Come Back To Me (Jack Russell x Reader) [Part 1]
Premise: Caught in a hunter’s trap, you nearly give up hope until Jack arrives to lend a helping hand.
I still have requests to do, but I HAD to write this.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Epilogue
Warnings: blood, gore
Gif Source: timothydalton
Pain flared red hot through your guts, burning deep in parts of yourself you had never hoped to see exposed.
A wooden spike protruded out from your abdomen, your blood and flesh coating its surface.
Gritting your teeth, you wheezed through your nose, biting back a cry. Tears, both of pain and panic, blurred your vision. Calling for help should have been your first priority—you were weighing it heavily through the fog of excruciating pain—but if there really was a monster lurking about in the woods, alerting it to your position would be a certain death sentence.
Not that the stave that pierced you wasn’t one.
I didn’t even want to be here!
The faintest hint of a whimper slipped past your teeth. Another threatened to follow. Pressing your lips tight, you swallowed it back.
Think, you hissed at yourself. Focus on a solution.
The waxing moon hung above you through the trees, your view of the sky circumscribed by the edges of the hole you had fallen into. A very old hunter’s trap, mostly rotted from rains and new growth—but for a sharpened stick planted here and there in the rich soil. That no animal had become prey to it surprised you in a distant, removed part of yourself.
Just a stupid human, you thought bitterly.
Sucking in a painful breath, you reached behind you. Torn muscles in your abdomen pulled as you tried to feel the length of the stave sticking into your back. The pain turned white-hot. Sparks flashed across your eyes.
Darkness.
~~
When you woke, the pain resurged. Fighting the urge to flail, you tried again, struggling against the thick fog in your mind. Moving slower than before, you reached, brushing the stave with your fingers. You walked them down the length of the stick, felt sticky dirt not a few inches down.
You were nearly to the base of it.
Panic whispered in the back of your mind, sickly sweet as its volume began a steady crescendo to a roar. Shoving it back, you focused on keeping your gasps quiet and even, the throbbing in your skull warning you of hyperventilation.
I just need to get myself off this thing.
You couldn’t fathom how. Though your feet touched the ground, you weren’t properly leveraged to slide yourself off the stave, not when reaching behind you to brace yourself with both hands would knock you unconscious again.
I can’t get out.
Panic shouted then, sending a wave of icy dread over you. Tears blurred your vision again, hot against your cheeks.
“I probably deserve this,” you whispered hoarsely, the irony of the situation not lost on you despite the agony.
“Hello?”
You froze, your heart stuttering in your chest hard enough for the pain in your stomach to lance up your spine. Pain choking your voice, you called weakly, “Help.”
A face peered over the rim of the hole. Backlit by the moon, the man stood in silhouette, a dark cutout against the sky. “You’re hurt.”
“Yes.”
“Can I help you?”
You almost huffed in frustration. “Yes.”
Nodding, the shape swung itself over the lip of the hole and slowly dropped down the wall, avoiding the few staves that still protruded from the ground. Hurrying to your side, he glanced first at the end sticking out of you, then peered underneath. He sucked in a sharp breath.
Dread coiled around your throat for a moment. “What?”
“Being impaled isn’t great.”
Great, a comedian. “Yeah.”
“If I pull you off it, that could be worse.”
“You don’t happen to have a saw on you, then?”
“Uh…” He patted his pockets. “Sadly, no.”
“I have…I have a knife.”
“Oh, good, that’s helpful. Where?”
You pointed to your thigh, where it was strapped into a holster. The man deftly removed it, brandished it in the moonlight. The sharp edge gleamed wickedly.
“That’s quite a knife,” he said, his voice hesitant. “Are you a hunter?”
“Technically,” you answered. Why am I wasting breath answering these questions? As if in response, pain flared through you again, your hands clenching into fists.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he soothed, leaning over you. “I’m going to start cutting.” He hesitated. This close, you could see his features but not the color of his eyes. A funny canine pushed against his upper lip as he grimaced. “This is going to hurt.”
Nodding, you squeezed your eyes shut and focused on your labored breathing. You felt him grab the base of the stave, the vibration of that slight action traveling through you. Pain sparked along with it.
You knew when he began cutting. Each scrape of the blade against the wood sent fireworks of agony exploding through you, traveling all the way to your toes. You bit back a scream, your breath whistling through your clenched teeth, your body a taut bow.
He stopped. You exhaled with a gasp, sucked another one in. Sweat poured down your face.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. Brushing his hand over your forehead, he wiped away the sweat with warm fingers, his touch gentle and surprisingly soothing. “My name is Jack.”
You found your voice, hoarse and broken. “Have you done this before, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“But nothing this bad, right?”
He ducked his head, averting his gaze. “No.”
“Great.”
He brushed his palm over the back of your hand, squeezed it. “I am going to start again.”
You seized his hand reflexively.
He stared directly into your eyes, his gaze calm and apologetic. “You’re doing well. I can tell you’re very strong.”
A rueful laugh limped brokenly over your lips. “Not strong enough.”
“Very strong.” He gently pulled his hand from yours. It took all your effort not to make a noise of distress at the loss of comforting contact.
He bent down to resume. You tensed, pain dancing along your nerves.
He made a soothing sound. “Tell me how you became a hunter.”
You braced for the cutting, didn’t feel anything. Peeling open your eyes, you found him looking into your face again.
“Talk to me,” he encouraged. “Do you like…hunting?”
What is this guy? A therapist?
Your voice answered anyway. “No.”
He bent back down, disappearing from your peripherals. “If you don’t like it, why do you do it?”
“Because…”
“Yes?”
“Because I’m good at it.”
Vibrations traveled along the stave, agony lancing through you anew. Squirming, you fought to breathe, your vision darkening at the edges as you sucked in a ragged breath.
His voice managed to pierce through the loudness of the pain. “You’re doing well.”
“It…doesn’t…feel…like…it,” you hissed.
“I’m almost done. Can you hold on a little longer?”
You didn’t think you could, but you wanted the pain to stop. “Yes.”
You blacked out.
~~
“Hey,” a mildly accented voice whispered. “Come back to me. You need to come back to me, okay?”
Excruciating pain woke you violently. You twitched, jerked awake.
Soothing hands pressed against your shoulders, keeping you from moving. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Peeling open your grainy eyes, you found yourself peering into Jack’s face again. Genuine concern and sympathy colored his fine features. Swallowing thickly, you whispered, “Is it over?”
“Kinda. It’s still in there, but we’re not in the hole anymore.”
You glanced around slowly, realized he was right. You sat with your shoulder propped against a tree a few feet away from the dark opening of the pit.
Glancing down, you saw the stake did still protrude from your stomach, the fabric of your shirt torn around it like a second skin. The sight of it made you dizzy. Your head tipped against the rough bark, your eyes fluttering shut as you fought to control your breathing.
“We need to get you help,” Jack said, glancing over his shoulder. “Fast.”
“One for Sherlock,” you heard yourself say. Unconsciousness had started reaching for you again, cold fingers trying to seduce you back into its dark waters.
“Hey, you need to stay with me, okay? I know you can do this.”
“You don’t know me.”
A pause.
“No, that’s true. What’s your name?”
You laughed, seized in pain. When it passed, you managed to hiss out your name.
“See, now we know each other.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Okay, I can tell you I’m not a hunter…usually.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged, averting his gaze as he peered over your shoulder into the woods. “And I know you don’t like hunting but do it anyway. How many people know you don’t like hunting?”
You hesitated. “N…nobody.”
“See? You already told me a secret. We know each other.” He fixed his attention back on you, the world narrowing to the conviction in his eyes. “I know you can do this.”
You almost believed him. Nodding, you took his hands and let him lift you to your feet. The world spun beneath you, the stars above whirling. As you fought the dizziness, Jack kept his hands on you the whole time, a stabilizing anchor as you struggled to right yourself.
When the ground stopped tilting, you opened your eyes again and took a tentative step forward, then another. Each movement sent sharp pain through you, your breath more labored than before. You wanted to hunch over and curl into a ball, perhaps crawl into a hole and die.
Jack led you carefully across the treacherous landscape, steering you around and over gnarled roots hidden by damp leaves. A branch snapped off to your left.
You both froze. The forest fell silent around you.
Heart thundering in your chest, you prayed it wasn’t the creature. God knew your blood was a beacon.
A night bird resumed a tentative song. Breathing a sigh of relief, you resumed your painful trek.
A thought crossed your mind. “What are you doing out here?”
“Looking for a friend.”
“A friend? Out here?”
“Yes. They like it here.”
“Haven’t they heard there’s a monster around these parts?”
You caught the faint uplift of a rueful smile on his lips. “They aren’t afraid.”
“They should be.”
“They can take care of themselves.” The conviction in his voice brooked no argument.
“I hope so,” you muttered.
Another branch snapped, this time behind you. You froze, jerked around to look into the dark. A cry slipped past your lips as pain lanced through your pierced guts.
The silence cracked.
You felt the bullet slice through the space between you and Jack. Instinct drove you down to the floor, dragging Jack along with you. The tip of the stave smashed into the earth, shoving it back through its entrance.
You screamed, the sound shrill and guttural at the same time.
Hands grabbed you under your armpits, dragged you across the detritus. Another gunshot split the air, whizzing past and smashing into a tree.
“Not even the full moon yet,” a voice called out, “and you’re already jonesing for meat? Animal!”
Jack crouched down in front of you, your vision swinging between focused and unfocused. He grabbed your face, palms warm against your chilled cheeks. “Everything is going to be okay, okay? I have to leave you.”
Through the agony-induced fog, you latched onto him. “Don’t leave me.”
“I have to,” he apologized. “You will get hurt otherwise.”
“I’m already hurt.”
Another bullet took a chunk of wood out of the tree you leaned against. Wood chips sprayed over your hair, made you duck. Pain stabbed your gut anew.
“He’s after me, okay? I have to run away so he doesn’t accidentally shoot you.” Jack slipped off his coat and draped it over you, his voice calm despite his haste. “He can get you help.”
“Please don’t leave,” you whispered, fighting against the darkness edging your vision.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, pressing his forehead against yours. “I’m sorry.”
Then he was gone, his warmth vanishing. You glimpsed him hustling through the trees and melting into the darkness cast by their canopies. An altogether different pain constricted your chest.
Footsteps moved through the undergrowth toward you.
“Help,” you gasped, your voice hardly audible above your broken breathing. Blood poured through the ragged wound in your stomach, thickly pulsing between your fingers. “Help me.”
Boots stepped into view. Swearing, the man dropped to his knees, pulled off the jacket. “Jeezus. He did this?”
You shook your head, though it felt like it rolled on a loose stem. “Hunter’s…trap.”
“Shit.” The man slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled out a large walkie-talkie from deep within his coat. “Let’s get you help, lady.”
You glanced back through the trees as he radioed for help. A shadow seemed to detach itself from a tree far ahead. For a moment, it seemed like it gave a thumbs up.
Then it was gone.
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