As the summary says, this is a larger continuation of chapter nine of my longer fic: An Unlikely Friendship, and it is included in this story. I've been doing some editing on the other chapters so if you have been following that story from any point before January 2019 it should be a little different. Other than combining chapters 14 and 15 and writing a new chapter 15, the story is largely unchanged, I think.

If you don't want to read my other fic, and I don't think you need to for the purposes of this story, then I hope you enjoy this story.

Chapter Nine

It was a cold, Friday morning and Sam was waiting for the bell to signal that he should go to class.

"I'm telling you Sam," Ross said, excitedly. "There is something out in the forest and we're going to find it!"

Steven, the other creator of Ross' crazy scheme, nodded enthusiastically.

Sam stared at the pair like they were crazy, which they were. What lunatics went out to a forest where a dozen or, so people had been turned to ice and frozen to death?

He knew what was in that forest. It was an angry poltergeist that had been drowned in a frozen lake. His dad and Dean were having trouble with this hunt because they weren't even sure if there was a body anymore. It could still be at the bottom of the frozen lake for all they knew.

"What do you think this thing is, then?" Sam asked trying not to let his voice betray how angry and annoyed he was with the two boys he had accidentally made friends with. In his defence, they had seemed perfectly normal when he first met them.

It really annoyed him that they were trying to get trapped in a world where there was no escape. Once you saw the supernatural it never left you alone.

"Jack Frost!" Steven said.

Sam smiled internally at the mention of his best friend. They were almost always together during the winter months. Sam never doubted the winter spirit, but now he had to worry about too morons who were trying to die years before their time.

Sam shared a look with Rachel, his other friend who actually was normal. "Jack Frost isn't real." He told the pair. "No of it is real. There is no Santa, or Easter bunny or tooth fairy. Ghosts aren't real, vampires aren't real, werewolves aren't real. The weather is cold, people are freezing to death. It's sad, but not supernatural."

Steven and Ross frowned. "Really?" Ross asked dejectedly.

"Really," Sam insisted.

The bell rang loudly through the school.

"C'mon we've got to get to class." Rachel said pulling Ross away to geography while Sam began dragging Steven to history.

No one noticed the heartbroken Jack Frost standing outside the open window.

Sam waved goodbye to Rachel, Ross and Steven as they continued on, to their own houses. He started walked his own way to the abandoned house that his family were staying in.

Sam was very surprised when he saw the state of the house. Frost covered the windows and snow was piled up around the driveway and front door. This wouldn't be too unusual, but it hadn't snowed in several weeks.

Sam dug his keys out from his jeans pocket and opened the door cautiously and peered in.

"Jack?" He called out. "Is it you?" The winter spirit hadn't talked to him in a few weeks and he didn't seem to want to break that streak just yet.

For one second Sam worried that the poltergeist had somehow gotten into the house. The house was freezing. It was even colder inside than out. Sam regretted not bringing a jacket to school so he could put it on now.

Sam kept his back to the walls as he skirted along towards the fireplace to grab the fire pokers there. He really hoped they were iron.

"Jack? Please, tell me it's you?" He shouted.

A quiet sniffle caught Sam's attention. "Jack?" he called.

A white-haired head poked through the door from the kitchen. They stared at each other, unblinking, for a long time until Sam looked away.

"What's up Jack?" Sam asked. "You froze the house."

Jack glared at him in what Sam guessed was anger. The frozen tears in his eyes ruined the effect slightly. "As if you don't know," Jack snarled.

Sam blinked at the menace in Jack's tone. "What?" he asked quietly not sure what he had done to make Jack mad at him.

"I heard you this morning," Jack said simply.

"This morning… oh no," Sam finally realised. "Jack is was just… they were…" Sam trailed off with a sigh. "Those guys were idiots, they might have gotten themselves killed. I was trying to convince them not to go off into the forest after the poltergeist!"

Jack didn't answer. He looked away from Sam and crossed his arms.

"Jack, of course you're real. I know you're real! You're my best friend. I believe in you more than I believe in anything else! I just don't want other kids to die when I can stop them. You wouldn't want them to die because they were looking for you, would you?"

Jack looked at him with an unreadable expression in his eyes.

"Winter may kill, Jack, but you don't."

Jack's shoulders slumped, and he sighed. They stared at each other a little helplessly.

"C'mon," Sam decided. "We need an excuse for all that snow before my dad and Dean come back."

An Unlikely Misunderstanding

The house that the Winchesters were renting was an old one. It was large, and a small distance away from town. It was one of the first houses built in the area, and was quickly forgotten when the town formed, leaving only an aging and shrinking family to live in and then rent out the house.

The realtor had seemed happy to have anyone ask about it. She had cut herself off several times before she could blurt out the real reason people didn't want to rent out this house.

Sam liked the history that it held, with furniture and photographs dotted around from every decade that it had stood, but he couldn't deny the obvious creepiness of the building. The current owner of the house was the younger sister of the poltergeist, a young girl who had fallen through the ice of the lake that was beyond the trees surround the house. And the current owner had left the house when her own daughters had fallen through the same ice on two separate occasions. No one had died because the sister had never let them go out without her, but it was unnerving enough.

Sam could see it from his bedroom window. Some nights he could just about see the outline of a figure hovering above the ice, glaring out at the house.

The real trouble about this haunting was that the body had never been recovered. And there was no way to retrieve it. The lake was frozen over. And no one was willing to go near it anyway, what with all the deaths in the area.

"Her brother was with her when she fell," Sam explained to Jack, as he began the process of shovelling out the driveway for when Dean and John got home. Jack was listening intently while he 'helped' by kicking around the snow and actually helped by directing the Wind to push the snow out of the driveway.

"Maybe he's why she's still hanging on?" Jack suggested. "Was he on the ice too? Maybe she thought that he was still in danger?"

Sam shrugged. "She was out there with an older boy as well, a boyfriend. She might be angry at them, the first people who died were all boys who were about the same age. And the girls who had died and been attacked by the ghost had all looked similar to her – and to her sister, like her nieces. But the brother and the boyfriend are dead. And there's nothing connecting either sister to the house."

Jack hummed. "It's a horrible way to die though," he sympathised. "I would hate to drown. I don't even swim." There was a quietness and pensiveness to the spirit that Sam wasn't used to.

He opened his mouth to ask if the spirit was okay when he felt a sudden drop in the already low temperature. He froze, not from the cold, but because he felt that he couldn't move.

"They left me to die!"

"Hey!" Jack shouted.

Sam couldn't move. He couldn't look behind him, but he could feel the razor-sharp fingers of their ghost dig into his biceps. He could just about make out the blue and translucent skin in the corner of his eyes. She looked as she did on the day she died, but long gone was the sunny little girl that Sam had spotted in the abandoned photographs strewn around the house.

"Let him go!" Jack demanded.

"They left me to die!" The ghost screeched, making Sam flinch and squeeze his eyes shut. He couldn't even cover his ears.

"Who? Sam?" Jack wondered. "Was Sam there when you died?" He took a step forward and the ghost flinched back, her icy claws dragging Sam backwards.

Jack froze and raised his hands in surrender. "What's your name?" He asked, softly.

The ghost shivered. "Marie," she snarled.

Jack nodded. "That's my friend Sam that you have. He's my best friend. Would you mind letting him go?"

The ghost – Marie – shuddered and pulled Sam even closer. He could feel the freezing, soaking body of the girl at his back, slowly soaking through his coats.

"Alright," Jack placated. "I'm Jack Frost, I'm the Spirit of Winter," he said, mentally capitalising his title. Technically, no one ever gave him that title, but the other winter spirits weren't around anymore to fight him. From what little he knew of monarchies and inherited titles, that made him in charge. "You're freezing people to death, that means that you've got to deal with me," he warned.

Sam couldn't see the face the Marie made, but based on the way that she tensed, he imagined that she was angry.

"You killed me!" She snarled.

Jack nodded. "You fell through the ice. It wasn't thick enough to walk on, and it was too cold for you to be able to swim. That shouldn't have happened to you, to anyone. I'm sorry. But you shouldn't be hurting anyone else."

"They left me!"

Sam struggled through the soul deep chill in his body. "Your brother said that you died instantly. Your boyfriend crawled across the ice to pull you out, but you were already gone."

"No!" She screamed. "I saw them! They left!"

"No, they didn't," Jack argued. "They tried to save you, but it was too late."

"Why were you on the ice?" Sam wondered, trying to speak through chattering teeth.

Marie twisted and pushed Sam forward, unhooking her claws from his skin just enough that he was able to stumble away. His legs still shook like he had been dunked underwater and was shivering through hypothermia.

"I was trying to save him," she said, softer. "My brother wanted to ice skate."

For a minute, Jack had a vision of big, pleading green eyes holding up a pair of homemade ice skates and pleading with her big brother. But then the minute passed, and he was looking into icy blue eyes on a frozen face, and big hazel eyes through a curtain of long brown hair on a face that looked equally frozen but far more life-like.

"You were watching your brother, weren't you?" Sam guessed. "Your sister never let her girls out near the lake on their own."

Marie frowned. "She was supposed to watch him!" She growled, but then she frowned again. Sad. "I went for a walk with my boyfriend. He proposed. Then we heard my brother shouting. I would have said yes. I should have had my entire life ahead of me. But I had to keep him safe," she explained. Icy droplets spilled from her eyes.

Her voice lost its unearthly quality, and she sounded like she must have on the day that she died. "I wanted to hurt my sister, to show her what happened when she was supposed to be watching, I didn't want to hurt the girls. But it didn't matter. She had already learned her lesson."

"What about all those other people that froze?" Sam pressed.

Marie shook her head. "They were already dying. They were going to fall through and die too. I killed them first."

Jack doubted that, but he guessed that death didn't leave someone entirely mentally stable. "You need to stop," he insisted.

Marie looked at them with watery eyes. "How?" She asked, helplessly.

Sam felt for her. She had had her whole life ahead of her, and then she had tried to save her brother and died for it. She must have woken up as a ghost and seen everyone leave her, not understanding that they couldn't see her, that she was already dead. What she did was wrong, but Sam could understand why she did it.

"What is keeping you here?" He wondered.

Marie frowned for a moment before she lunged, icy fingers plunging into Sam's chest, wrapping him up in an ice-cold chill. Sam felt weightless as frozen air stabbed at his skin before he was plunged into breathless, freezing world of darkness, with a vice like grip around him.

Jack frantically searched the front of the house, screaming himself hoarse for both Sam and Marie.

The poltergeist had lunged at the hunter, and then both of them had disappeared, leaving Jack terrified and alone.

"SAM!" He shouted again, hearing a distant splash.

He spun around and sprinted through the trees. He could just make out the dying light glinting on the broken and cracking ice of the lake, where he could just about see Sam scrambling across the ice, shivering and shaking as the dragged himself towards the solid ground.

Jack longed to pull him to safety, but he knew that he would only make matters worse. Instead, he rushed past Sam, skidding across the ice and slamming his staff into the too thin layer, thickening it and preventing it from shattering beneath his best friend, plunging him into the black water beneath.

"What did you do!?" He snapped at the ghost, now hovering above the large hole in the centre of the lake.

Marie tilted her head curiously. "My body is gone," she said, sounding oddly detached. "But I never got to wear my ring. He threw it into the lake for me, but I was never able to wear it. I needed someone to find it." She gazed over Jack's shoulder at Sam. "Thank you," she called out to him.

Sam didn't answer, instead he shivered even harder, looking spiteful. "You could have just asked," he groused.

"Can you thicken the ice?" Marie wondered.

Jack spun back around to stare at the ghost. "Spirit of Winter," he repeated. "Of course."

"Can you seal this hole?" Marie asked. "Can you freeze the lake? No one else will die here."

Jack glanced down at the ice beneath his feet. He poked it with his staff. He slid across the ice to the hole and tried not to shudder as the black water churned within. He tapped it with his staff and watched as the ice formed and spread, weaving and knitting across the hole.

A thick pattern of frost stretched across the ice, thickening it and strengthening it. No one would ever fall through there again. No summer would melt it. Marie's body would never be pulled out, but no one else would join her. Not now that she knew the truth.

The ghost watched the lake with a serene smile on her face. "Thank you," she said, happily. "You should go help your friend."

Jack resisted the urge to snap at her and rushed back to Sam, where he had slumped on the ground, shivering. "Sam?"

"I'm fine," Sam said, shivering. "I just need to get back inside."

Jack nodded and dragged the young hunter to his feet. Sam wasn't big, but Jack was glad that he was stronger than the average human, because he wasn't how else he would get Sam home in his uncoordinated and shaking state.

The house was dark when they stumbled through the tree line and Jack had to leave Sam to his own devices when they entered. He lowered the hunter onto the refreshingly soft couch while he hurried upstairs to hunt down some dry clothes for his friend.

He returned in less than a minute to find Sam struggling to peel off his wet clothes, and wincing at the blood dripping down his arms from where Marie had pierced him with her claw-like fingers. At least the cold had slowed the bleeding.

Jack helped Sam tug off his sodden shirts and jackets and left to him to deal with the rest on his own while he tried to start a fire in the grand fire place. Normally, he avoided fire like it was the plague, but, with Sam's life in the balance, he would just into flames to save him.

With his own careful dedication, and the lighter that he found abandoned in the kitchen, he soon had a merry blaze going and he was able to help Sam with the cuts on his arms. Thankfully, Sam had finished getting himself dressed by then.

"Here," Sam said, holding out a shaking hand.

Jack reached out and took the small, wet ring from Sam's hand. It looked so tiny for something that had kept such an angry woman tied here for so long. "Do you think she'll disappear when you burn it?" He wondered.

Sam shrugged. "I hope so. I don't think she'll hurt anyone whatever we do."

Jack nodded and dropped the ring on the small ledge in front of the fire where it could dry off and not get lost somewhere. Before he could return to Sam's side, the door swung open with a crash.

"Sam?" John and Dean called hurrying in.

The two older hunters had gone to hunt down the brother and boyfriend, both dead, to see if they had anything of Marie on their graves that could be keeping her around. Clearly, they hadn't succeeded. But they must have noticed the thick snow and ice surrounding the house in their return, and with a poltergeist around that was freezing people to death they were probably worried.

"In here," Sam answered, shooting Jack an exasperated look. It was like they thought that he couldn't handle himself.

The older Winchesters hurried in. Dean sat down next to Sam on the couch, running a hand through his hair to check him over while John grabbed his arms, frowning at the cuts.

"Are you okay, Sammy?" John asked, worried.

Sam nodded. He pointed to the fireplace, where Jack had now moved safely out of the way. "That's what's keeping her here. We just need to destroy it."

"How did you find it? Did it get you?" Dean asked, poking at the wounds.

Sam winced and nodded. "Yeah, she dragged me into the water to get that, but then she let me go. She didn't know what happened to her, once I told her, she calmed down. She thought that her family left her to die. She was angry."

John shook his head. "She killed people, Sammy. She nearly killed you," he added.

Jack watched the encounter curiously. He had seen the strained relationship between the oldest and youngest Winchesters plenty of times, but it was clear that if Marie had seriously hurt Sam then John would find a way to kill her again.

Sam shrugged. "She won't hurt anyone else."

John sighed. "Dean, go make something warm in the kitchen." When Dean looked like he was going to argue against leaving his brother, John ordered "now, Dean." Dean, with an anxious look at Sam, got up to do what John asked, leaving the father alone with his youngest son.

"Are you alright, Sam?" John asked, again, softer. "You could have been seriously hurt. What happened?"

Sam shrugged. "I had just gotten home from school and started to clear up the snow from the drive when she just grabbed me. She'd never done that before. The shovel was iron, but she got me when my back was turned and then I just… I couldn't move. It was like I was frozen," Sam explained.

John rubbed warm, thick skinned hands over Sam's arms. "It's alright now, Sam. You did good, getting that ring."

Sam smiled. "I didn't really have a choice," he admitted. "I think she wanted it found."

John nodded, "I'll take it outside to salt and burn in a few minutes, once I'm sure none of us will freeze."

Sam watched out of the corner of his eye as a certain winter spirit gave him a nod and them crept from the room, listening to the almost unnoticeable sound of the door opening and closing behind him. Off he goes again, Sam thought.

Jack watched the fire burn in the distance as John salted and burned the ring in a small metal container in the back garden.

In the middle of the lake behind him, Marie bathed in the light of the moon. Jack pushed down the annoyance within him as the Man in the Moon talked to someone else, someone who hadn't spent three hundred years trying to get his attention.

He turned away before the silent conversation finished and he didn't see Marie become the Lady of the Lake, lurking in lakes and saving drowning victims.

Instead, Jack waited for the wind to change and carry him away.