A/N: After suffering massive writers' block for my other story, I decided to take a whack at writing some Supernatural fic. This story was written for the One Shot Party 2 one-shot challenge at The Beta Branch. Rating of T is for language and some violence. Enjoy!

Freezer Burn

The first thing Dean became aware of was cold. It seemed to press down on his chest, seeping into his bones. He felt his face pull into a grimace and shifted under the slight weight. He could smell something now, just faintly: the slight tang of burning leaves, of snow before it fell. Something silky tickled his nose and he swiped at it half-heartedly. The tickling shifted to the side of his face. Annoyed, he dragged his eyes open. A beautiful woman was smiling down at him, all large dark eyes and soft bluish lips. Her long black hair cascaded down around her pale face and fell against his cheeks. He smiled drowsily as a slender white hand reached towards his cheek. Hey, if this was a dream he was totally onboard. But before her fingers made contact he blinked again and suddenly she had death in her eyes and fangs between her blue lips and holy shit she was-

Dean woke with a jolt. His hands were still dreaming and jerked instinctively into a defensive position. One of them slammed into something hard and sharp; the other rose futilely to fend off the ghostly woman. Something stabbed at his fingers and tinkled down onto his sleeve. Swearing, he pulled himself up onto one elbow amid the wreckage of…something else. Blinding pain lanced through his head when he moved and he winced.

Sam shoved him through the door. "Don't let her touch you, Dean!" They burst out into the snow, racing for the truck. "Wait, the oil!" Sam shouted. He doubled back towards the house, his dark hair whipping in the wind.

"No! Sammy!" Dean screamed over the howling wind. Snow whipped around his legs, ice crystals stinging against his bare face. He could see Sam's tall form stumbling for the door. "Forget it; let's get the hell out of here!"

He slammed into something hard and dark: the truck door. Frantically Dean groped for the handle, looking over his shoulder for that thing. He wrenched the door open and threw himself inside. Snow rasped across the windshield. Dean jammed the unfamiliar key into the ignition and twisted it desperately. Nothing happened. He swore. "Come on, Sam!" he shouted out into the snow. "We gotta go!"

He twisted the key in the truck's ignition again. This time it caught and the engine roared to life. He turned back to the window to scream for Sam again, but she was there, her bloodless hand pressed against the glass and her horrible dead eyes staring directly at him. He yelled with surprise and went for the shotgun under the seat, but her blue lips parted into a smile and the truck rocked and his head connected with the steering wheel-

Dean blinked several times, willing the world to stop spinning, but everything was still all cock-eyed. Finally, he realized it was because the truck (it was the truck, right?) was tilted. He was lying half across the driver's seat and the dashboard, one hand reaching through the broken windshield into the snow. Something warm (it was the only thing that felt warm; man, it was cold as balls) trickled into his eyes and he realized it was blood.

"Sam?" he called instinctively, reaching up to dab at the gash on his forehead. His own voice was painfully loud in his ears. He groaned as he raised his head and glanced around for his brother. "Sammy?"

There was no response. Typical. Dean swore and pulled his arm back through the remnants of the windshield. Gingerly, he tried to sit up, or at least as close to up as he could get. The truck was lying almost on its driver's side, propped against something snow-covered he could not see through the shattered window. The motion made his head throb and he felt bile begin to rise in his throat. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to take a deep breath. He'd have to climb out the passenger side. Dean looked up towards the door, but he saw nothing but gray sky and snow-covered trees through the shattered window. Well, at least it would make getting out of the truck easier.

Slowly, painfully, Dean dragged himself up through the cab and over the passenger seat. Glass tinkled down around him as he climbed. Somehow he managed to extract himself through the broken window without cutting himself and dropped heavily to the ground. The impact was too much for his head and he sank woozily to one knee, seeing stars. The cold, wet sensation of melting snow soaking through the knee of his jeans was almost as good as a slap to the face. He shook himself and took several deep breaths of the frigid air, willing his head to clear.

Dean got to his feet. There was still no sign of Sam, and that worried him. He sucked in a deep breath. "Sam!" he yelled as loudly as he could. "Sammy! Where are you, man?"

His shout sounded hushed, probably muffled by all the snow. The powdery white stuff was deep enough to reach the middle of his calves. Dean sighed, his breath billowing outward in a puff of white frost. He looked around at the snow-covered trees and shivered. Jesus, it was cold. He fumbled inside his jacket with numb, bloody fingers until he found a leather-bound flask, the one not marked with a silver cross. Dean unscrewed the top and took a long swallow. The whiskey burned pleasantly down his throat, warming his stomach. He took another long swallow and capped the flask, eyeing the wrecked truck. It bothered him that he couldn't remember why he had gotten inside, or how it had ended up on its side.

Judging from the tire-sized bare patches in the snow, something had tipped the truck over onto what looked like a pile of snowy lumps. Broken glass littered the ground. He crouched a little, wincing as his head protested the action, to examine the shattered windshield. The glass had all fallen inward, same as the window in the door. There was a large dent in passenger's side door, too. Dean frowned. Something, something strong, had hit the truck from the outside. The false, whiskey-induced warmth was spreading into his limbs now and easing the throb in his head, but even with these two pleasant sensations he couldn't remember for the life of him what had happened. Absently, he walked over and brushed the snow from the pile of lumps. It was wood, old half-rotten wood, but it had been deliberately stacked. A woodpile. He looked up. A woodpile meant people and-

The ramshackle house loomed out of the snowy trees. How had he missed that before? It hadn't been much of a house, even before it had been abandoned. Dean blinked. How did he know that? He walked towards where the front door had been. Like the truck, it appeared to have been blown inward. Fresh splinters, golden against the old weathered wood of the doorway, marked where the hinges had once been. Half-obliterated footprints marred the snow surrounding the house. One set was roughly the size of Dean's own boots, and the other was somewhat larger. Sam.

"Sam!" he yelled again, stepping through the remnants of the doorway. He stowed his flask safely inside his jacket and reached for his gun. His hand came up empty and he swore under his breath. It must have fallen out in the truck. Stupid, stupid, stupid; he should have never left the truck without it. Dean dug around in another pocket and came up with one of his knives instead. That would work. He flicked the blade out and slipped carefully inside.

Other than a lot more snow than there should have been, there wasn't much in the entryway. Dean kicked at it a little bit. Fresh powder, just like outside on the truck, but it was already beginning to melt a little in the slight warmth of the building. It was dark, but not so dark he went for his flashlight. A few yards in and the hall opened up into a single large room. His eyes widened.

John Winchester's journal lay open on the floor near the center of the room. Papers, some new, some yellow with age, had been scattered around the room as if blown by a sudden wind. As Dean's eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could make out the dead remnants of a fire in the rough stone fireplace. A glimmer of light on metal caught his attention, and he spotted the sawed-off that Sam favored lying on the floor. Dean swallowed hard.

They had been hunting, he realized, stepping forward. His foot landed on something soft and he recoiled, but it was just a glove. Two gloves, actually, old, battered shearling gloves that he recognized as belonging to Bobby Singer. He squatted to pick them up and pulled them onto his numb hands. He grabbed the shotgun next. By the heft of it, it was loaded with salt rounds. Okay, so they were hunting something that could be repelled by salt?

"Yeah," Dean mumbled to himself. " 'Cause that really narrows it down."

His father's journal followed; tucked safely in an inner pocket of his jacket. Somehow he knew whatever they had been hunting wasn't mentioned inside. Dean eyed the fireplace. Maybe he should at least get a fire going; try to warm up a little before continuing the search for Sam. He fumbled for his lighter, but it too seemed to be missing. Dammit. He picked up one of the stray papers anyway, thinking it would be useful for tinder, and scowled. It was covered with characters he couldn't read; Japanese maybe. Not helpful. He stuffed it in his pocket and selected another page. Dean could read this one; it was English and Sam's handwriting, but the combinations of letters didn't make any sense. It was just nonsense syllables. Dean wasn't stupid enough to try to read it aloud (in his line of work, accidentally summoning something was a very real fear), but damned if he wasn't stumped.

With a huff of frustration, he dropped onto a rickety chair near the fireplace. He could feel blood trickling down his face again and he swiped at it angrily. The cut must've opened again at some point. Irritated, Dean mashed his sleeve against it. He looked down at the scuffed wooden floor from under his jacket sleeve, trying to decide what to do next.

There was something faintly marked into the floor. Dean cocked his head slightly, wincing as his jacket scraped against cut on his forehead. Not just marked, but burned into what was left of the varnish. Symbols like he had seen on the scrap of paper, burned into a rough circle. Pain forgotten, Dean crouched and examined the markings. There was a familiar tang under the rancid scent of the scorched resin; a tang of burning leaves and the smell of snow before it fell-

Sam finished the incantation and rocked back on his heels. "We can kill her now," he said proudly, looking up at his brother from under his ridiculous knit stocking cap. Neither of them had anticipated just how cold it was going to be in the mountains, looking for this damned spirit or whatever the hell she was. They'd been forced to improvise. Thankfully Bobby had left a couple of random things in the truck's glove compartment. It was probably the only time Dean had actually found gloves in one. Outside, the wind howled.

Dean raised an eyebrow. He glanced at the small vial in Sam's hand. "That's gonna kill a yuki-onna?" he asked dubiously. "Dunno why Bobby was so worked up 'bout us going after her alone, if that's it."

"Well, first we have to steal her knife," Sam said with a shrug. "Then we have to coat it with the blessed oil."

Dean grinned at the words "blessed oil" and edged a little closer to the fire. Sam rolled his eyes before he could make the obvious joke. "Then, uh, flame on?" Dean asked. His brother nodded.

The howling outside was growing, and Dean could hear blowing snow hissing against the ground. Sam dropped Dean's lighter and reached for the salt-loaded shotgun. His Adam's apple bobbed above the collar of his jacket. "You, uh, did the salt lines, right?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yeah," Dean said, warily glancing towards the hallway. The hiss of snow outside had become a roar. A faint odor was seeping in through the cracked walls and under the door. It smelled a little like burning leaves. "Of course-"

Before he could finish the sentence, the door blew inward off its hinges. So much for the salt lines.

Dean's knees hit the floor sharply and he came back to himself. His head pounded in protest but he ignored the pain. He fumbled for the bit of paper with Sam's writing on it and saw, in surprisingly neat letters, yuki-onna. A snow woman. He rocked back on his haunches, scanning the floor urgently. Sure enough, a small silver box had been scattered to one side of the room. His lighter. He grabbed it and carefully tucked it into his jeans pocket.

But there was still something missing, well, besides Sam. Dean glanced around the room, but he didn't see any vials. There was, however, a pile of half-rotten wood that looked like it had once been a desk in one corner. It was the only place the vial could have gone. He lay flat on the floor and groped underneath; hoping he wasn't putting his vulnerable fingers into a rat nest or something worse. Something rattled under his hand. Even through Bobby's gloves he could feel it didn't belong. He dragged his hand back, and found that he was clutching a small, ornate vial with characters he couldn't read etched into the glass.

That left Sam. Dean got to his feet. He had a knife in his pocket, another knife strapped to his ankle, Sam's shotgun (he never had found their duffel of supplies), and the magic oil or whatever it was. He wracked his brains for the relevant lore, but nothing else came to mind. This yuki-onna might not leave footprints, but Sam sure as hell would. If they were there, Dean would find them.

The cold hit him like a physical blow when he stepped outside the shelter of the tumbledown house. Dean gritted his teeth and zipped his jacket up as high as it would go. He glanced up at the sky. Maybe an hour left of daylight, two if he was lucky. Damn. He'd lost feeling in his toes, but he didn't have a choice. He needed to find Sam before darkness fell. He tucked the shotgun under his arm and started circling the house, looking for his brother's footprints. A dark spot against the white snow caught his eye, and he waded through calf-deep snow to pick it up. Sam's knit hat. A dribble of something reddish-brown was sprinkled across the snow nearby, within a couple of small hollows that looked vaguely like someone's knees. A chill unrelated to the cold raced down Dean's spine. A very faint set of footprints left the disturbed snow, leading into the woods. He tightened his grip on the shotgun and tromped after Sam.

Thank god or whoever for Sam's giant feet, Dean thought, while he slogged through the snow. The yuki-onna had managed to obliterate whatever tracks she might've made in the powdery snow, but she had apparently underestimated (could spirits or ghosts or whatever estimate? Christ, the cold was making him loopy) the depth of Sam's tracks. He rubbed his hands together and tugged Sam's stupid hat down a little farther over his ears. It itched and stuck to the cut on his forehead, but it was warm.

Dean was deep into the woods now, and he didn't like it. It was just so…quiet. The snow muffled everything, including his own footsteps (which was useful) but it also muffled the footsteps of anything that might be hunting him. The little depressions in the snow that looked like knees near Sam's tracks were occurring more frequently, and it worried him. Every now and then there was another little sprinkling of blood across snow, and every time he spotted one, Dean redoubled his pace. Just to make everything more fun, the snow seemed to be getting deeper. His jeans were soaked nearly to his knees, compounding his misery. His feet felt like blocks of ice.

Dean stamped several times in place, trying to get blood flowing down there. He didn't dare drink any more whiskey, just in case he had a fight on his hands. It would slow his reflexes. He bit his tongue and kept walking. A greenish patch on the snow caught his attention, and he stamped up to it. Sam's coat. He picked it up and flung it over his shoulder. He had to be close. He slipped the safety off the shotgun and held it ready.

It was a mark of his own exhaustion that Dean didn't notice the cave entrance near where the coat had been lying in the snow. He nearly walked past it before he smelled the faint scent of burning leaves and froze in his tracks. A bright splash of blood marred the snow above the threshold, a couple inches above Dean's head. It was about where Sam's forehead would have reached. He gritted his teeth and walked inside.

If it had been cold outside, the interior of the cave felt like a goddamn freezer. Dean couldn't help shivering violently. The cold was everywhere; it seemed to cut straight through his two jackets and seep into his very bones. But he held the shotgun level and rummaged for his flashlight. He clicked it on and gripped it in his teeth, continuing deeper into the icy cave. The meager light refracted in the ice, making glow an unearthly blue.

"Wasn't expecting a frigging wampa," he muttered around the flashlight. The only reason his teeth weren't chattering was because he had the flashlight in there. "Sammy!" he whispered loudly. "Sam!"

Finally, he rounded a corner and the tunnel of ice widened into a single large room. Sam was suspended by his boots from the icy ceiling, looking for all the world like an overgrown Luke Skywalker in the wampa cave. He was so tall, however, that his fingers dragged against the icy cave floor. Dean grinned around the flashlight.

His grin abruptly faded as the yuki-onna emerged from a side passage, seeming to hover over the ground in a shimmering cloud of blowing snow. She had a long, crystalline knife in one hand and a bowl in the other. She placed the bowl on the ground underneath Sam's head and wound her pale fingers into his hair, raising the knife to his throat-

He spat out the flashlight. "I don't think so, Frosty!" Dean yelled. She released Sam and hissed at him, but Dean was already firing. The salt round caught her mid chest. With an inhuman shriek, she vanished into an explosion of snow and ice. Her knife clattered to the ground. "Sam!"

He let out a sigh of relief as Sam's eyes fluttered open. Dean walked over to his brother, grinning again with relief. Apart from a couple of large scratches on his face, Sam seemed unhurt. He set the shotgun at his feet and fished his knife out of his jacket. "C'mon, let's get you down. Your Mark Hamill impression sucks."

"W-what?" Sam gasped. His eyes rolled around frantically. His lips were blue with cold, and his face was very pale around the bloody scratches. Finally, he focused on his brother. "D-Dean?"

"Who else would save your sorry ass?" Dean replied distractedly, standing on his numb toes to try and get a look at how Sam was attached to the ceiling. He tugged experimentally on his brother's legs, but he was stuck solidly in place. Somehow the yuki-onna had managed to freeze Sam's feet into the ice. "Dude, how the hell-"

"C-coming. She," Sam muttered. He sounded…drunk, Dean thought. He glanced down at him worriedly. Sam's eyes had closed again, and despite the cold, he wasn't shivering. "Back. She."

"What?" Dean said. The shotgun was within easy reach, but he had to get Sam down, and to do that he needed both hands. The cuffs of his jeans and his boots were frozen a couple inches into the ice. The laces, though, were exposed, and that gave Dean an idea. "Hang in there, man, I'm working on it."

"Fire," Sam mumbled. He grabbed Dean's leg, making the other man jump with surprise. "Y-you have to…kill…fire."

Dean swallowed hard and stood on his toes. Sam was clearly not all right. He had no idea how he was going to get his brother back to the cabin like this, but one problem at a time. He sawed away with his knife at the frozen denim around Sam's ankles. It made a rasping noise that made Sam panic and writhe weakly in place, clutching at Dean's clothes. "Relax!" he snapped. "Hold still, or you're gonna lose some toes."

"She-she-," Sam gasped. "She's coming back."

The tang of burning leaves, of snow before it fell, began to permeate the air. Dean felt his eyes widen. He redoubled his effort to free Sam's legs. Sam whimpered pitifully, his neck twisting from side to side as he looked for the yuki-onna. Finally, Dean cut through the last of the fabric and began to saw desperately at Sam's frozen bootlaces. He was just about to free one foot when he heard the hiss of blowing snow across ice and he knew she was there.

"Sorry about this, Sammy," Dean grunted as the last bootlace snapped. He tugged as hard as he could on Sam's legs. The frozen leather held for an instant before breaking free, sending both Sam and Dean tumbling to the floor. Sam's legs caught Dean across his chest, knocking the air from his lungs.

Gasping, he went for the shotgun but the yuki-onna beat him to it. She flicked the shotgun away from his hand with a gust of supernatural wind, her long black hair billowing to either side. Her hollow eyes were fixed on Dean now, her fangs appearing between blue lips. She reached for him and he quickly rolled away, his jacket scraping across the icy floor. "SAM MOVE!" Dean bellowed, scrambling after the wayward shotgun.

But Sam remained motionless on the dirty ice. The yuki-onna vanished in a puff of snow and reappeared beside him. He yelled, but she didn't try to touch him. A great gust of icy wind blew him off his feet, slamming him against the cave wall hard enough to make him see stars. Blinding pain in his thigh and left shoulder followed, and he screamed. A shard of ice was sticking out of his flesh.

She'd stabbed him. She'd stabbed him with a frigging icicle.

"Oh come on!" Dean howled, frustrated. Death by icicle had to be the lamest thing he'd ever heard. He reached for the shard in his leg with his good hand, but he couldn't get a grip on the ice. He was pinned to the goddamn wall. "Sammy! Get the gun!"

The yuki-onna was advancing on him, smiling horribly with her blue lips. A blue tongue flicked over her fangs. Dean flattened himself against the wall, his blood roaring in his ears. His mouth went dry with panic. He could feel the temperature of the air dropping as she got closer and closer, her bloodless fingers reaching towards his face-

Suddenly Sam was there, a crystal knife in his fist. He jammed it into the yuki-onna's back. She let out an unearthly scream and vanished. Snow smattered across Dean's face. "Jesus, Sammy, you cut that awful close," he gasped.

Sam swayed on his feet. His eyes were unfocused and he looked like he was going to collapse.

"Oh no no no you don't!" Dean cried. The ice pinning him to the wall was finally beginning to melt from the heat of his body. It snapped under his weight and he slumped to the floor. His vision swam for a moment, but he gritted his teeth and managed to cling to consciousness. He gripped the wound in his shoulder with his good hand. Bobby's glove grew damp against his palm.

Sam blinked and swayed again, but somehow kept his feet. "The- the oil, Dean," he said, in a sudden moment of clarity. The rasp of snow against ice was already beginning to sound as the yuki-onna reconsolidated her body. His words cut through Dean's own fog of pain. Right. They had to steal her blade, douse it in oil, and stab her with the flaming blade. Well, they had the blade.

Dean released his shoulder and dug in his pockets with his bloody hand. The yuki-onna was coming back; he could smell her. Heart pounding, he finally found his lighter and the blessed oil. "Sam! Here!"

Sam stared at him blankly. "I-I don't- I can't," he said, looking puzzled by the complex stopper on the vial of oil, and the wheel of the lighter.

"JUST DO IT!" Dean shouted. Reluctantly, Sam accepted the proffered lighter and the vial. Dean shivered, his teeth chattering. The temperature of the room seemed to drop even further. "Sammy…!"

Somehow Sam had managed to unstopper the vial and pour the oil over the crystalline blade. Now he was fumbling with obviously numb hands to light the lighter. He looked like he was going to cry. With a final hiss of snow, the yuki-onna reappeared a few yards from Sam, snarling furiously. He nervously backed away from her, edging towards his brother against the wall.

"Give it to me!" Dean yelled.

Sam dropped the lighter in his lap, his dull eyes wide with fear. The blade was shaking in his hand. Dean clicked the lighter once, twice, finally a flame sprung to life. The yuki-onna was reaching toward Sam's throat. He jammed the flame against the blade and the oil ignited with a woosh. But Sam's knees wobbled and he sank to the floor, the flaming knife falling much too close to Dean's face for his comfort. Desperately, Dean grabbed his brother's hand and jammed the knife into the yuki-onna's belly. Her once-beautiful face contorted with pain and surprise. Hot white flames licked outward from the hilt of the knife in her belly, racing over her limbs and flowing black hair. She let out a final, ear-piercing shriek as the fire consumed her and vanished in a cloud of ash.

Dean sagged with relief back against the icy wall, pain from his wounds clawing through the rush of adrenaline from the fight. He weakly reached up and put his good hand over the hole in his shoulder. He could still feel blood and melting trickling down through the wound in his thigh. Sam huddled against him, his long limbs folded almost comically in an attempt to get warm. There was a hole in one of his socks. Suddenly it was the funniest thing Dean had ever seen, Sam's stupid pink toes wiggling through the hole. He began to laugh, his body quaking with semi-hysterical mirth against his brother's ribs.

He was still chuckling like a loon two hours later, when Bobby finally found them.

"You goddamn idjits!" a familiar voice growled not far from Dean's ear.

Dean grimaced without opening his eyes. It was lovely and warm, wherever he was, and he really just wanted to sleep. A sharp pain stabbed into his shoulder and he yelped and flinched. His eyes flew open. Bobby Singer's gruff, bearded face was less than a foot from his own. A strong hand pressed him back down against the cot.

"Man up, Winchester," Bobby grumbled, his eyes narrow with concentration. He dropped a syringe onto Dean's blanket-covered chest and picked up a needle threaded with silky thread. "Keep movin' around like that and I'm gonna mess up these stitches. You're lucky it's just a flesh wound."

"Good to see you too, Bobby," Dean gasped. He relaxed as whatever Bobby had pumped into his arm kicked in, numbing the area around his wound. That was kind of him. He didn't usually bother with such niceties before patching Dean or Sam up. Under the blanket, he could feel a swath of bandages already stuck to his thigh. He was glad he'd been out for that. Well, at least they'd avoided the hospital.

Dean craned his neck, looking for his brother. Sam was sitting nearby on one of Bobby's battered easy chairs, wearing a pile of blankets and a vaguely emasculated expression. A mug steamed gently in front of him. He smiled sheepishly when he saw Dean looking at him, and Dean grinned.

"As I was saying," Bobby growled, shoving him down again. "You goddamn idjits! I told you to wait for me or Rufus to get there. A yuki-onna is nothin' to play with, 'specially if you ain't dealt with one before!"

"We muddled through," Sam said. His voice was hoarse, but to Dean's relief, he didn't sound nearly as loopy as he had in the cave.

Bobby turned away from his work on Dean's shoulder and glowered at Sam. "You were both near froze to death when I found you. Damn straight you muddled. You're lucky you got all your toes, boy."

Dean snorted, and Bobby yanked on the thread holding his skin together a little harder than necessary. He winced. "And you, you coulda bled out!"

"But I didn't," Dean observed, only a little smug. "Thanks to you."

"Flattery ain't gonna get you nowhere, son."

"Not flattery, Bobby," Sam piped up, his dark eyes wide with feigned innocence. "Just gratitude,"

The corner of Bobby's mouth twitched upward inside his beard. "Fine," he said gruffly, but his eyes twinkled merrily. "I'm warning you, though. Next time you go runnin' off against my better advice, there ain't gonna be any novocain when I patch you up. If I patch you up."

"Fair enough," Dean agreed, somehow managing to keep a straight face. Even without looking, he could tell Sam was smirking behind the other hunter's back. They all knew it was an empty threat. Bobby knew they would run off again, just like they knew Bobby would be there help patch them up whenever they came limping back.

Please review! :)