reddened arm, Ginny with a giant chocolate stain on the backside of her pants. Inside the cell, the kid has resumed the duck-and-cover atop the narrow bunk, clearly as dangerous as a rabid dog and no more predictable. He'll try to bolt again the moment he's freed; hell, given enough time he'll probably figure out how to jimmy the lock, or how to slither in between the bars, or down the toilet drain. This isn't a stupid kid, Ellen understands.
"Gimme a minute," she murmurs to Tom.
Tom, beefy and florid, no longer the pale, scrawny kid Ellen first met in the sixth grade, embarrassed up to the eyeballs that this foolishness is happening on his watch, pulls a frown and shakes his head. One eyebrow hiked, Ellen pats his uninjured arm and nods toward Tom's desk, piled high with paperwork, dust motes floating above it in a pool of mid-afternoon sunlight. Ginny doesn't need to be persuaded; with a scowl and a mutter she slinks away, and a moment later Tom follows, leaving Ellen by herself a couple of steps from the cell.
She stands in silence for a while, observing, listening. The boy doesn't lift his head, but he surely knows they're alone, the two of them.
Time slides by.
Ten minutes? Twenty? Who knows.
She's twenty-eight years old. For most of her life she's managed the temperaments of other people. Drunks, little kids, her grandfather, the crackhead who busted in one afternoon intending to rob the till. She's a good listener, they say. Good at ass-kicking, too, when the situation calls for it. And she's patient. That serves her well, more often than not.
After what might be half an hour, or less, or more, the kid's head rises a little bit, enough for him to meet her gaze. He's been crying, silently and bitterly.
All she does is look at him.
"They took my brother," he says, and those few words hold more pain and grief and fear than she's ever heard come out of a human being's mouth. "They took him, and I don't know where my dad is."
For a moment, she does nothing.
Then she turns slightly and calls out, "Tommy. Come and unlock this thing."
Part 2...
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Ellen (age 28), OCs, and one 8-year-old boy
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1282 words
SAVIOR
By Carol Davis
They don't get a lot of what you'd call hardened criminals out this way, Ellen Harvelle observes as she stands leaning against the visitors' counter at the front of the Custer County sheriff's station. Most of what does go on, out here in the Middle of Nowhere, Nebraska, has to do with boredom, or jealousy, or frustration - sometimes with a little genuine stupidity mixed in. (The mobile home that blew up a few months back, for instance.) There's a murder now and then, when a bar fight goes off the rails, or somebody's been caught in flagrante. But for the most part, the sheriff doesn't have a whole lot of big-time wrongdoing to deal with.
Even when the shit does hit the fan, he doesn't generally get mixed up with perps who stand maybe four feet tall.
"The hell's goin' on there?" she asks quietly when Tom returns to the counter.
Tom, Sheriff Bonwell's chief deputy, glances back into the bowels of the office. He doesn't ask what she's talking about; there's only one thing back there she could possibly be talking about. "Runaway," he murmurs. "Third time. Folks are at their wits' end."
There's a boy back there, sandy-haired, dressed in jeans and a wrong-sized flannel button-down over what looks to be a St. Louis Cards t-shirt, perched on the chair alongside one of the deputies' desks. He's got his feet pulled up onto the chair, head tucked down against his knees, hands clasped tight at the back of his neck. Looks pretty much like he's doing that "duck and cover" routine nobody's bothered with very much since Ellen was in grade school.
Since she was the age of this kid. He's eight, she figures. Give or take.
"Local?" she asks.
"Broken Bow," Tom says, then adds, "Foster family."
"And he bolted?"
"Every time they turn their backs. Said they can't lock him in all the time. They don't know what to do."
The kid's silent, but he's not still. It's some distance from her side of the counter to that chair, but even so, Ellen can see him trembling - vibrating, really. She's had enough years with Jo to understand that when a kid does that, he's either scared blind or getting ready to blow. Just like that mobile home. And sure enough, when Ginny - the station's combination dispatcher/secretary/errand runner - approaches him bearing a big yellow mug of what's probably Swiss Miss from the box they keep alongside the coffee machine, and nudges him, figuring she'll get him to take a sip or two, a hand shoots away from the kid's neck, hits the mug square on and sends it flying across the room.
Kid's got good aim, Ellen thinks.
That's about all she's got time to think, because an eye-blink later, the kid's exploded up from that chair like a scalded cat, flailing and screaming. Ginny stumbles back out of his way, missteps, and ends up on her butt on the floor in a puddle of hot chocolate, leaving pretty much an open path between the kid and the front door. He's almost there, is only three or four steps from the dust of the parking lot, when Ellen flings an arm around his middle and hauls him in, his back to her front, giving him no good way to hit her.
She's been dealing with drunks for a dozen years, and a feisty daughter for four. He tries to stomp on her feet, but the toes of her boots are sturdy. He dips his head to bite her, but a tight fistful of his hair keeps his teeth out of range of the arm that circles his belly - and prevents him from jerking back and delivering a head-butt to her throat or chin.
"LEMMEGO!" he shrieks. "LEMMEGO!"
It's a frantic sound, terror and rage and pain in equal parts. What in God's earth've they been doin' to you? she wonders.
"I can -" Tom offers as he circles around the counter.
She knows better than to loosen her grip. A moment of distraction will cost you, every time; she's learned that the hard way. "I got it," she says.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" the kid screams.
There's only one good thing to be done, just the one option that'll prevent him from busting loose and tearing out of here hell-bent for leather. He might or might not have considered that there's nothing outside the sheriff's station but a long, dusty road that eventually ends up at the I-80; he's too small to drive, and you could fry half to death standing out there in the midsummer heat waiting for somebody willing to take their chances with a hitchhiker. Yeah, his being a kid might make him a less threatening passenger, but nobody's gonna pick up a kid who's got no destination in mind, particularly one who's hitching right outside the cop shop.
So they thrust him into a cell and lock the door.
Predictably, he's not happy.
"This here," Tom says from a couple of yards away - well out of biting distance, though he's already got teeth marks dug into the meat of his left forearm for his troubles - "This right here? Is just so frigging typical."
It's not. Of course it's not. Unless Tom's kids are in the habit of erupting like that. Of going what Bill likes to call completely frigging apeshit.
The three of them stand considering their prisoner, Tom nursing his reddened arm, Ginny with a giant chocolate stain on the backside of her pants. Inside the cell, the kid has resumed the duck-and-cover atop the narrow bunk, clearly as dangerous as a rabid dog and no more predictable. He'll try to bolt again the moment he's freed; hell, given enough time he'll probably figure out how to jimmy the lock, or how to slither in between the bars, or down the toilet drain. This isn't a stupid kid, Ellen understands.
"Gimme a minute," she murmurs to Tom.
Tom, beefy and florid, no longer the pale, scrawny kid Ellen first met in the sixth grade, embarrassed up to the eyeballs that this foolishness is happening on his watch, pulls a frown and shakes his head. One eyebrow hiked, Ellen pats his uninjured arm and nods toward Tom's desk, piled high with paperwork, dust motes floating above it in a pool of mid-afternoon sunlight. Ginny doesn't need to be persuaded; with a scowl and a mutter she slinks away, and a moment later Tom follows, leaving Ellen by herself a couple of steps from the cell.
She stands in silence for a while, observing, listening. The boy doesn't lift his head, but he surely knows they're alone, the two of them.
Time slides by.
Ten minutes? Twenty? Who knows.
She's twenty-eight years old. For most of her life she's managed the temperaments of other people. Drunks, little kids, her grandfather, the crackhead who busted in one afternoon intending to rob the till. She's a good listener, they say. Good at ass-kicking, too, when the situation calls for it. And she's patient. That serves her well, more often than not.
After what might be half an hour, or less, or more, the kid's head rises a little bit, enough for him to meet her gaze. He's been crying, silently and bitterly.
All she does is look at him.
"They took my brother," he says, and those few words hold more pain and grief and fear than she's ever heard come out of a human being's mouth. "They took him, and I don't know where my dad is."
For a moment, she does nothing.
Then she turns slightly and calls out, "Tommy. Come and unlock this thing."
Part 2...
* * * * *