A Different Kind of Hell

A/N: So I've had this vision of...well I'll get to the exact vision in the next chapter...but I've had it for a really long time, and finally I'm writing it. Hope you enjoy!

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"Sam!" Dean shouted as he pushed against the bitter cold wind that seemed to be trying to force him in the opposite direction. "Sammy!" he called out again. He was getting scared, now. The snow was up to his knees, and his jeans were soaked halfway up his thighs as he trudged through it, in desperate search for his brother. North Dakota was a bitch in winter. Dean forgot the last time he'd ever been so damned cold.

The brothers had driven up when some campers went missing, leaving behind a bloody and destroyed campsite. No trace of them could be found otherwise. It sounded strangely familiar to the wendigo case they'd worked years ago, only this was more in the right location. Only, what they ended up finding wasn't a wendigo, or anything at all supernatural. Yeah. What they'd found was a huge pile of crap. Literally. The campers had been dragged away, eaten and digested by a pack of wolves; their trails covered by fallen snow. For once, their 'nature guide' came in handy, and identified the several disgusting piles of doggy doo-doo, and the semi-digested pieces of human flesh and bone therein.

Dean had smiled at Sam's "I'm gonna throw up" face, at the time. But he wasn't smiling now. He wasn't smiling at all, because it'd been three hours since Sam had gotten himself separated from them, and it was starting to get dark.

It was stupid, really. They'd started heading back after they discovered the remains. There had been storm clouds forming in the sky above them, and even the guide had grown nervous at the sight of them.

"I don't like the looks of that," he told them. "Meteorologist said there was a chance for a big snow storm tonight. Looks like it'll hit us earlier than expected, which means it's stronger winds than they predicted. We need to get back down, now."

"Okay by me," Dean told him. "We're done here."

"Dean-" Sam tugged Dean's arm right as he'd started to walk.

"What, Sam? You wanna pull a Jurassic Park? Take poo samples while we're here?" he arched an amused brow.

Sam scrunched his face up. "No, dude. I...I gotta..."

"You gotta what?"

"I gotta go."

"Go w-" he paused mid-sentence, realizing what Sam was trying to say. "Oh. Well, go on. You need me to hold your hand or somethin'?"

"Real funny, Dean," Sam replied, annoyed.

"Hurry it up, man. It's gonna start getting colder than it already is."

"You don't have to wait for me. I'll catch up. Just go," Sam urgently waved them off.

"Ohhh..." Dean let out a small laugh. "You gotta go. Have fun finding TP out here," he laughed.

"Shut up, Dean! There's plenty of non-poisonous leaves. Just go!" he shouted as he made his way into the heavier brush. Dean shook his head and laughed, before turning to catch up with the guide.

"Don't you wanna wait for him?" he asked.

"Sam's a good navigator. He won't be long; he eats all that healthy crap that makes your crap less c...less...uh... He won't be long. He'll catch up."

But Sam never caught up. They'd made it all the way back to the guide's SUV without even hearing Sam call out. Dean turned back. But the guide grabbed his arm just as the wind started to pick up. "Just wait! He's probably not far behind, and by the time you get back-stepping, the snow is gonna be too thick to see through, and you'll pass right by each other without even seeing!" he shouted over the wind.

"Then how the hell is Sam supposed to see to get down here?!" Dean shouted. The guide went to his SUV and turned the engine, cutting on the high beams. The light shot straight toward the path they'd come down.

"Now come on, get in the truck until he gets here, or you'll freeze!"

Twenty minutes into the blinding snow, Dean couldn't sit there anymore. Not while his brother was lost out there in this. The outside temperature gauge in the truck said it was fifteen degrees, and it was steadily dropping as the wind picked up. No way he was leaving Sam in that. He pushed the door open after pulling his hood up and pulling the drawstring tight.

"What're you doing?" the guide shouted.

"What the hell do you think? Stay here! In case we need the light to get back!" he slammed the door closed and headed toward the path, only able to see traces of their shoe prints from earlier. "Sammy!" he shouted. "Sam, where the hell are you, man? How much rabbit food did your gigantor ass eat?" He had hoped to hear a bitchy reply from his younger brother. But none came...

Twenty minutes later...

Carl, the nature guide, nervously shook his leg where he still sat in the truck, blindly looking out the windshield at nothing but white, and the faint glow of the high beams beyond it. "I should just go..." he thought. "They're gonna die out there, and I ain't gonna die going after them. No one knows I took them up here. No one even has to know. Those damn wolves...they'll probably get to them before anyone finds them." Carl shook his head. He wasn't a bad guy. He did suggest they wait for Sam in the first place, and he did try to tell Dean not to go back out in the storm. He shouldn't have to lose his job because a couple of stubborn out-of-town private detectives didn't wanna listen.

A slam against the passenger window pulled him from his thoughts and made him jump. The door swung open, and the taller of the brothers appeared. After a quick glance around inside the vehicle, he turned to the guide. "Where's Dean?"

"Out looking for you!"

"What?"

"I told him to wait, but he wouldn't listen!"

"How long has he been out there?" he asked, angrily.

"Little over twenty minutes, I think," he replied.

"Damnit! I've gotta go find him-"

"At least warm up a bit, first!" the guide shouted. "You won't do him any good dead!"

Sam's lips formed a thin line as logic outweighed his instinctual need to go find Dean. He climbed into the seat and closed the door, grateful for a break from the harsh, bitter wind. He furiously rubbed his hands together, then up and down his thighs, attempting to speed up the warming process.

"So what happened out there?" Carl asked.

"Got turned around, once the storm started," Sam told him. Eventually I saw the headlights; started heading this way. Definitely wasn't the path we came up on."

"I'd be surprised if you'd have seen each other if you'd been on the right path, right now anyway."

"I need to get back out there. It's getting worse."

"Wait," Carl sighed. "Look...just...at least take this pack with you," he reached into the back seat and pulled a huge back pack up front. "It's got winter weather survival gear in it, as well as food and water. There's stuff to make a small shelter and fire... In case you do find him and you can't get back down right away."

"What're you gonna do?"

"I'm gonna go get some help, before this damn truck gets stuck in the snow," he replied. "I'm not gonna leave you guys out here to die. Even if I've gotta bring back a chopper once this storm clears..."

Dean. Present time...

"S-Sa-" Dean's voice was barely audible anymore. His throat was raw and numb. He was cold from the inside out, and yet somehow he managed to keep on walking. But even that was getting difficult, now. His muscles were stiff. He couldn't pick up his leg to take a step, but pushed through the knee-high snow to move forward.

The snow had stopped, and the wind wasn't even as bad anymore. But it was pitch dark, and the temperature was still dropping. Not that he could get any colder than he already was. He was pretty damned sure of that. And if he was this cold, Sam was, too. He couldn't let himself stop; not until he found his brother. Hopefully that idiot nature guide would come back for them, because Dean wasn't really a hundred percent clear on what, exactly, he was gonna be able to do once he did find Sam. He desperately tried not to think about the possibility of finding him dead and blue, face down in the cotton-white hell.

The thought seeped into his head against his will. It was upon trying to shake it out, that he tripped over his own foot and came crashing down into the three feet of freezing wonderland. "Sh-sh-shit...n-n-n-no!" he cursed, realizing that all of his muscles were seized to the point that he could do nothing to get himself back up again...

TBC...