Sam and Tucker had fallen into uneasy silence. They figured they would wait maybe an hour for someone to find them, before taking matters into their own hands. As it was they knew they were crunched for time. The snow had yet to let up. It was still pelting down and entombing the car in a ice-cold coffin. Sam watched as it drifted, finding it odd that something so ethereal and peaceful could be so dangerous. Soon enough even trying to dig their way out of the car would be futile.
"We can't wait any longer." Sam spoke up, finding herself so cold she was past shivering at this point. Her lips were blue and she felt an incredible lethargy starting to creep into her muscles. She knew it was too dangerous to fall asleep, although with each passing minute her eyelids felt as if they had weights tugging them down. Like a curtain draped over a mirror after someone died - she knew they might never open back up.
"Tucker?" She asked as she dazedly realized he hadn't responded. "Tuck? You awake?"
Ice cold fear started to reverberate in her chest as she tried to look back at him.
"TUCKER." She nearly screamed.
To her relief he flinched and gazed up at her. His eyelashes had frost coating them and his hair had snow half in it. He looked as if he was slowly becoming ice.
"It's time." Sam whispered.
Tucker nodded at her, but she could see the uncertainty flash across his features. What if he couldn't walk far or fast enough? What if he fell and couldn't bring himself to get back up? What if there was no service, even after he dragged himself with a broken leg a mile down the mountainside? What if he couldn't find them again even after getting help?
"You have to try." Sam wheezed.
"Sam I-" Tucker started, but Sam shook her head.
"You'll be fine. We'll be fine."
Tucker started to push at the door, upside down, testing it to see how hard it would be to open it. The window was busted out, but he wasn't so sure he could fit through it. After a few minutes of digging and pushing he got the hunk of metal that used to be a door pried open enough that he could slip out.
"I'll be back." Tucker told her, "Stay awake until then."
He paused on the threshold of the door. They both gazed at each other, but found they couldn't think of the proper words to say in a situation such as this.
"Bye." Sam whispered.
"I'll be back." Tucker repeated.
Sam nodded, peering through the rearview mirror as Tucker gave her one last look and left into the dark black abyss outside. She listened to him struggling up the side of the bluff for what seemed like ages, no doubt in incredible pain. Then the sound of him faded into nothing and she was left only with the hiss of the wind and the soft crackle of her music still playing.
As she turned her attention back down to the faintly glowing dashboard she watched as it flicked out, battery dying, dunking her and Danny into absolute darkness and silence. For the first time since the immediate aftermath of the crash she felt utterly alone. Without Tucker to talk to she knew it was going to be difficult to stay awake, and now without even the music for company she was more terrified than ever before. All that was left was her own pain and racing thoughts.
She began to cry softly. The sound of it was comforting in a strange self-fulfilling kind of way, much like an infant sucking its own thumb.
Minutes passed. Hours passed. Sam felt as if she would drive herself insane with nothing but her own mind for company. Her head felt like it might explode and she forced herself to perform awkward sit ups every twenty minutes or so to get her head above her heart lest she blackout from hanging upside down for so long.
She couldn't even see Danny next to her anymore. He was a faint outline in the dim moonlight. Sam wondered darkly if he had stopped breathing. If she was hanging limply next to a corpse, for she had no way of checking short of reaching out and touching his ice cold limp arm.
After crying was no longer appealing she lapsed into singing to herself. She sang every song she knew by heart. Lullabies and old rock songs. Her favorite Humpty Dumpty ballads and some old camp classics. Even the Casper High fight song, which, weirdly enough, filled her with a renewed sense of strength. She sang until her lungs could hardly take it; until she felt as if she had inhaled a pound of snow and she was frozen from the inside out. Her lips were numb and her breathing started to hitch, catching in-between the refrains.
Tucker would come back. Soon. Any minute now. She had no idea how long he had been gone, but she refused to give up on him - on herself. He was her last hope.
She blinked a few times, finding herself mentally drifting. With a few shakes of her head she picked up from where she had left off, stuttering on the notes. It was halfway through a trembling "You Are My Sunshine" when she heard a creak of metal and a soft gasp.
"Danny?" Sam could hardly believe it, but there was no movement that she could sense to her right. "Danny was that you?"
She felt the car rock slightly and there was the sound of sniffing. Animalistic sniffing. Sam swallowed a scream as she froze, head tilted, eyes wide and unseeing. She gazed forward at the broken windshield as the car rocked again. Some curious creature had discovered them and was attempting to figure out what they were. It was only now Sam remembered they were deep in a mountainous wilderness. One she had gushed about only a few days before.
A bear? A racoon? Whatever it was, it was heavy enough to rock what was left of the car.
To her right was another sharp groan. Sam froze, looking over at Danny, half relieved he was making noise, half wanting to strangle him into silence.
But, Danny was waking back up into a world of darkness, pain, and confusion. He gave a loud hiss as he started to claw in front of himself - feeling trapped inside a nightmare as he attempted to sit up. A wave of intense pain crashed through him, racing up his side and his spine like a knife and he felt a sharp cry get jettisoned out of his lips. He was pinned through agony and belts to his chest and lap. Besides his arms the rest of him was trapped through minute movements. His head was pounding violently and he was dazed, unable to make sense of where he was or what had happened to him.
"Shh Danny, shh." Sam whispered, still frozen in horror as she heard the animal start to sniff again. It had paused briefly in shock at Danny's noise.
The car suddenly filled with the faint glow of Danny's ectoplasm and Sam saw a huge looming dark shape hunched on the other side of the windshield - two illuminated red eyes stared back at her and its sharp teeth glinted a reflective green.
Sam stared at it. Normally when she found herself face to face with the majesty of mother nature she was awed and inspired. Unfortunately this creature wasn't an image on a nature documentary. It was extremely real and extremely dangerous.
Instead of terror seizing her she felt a wave of indignation. This wasn't fair! They had crashed their car and had almost no hope of rescue, and now a giant wolf was going to tear her apart? Cold hard fury overwhelmed her and she grabbed anything and everything in her immediate vicinity to prepare for battle. An empty water bottle and the keys to the car were all she could come up with along with strewn clothes.
The wolf was digging again, but Danny's brief burst of ectoplasm had faded leaving only the faint glint of a pair of nocturnal eyes merely feet away from Sam.
"Great. Just great. Is this some kind of test?" Sam wondered, turning her eyes down towards her feet and ultimately up at the sky. She wasn't a religious person, but she oftentimes found herself directing these kind of questions to some deity she didn't believe in. The question echoed around in her and she found herself screaming it again and again as she threw the water bottle towards the eyes and the keys with it.
"IS THIS A TEST?!" She roared up into the pitch black darkness, "IS IT?! HUH?!"
It ripped, raw, out of her throat and seemed to reverberate around inside car before hitting the wolf in the face.
The wolf gave a strange yip and vanished, spooked, into the inky darkness.
It was only a matter of time until it returned, however, with more of its friends. Sam felt her heart pounding in her chest. The whole ordeal had snapped her back into sharp clarity. She was no longer sleepy, but instead in a blind panic to get out. Funny how, like swaying on that tightrope, Sam only ever felt truly alive when she was one step away from death.
She tugged at her leg again, ignoring the pain. Hot blood was running down her calf as she slammed her hands over and over into the dashboard and swore with the practiced ease of a sailor, before grappling around the ceiling below her, yet again, for anything she could use as a weapon. Her fluttering hand hit Danny's limp one and she grabbed it tightly, feeling the very small twitch of his fingers against hers. He was awake?
"Danny?" She asked, trying to see him through the darkness. The momentary flash of green light had faded.
His hand twitched against hers and she tugged it, squeezing it encouragingly.
"Say something." She ordered, but was met with silence.
"C'mon." She was relentless. He had just groaned and cried out. She knew that, however briefly, he had woken up. Sam didn't know a lot about head wounds. Had he hit his head so hard he couldn't speak anymore? Did he remember her still? Was he rendered lame? "I know you're awake, Danny." She coaxed, "And I know its hard to believe, but I need you. You hear that? Don't make me have to repeat myself."
His fingers were limp once again in her grasp, but she continued to tug at his arm and squeeze his until they warmed.
"Danny!" She hissed after a long moment of him not moving, "I swear to god. Do not make me go through this alone."
"...'our not…"
Sam almost missed it, it was said so softly.
"What?" She breathed, yanking on his hand again, afraid he would lapse back into unconsciousness.
"-hurts. Don't." Danny told her, voice a bit louder. Sam stopped tugging immediately, but didn't let go of his hand.
"You're not dead."
Danny merely gave her hand a weak squeeze in response before his hand relaxed in hers. Sam's eyes had adjusted enough in the moonlight to see his form, still, next to her. His eyes were closed, mouth slack. Sam felt a flurry of worry.
"Danny?" He seemed to have drifted into the land of unconsciousness again, "Come back. Hey- Stay with me."
Despite the fact that the had told her not to, she tugged on his arm again and watched him reanimate, giving a soft pained grunt. He shook his head once but stiffened at the motion with a weak gasp.
"Sorry." She told him, "But you have to stay awake."
"Where..?" Danny's voice was dreamy and undefined. Like he didn't have complete control over his lips. His eyes were muddy, staring blankly forward at the windshield.
Sam suddenly knew something was wrong.
"Do you know your name?" She asked him, trepidation knawing in her belly. She was met with heavy silence for a long moment in which she watched Danny battle to keep his eyes open.
"Danny." He whispered faintly.
"What's my name?"
He struggled, the soft glow of his eyes bathed them in unnatural green light as he studied her. There was recognition in them, but he didn't seem to have the ability to form her name. It was as if he knew the significance of her, but couldn't sound out the letters.
"It's okay." Sam told him, seeing the growing frustration in his dark brows. It wasn't okay, though.
"No- it's…" He tried again, before falling silent.
"It's fine. Forget it. You hit your head really hard. You'll remember eventually." Sam told him, although her voice was trembling.
"Sam." He managed out. His eyes seemed to clear. His pupils, which had been completely dilated, sharpened. He was actually looking at her in the face, instead of staring blankly somewhere to her left.
"That's right." Sam beamed at him, relieved, "Do you remember where we are?'
Danny fell uncharacteristically silent again. Sam paused, looking over at him and seeing his eyes struggling to stay focused. She continued to talk to him, however, her grip in his hand tight as she battled for his clarity. One minute he would be responding to her, the next nearly catatonic. In his more zombie-like phases he pawed clumsily at the makeshift tourniquet around his head until Sam was forced to grab his hand to prevent him from removing it. The more she tried to keep him aware the more scared for him she became.
"We were in a car accident. Tucker is getting help. He will be back any minute-" Sam paused as she watched Danny start to shift back and forth in his seat, "...What are you doing?"
Danny reached up from where his arms had been dangling and was grasping at something to his right.
"Can't-" He was muttering. Sam instantly realized what had preoccupied him.
"Don't touch it." She grabbed at one of his hands and yanked it back, ignoring the pained noise Danny gave at the tug.
"There's something in my side." Danny told her matter-of-factly. He didn't sound nearly as distraught as he should be. Maybe it wasn't so bad? Sam hadn't actually seen whatever Tucker had seen. She couldn't see Danny's right side. As it was she could barely see his outline.
He hung there, staring, for a long moment.
"Danny?" Sam snapped her finger a few times.
His face was growing more and more alarmed as he stared down at his side. Sam could only watch as suddenly the veil of his concussion lifted and he seemed to actually understand what had happened to him.
"Don't look at it."
His blue eyes flicked up to hers, barely visible in the curtain of night, studying her critically. He seemed to have taken an inventory of his own injuries and, instead of being concerned for himself, came to the conclusion that Sam must have equally ghastly wounds.
"Sam are- are you okay?"
Sam paused at that question. She hadn't really been paying attention to herself for the past ten minutes, too focused on making sure Danny didn't slip off and leave her alone again to fend for herself when her wolf brethren returned. Maybe she was being selfish. Maybe she should have let Danny remain blissfully unaware. At least then he wouldn't be looking at her with a face that told her he had just seen his own insides. At least then if the wolves returned and ate them alive he wouldn't have noticed. Could wolves smell blood? Her nose was full of it. Her leg was oozing it. Danny's side was no doubt leaking it.
These were the kind of dark thoughts that had seized control of Sam's mind.
"Sam?" He repeated.
"My leg is pinned. It hurts whenever I move it. My neck hurts and my nose is broken. Other than that I'm not sure. Most of me is numb at this point... I'm so cold." Her voice was weezy and tired as she fought her own exhaustion. Her head was spinning at such a constant rate from hanging upside down at this point she had forgotten what it felt like before.
"I'll get you out." He was nodding to himself and suddenly the car was bathed once again in a weak green glow.
"You can't." Sam closed her eyes against the light and couldn't find the strength to reopen them.
"Why not?"
"Because you're impaled."
"I didn't say I was getting me out." He gave her a wry grin, "I might be stuck, but you don't have to be..."
"...Was that a pu-?"
Danny's hand found hers clumsily.
"Ready?" He asked her.
"No-!" She ripped her hand out of his. He stared at her, confused.
"I don't want to lay in ice." She looked down pointedly at the snow covering the roof of the upturned car. The capsule itself had - like an igloo - kept them relatively warm in comparison to outside for the past few hours. As long as they didn't coat themselves with ice or fall asleep they stood a fair chance of not freezing to death.
She slipped her free hand away from Danny should he try to grab it again, and instead placed it underneath her butt and the seat. Her hand felt like like a limp and foreign thing.
"What about your leg?" Danny asked her softly.
Sam shrugged.
Truthfully she was terrified of what she would see should Danny free her from the confines of the crushed-in steering wheel. Would she even have a leg left? Was she permanently crippled? Sam didn't know if she could handle that right now. Already she was teetering along the cusp of shock.
Danny was staring at her, confused, but he made no further attempt to free her.
"Where's Tucker?" He asked.
Sam started and looked over at him from where she had been staring up into her lap.
"He's getting help. He will be back any minute now." Sam felt the insides of her grow even colder, if possible, at Danny's question. It was a small sign that his head injury was much more serious than he was trying to let on. Sam was finding it difficult to tell if he was entirely lucid in the darkness. His words had a loping lazy slur to them.
"Right, right." Danny breathed, but the silence that followed his words admitted that he didn't remember the first time Sam had told him that.
The moment of silence was ruptured by a distant chorus of howls.
Sam felt a shudder race through her at the implications of it.
"We have company." She told Danny dryly. Her eyes were still closed as she let her head hang, still sitting on her hands to warm them. She attempted to curl her free leg up into her chest in order to huddle her body into a ball.
She felt Danny's hand pull hers free. He gave it a soft squeeze that said I'm not going to let you die.
Sam, selfishly, found this very comforting.
But, if anyone should be doing the comforting it should be her, comforting him. However, it seemed that these roles were so ingrained in them that - even now - in their possible last moments they fell into place.
"You have nothing to be afraid of." Danny told her, and she knew this to be true. Because even impaled and half-dazed Danny would never let a wolf get to her. Not without being torn to pieces himself.
"I was doing just fine on my own. I'm not afraid." She spat back at him, hiding behind a veneer of stubborn independence and bravery.
"Good."
"Danny…" Sam looked away from him as she breathed slowly. Her eyes slipped shut again, this time ice gluing her eyelashes together. It seemed that she had been holding back the tide of sleep for so long out of necessity, that now that she no longer had to carry herself and Danny it had broken through the dam. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I'm sorry." She told him faintly.
She could sense him inspecting her. His fingers were rubbing hers softly.
"Wait- you mean you didn't want to crash your car down a snowy ravine?" Danny joked. Sam, despite herself, laughed.
"Because I mean, for a minute there I thought this was just another one of your ploys to get us closer to nature…" Danny continued.
"Yes this was all my diabolical plan." Sam wheezed in between soundless chuckles, the banter enough to take her mind off of the fact that they were dying. But at least if they were dying they were dying together.
"The whole 'returning your body to the earth from whence it came' is kind of expected. I thought you'd go for something a little more unique. I have to say I'm kind of disappointed."
"What? Getting eaten by wolves is too mainstream?" Sam snorted.
"Ah- there it is." Danny's fingers paused in their rubbing, "Of course, the typical Manson dramatic plot twist. It wouldn't be a true Sam-death without gore."
"I'm never typical." Sam managed out faintly, feeling her mind start to drift. She was experiencing this conversation as if through a long tunnel in which she was being tugged further and further away from Danny's warm hand and his calming voice.
"No. You are a lot of things, but typical isn't one of them." Danny agreed with her. Sam felt a hand brush across her cheek but she was already so far away from him.
"Sam?" Her name barely reached her. "Sam you're leaving me." A gentle pat on her cheek, "Hey, its not your time to go yet." Another pat, this time more insistent.
But she was too tired.
She woke up days later blurting Danny's name out, finding herself in a white hospital bed with Tucker by her side in a wheelchair, brandishing a tub of ice cream. She would never truly know if what she had seen and heard during that last hour had actually transpired or if they had just been in a dream.
If it had been a dream, it had been a fantastical dream.
One of Danny holding her cheeks with his hands; of him kissing her resolutely on her ice cold lips. Of the ghost of him tugging them both from the car and holding her close to his body as if she was a precious doll, sinking in the snow around them. Of his body trembling in pain, and the sound of his uneven hitching breathes. Of being surrounded by huge looming snow-filled aspens that swayed over them like silent protectors. Of snow falling like petals against her cheeks. In her dream there were wolves, lots of them, prowling around them in circles as if performing some kind of ritual. Their howls bathed them in an eerie soundtrack; their eyes glowed absurdly in the neon green light as Danny simultaneously shot a beam of light into the sky and protected both of them from the world outside. And then, there had been bobbing white orbs. Danny's hoarse voice calling out. Shots fired. The yips of wolves scattering back into the forest. The beacon flickering into nothingness; Danny's body flickering into nothingness. Strong warm hands ripping her out of the snow. Fingers scrambling at her neck and a multitude of voices. For a long moment she wondered where Danny was, if he was okay and how he had managed to get out of the car without bleeding to death, before she followed that seemingly unending tunnel to be absorbed by the full moon.
fin