A/N: This story comes at the request of my dearest ArielButtercup, who celebrates her birthday today! :) Yay! Happy Birthday, babe! You always will be the Sammy to my Dean!

And even as I wander

I'm keeping you in sight

You're a candle in the window

On a cold, dark, winter night

And I'm getting closer than I ever thought I miiiight…

—Oh, sorry. Heard it somewhere, can't get it out of my head. ;)

Anyway, Ariel requested a story where Sammy is hurt and Dean is the big brother. She also requested Sam be delirious and feverish and a little funny. But she also wanted him lost, hurt and alone first, and that's unfortunately where we start. Don't worry, though—Dean will come to the rescue soon enough!

It's also thanks to Ariel that I'll be finishing up my crack!fic of negotiable hilarity "Like Cats and Dogs" hopefully around Christmas, but certainly by the time I start school again…otherwise it'll never get done!

This story happens some time before Sam leaves for Stanford.

…

PRUDENCE

…

Sam Winchester liked learning things. He liked reading, looking things up, learning about things by researching them. He liked school. He loved libraries. His brand new laptop—Dad's eighteenth birthday present to him—was his most prized possession. Sam loved learning.

Sam, however, hated learning anything the hard way.

Take Black Dogs, for instance. Dad's journal, a few old tomes from library basements, and the occasionally-reliable internet helped him build a fairly straightforward MO for these things: Slimy, amphibious dog-like apparitions. They could occupy a corporeal or incorporeal form; or else they could teleport, but "scholars" were divided on this issue. They could be killed by ordinary means, but the trick was getting them to hold still. Usually they had to be focused on a hunt or a piece of meat. They traveled singly or in pairs during mating season (early to mid-October). Native to the British Isles, they traveled wherever ships could take them, much like rats. They were nocturnal by nature, although there had been sightings of them in the early morning and at dusk.

That was all fine. Sam liked to know what he was getting into, especially when his brother dragged him out hunting in the middle of freaking December in freaking Michigan.

Dean liked to go in half-cocked and learn from experience—what Sam liked to call the hard way—but Sam sure didn't.

So, finding out that these damn things can travel in packs was just the start of a very long, very bad day.

…

Sam had been sitting here all night. Like, all night. In the cold. Up a tree. With those things—all twelve of them—snapping at the lower branches, daring him to come down so they could rip him to shreds.

"N-no-no-not a ch-chance, you sons of b-bi-bitches," Sam shivered, tucking himself in closer against the largest branch.

Where the hell was Dean in all this?

At least his arm didn't hurt anymore. Maybe it wasn't broken, after all. Awesome.

Come to think of it, his leg and side didn't hurt, either, and that was where he'd definitely been bitten. So that was wrong. Crap. The cold was screwing with him. Admittedly, that probably helped him not to bleed to death, but still. Freezing to death wasn't much harder to do. Sam tried wiggling his fingers and toes. He was pretty sure he didn't feel anything. Crap.

This was all Dean's fault, the stupid jerk. Big time. He was the moron, here, not planning enough ahead of time, wanting to shoot first and ask questions later. Sure, Sammy, we can take care of it, no problem. Clean it up before Dad gets back—hell, before dinner time. Grab your jacket, Sammy. And you'd better put on an extra pair of socks.

Yeah. Those were coming in real handy now. Thanks, Dean.

Sam wasn't even sure where he was right now. Dean had taken the map from him while driving and…maybe it was still in the car somewhere? Sam knew only that they had hiked three miles east from where they had parked, and then he had run downhill, toward the river. They had gotten attacked and Dean managed to be lured away by a stupid decoy dog before the whole pack grinned at Sam, alone in the moonlight. Sam had dropped his rifle after it went empty, with three down and twice that still to contend with. And more continued to join the chase. He must have run another two miles at least—maybe more, it was hard to keep track of distance when you were careening downhill with the jaws of death nipping at you—before he'd fallen off a precipice he'd missed in the dark. He had hurt his arm there, but he had no choice but to keep going unless he wanted to be a chew toy, and might have been stuck running like that forever until his lungs or legs gave out, but managed to hear the river just before he fell into it. Actually, the only bit of luck he had had all night was climbing into the oak tree he was now sitting in.

Then—as now—weaponless, bored, cold, and discovering new injuries as adrenaline wore off and then forgetting about them as cold numbed them away, he waited for Dean.