Title: Captured in Crystal
Author: Disasteriffic Kaz
Info: Crystal City, Colorado sure sounded idyllic…until the bodies started dropping and trouble, that old Winchester friend, arrived to make the boy's lives more interesting than they generally like. Post 1x12 "Faith" hurt/comfort/awesome!Sam/Dean
Author's Note: I'll be hiding in my panic room from the angry hordes if anyone needs me. *snicker*
Beta'd by the always awesome JaniceC678 :D– Friend and Muse's co-conspirator.
**Follow me on Facebook as "Disasteriffic Kaz" for frequent fic updates or just to chat!
~Reviews are Love~
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"Dean!" Sam shouted his brother's name as a massive, glistening, scaled creature burst from the cover of the tall bushes to his left. The ahuizotl was bigger than he'd thought. He could see powerful muscles shifting beneath the scales as it rushed him. Sam brought his gun around reflexively and fired three times before it crashed into him. He heard Dean shouting his name as the ahuizotl breathed rancid breath into his face and lifted him in powerful, clawed hands.
"SAM!" Dean rounded the wide tree and slid to a stop. He raised his gun as he took in the sight of his brother held in the clawed grip of a giant lizard with rows of spikes visible down its back. He snarled in his fear and anger, unable to take a shot without the risk of hitting his brother. "NO!" He screamed it as the creature suddenly threw Sam to the side as though he weighed nothing. Dean watched Sam slam into a tree with a sickening thump and slide, motionless to the ground. He was torn between reaching his brother and the ahuizotl that now had its sights set on him. "Son of a bitch!" Dean fired into the scaled chest and it didn't even seem to slow the creature as it barreled at him. He shot one round into the ahuizotl's eye, making the creature scream in a rage and it was on him; smashing him to the ground and rolling him across the rocky ground. Dean scrambled to get back to his feet, ignoring the bruises he could already feel and looked up in time to see the beast's heavily weighted tail swinging down at him.
Chapter 3
Dean woke with a strangled cry as his leg was pulled viciously and icy water closed around him. His head slid under the surface as his back scraped the rocky bottom, and he only barely managed to stop from sucking in a mouthful of water. He flailed his arms, bumping and scraping, and pushed, sucking in a surprised breath when his head broke the surface. He blinked to clear his vision and fell back into the water as his leg was pulled again. He fought to get his head back above the water and gasped in another precious breath and this time managed to get a look. The ahuizotl had his leg wrapped in one wide, scaly hand and was dragging him through the shallow lake below Crystal Mill.
Dean took as deep a breath as he could manage in a chest that felt unnaturally tight and let himself slide back under the water as he fumbled at his side to find his silver long-knife. His hand closed around the hilt and he tugged it free in a rush. He held it like it was a lifeline, planted his free foot in the rocky bottom, and surged up while the creature pulled his other leg. Dean came up swinging and sliced the silver blade through the meaty forearm of the ahuizotl. It screamed and dropped his leg as it fell away holding its arm, and Dean got a brief look at one darkened eye from his last shot before he fell back into the water.
He came up spluttering, splashing and crawling back into the wide basin at the bottom of the falls. "Shit," Dean gasped and went for the old water wheel support as fast as his abused, thoroughly chilled body would let him. He ached to get back to his brother, still hearing the sound of him striking the tree. He shoved the knife back through his belt, wrapped shaking, cold-pale fingers around the wood at the bottom of the water wheel support, and started to climb. Dean heard the creature roaring its rage out behind him and tried to climb faster.
"Dammit," He grunted as his left leg, which had been held by the creature, refused to cooperate, his foot slipping off one of the old planks for a moment. He fought his way higher up and risked a glance down. The creature's Godzilla-like head weaved around as it searched Dean out with its one remaining eye, and he knew the moment it saw him because it roared and leaped back into the lake. Dean scrambled up the framework, hearing the thing splashing below him and reached the top as the structure he clung to shook violently. He rolled off the wooden planks onto the bedrock holding the mill and used the bottom of a doorway above him to pull himself up. The ahuizotl roared from the water below and then sprang off to the side, slamming into the rock wall in a stumble as it ran.
"Shit. Shit." Dean cussed in a near panic and dragged himself inside the empty mill. He flopped back onto the musty wood floor for a moment and tried to catch his breath. His whole body hurt. Dean leaned up and tugged his shirts up to look at his chest with a groan; a myriad of bruises were already starting to appear, as though the creature had started tenderizing him while he was unconscious. "Crap." He rolled to his side and gained his knees with a massive effort. He could hear the creature crashing through the forest outside the mill and figured he didn't have much time.
Dean crawled over to the mill wheels and used them to get on his feet…or at least sitting on them and not on the floor any longer as he hunched over his aching chest and stomach and got a good look at his left leg. His jeans had been torn open below the knee by the ahuizotl's claws, and there were three long, bloody furrows running from knee to ankle. He realized he was shaking, whether from cold or the early stages of shock or both, as frigid water dripped from his hair and clothes.
"Dammit. D-don't have t-time for hypo…hypothermia. Shit!" he growled and stood, testing his leg. It held his weight and that would have to do for now. He wanted to get to his brother; needed to get to Sam and find out if he was even alive. Dean swallowed hard and shoved that thought away. He couldn't afford to even think like that or he'd just sit down and let the ugly bastard outside eat him.
He still had his long-knife, but his gun had been left where the ahuizotl attacked them. Dean looked around the mill's interior, trying to think of some way to kill the thing. He staggered as he stepped away from the millstones and grunted in pain, holding an arm over his chest. His back hurt just as much as his front. The walls of the mill rattled with a hard impact, and Dean spun, drawing the blade from his belt again. "Ok, you bastard." He was shaking so hard in his cold, wet clothes it was probably a good thing he didn't have his gun; he wouldn't have been able to fire straight anyway. Dean looked at the door in the side of the building, the one he'd glanced in earlier, and decided that was his best bet. If he could get the creature to try and come in after him, he might able to bottle it up in the narrow door.
Dean limped to the open door, still hearing the ahuizotl banging on the back wall of the mill and stuck his head out. "HEY, UGLY!" he bellowed it out into the early afternoon air and looked toward the forest. A second later, the giant lizard lumbered quickly around the corner of the mill and howled when it spotted Dean with its good eye. "That's right! Come get some!" Dean pulled his head back inside and waited, moving a few feet away in case it decided to swing a clawed hand or its tail inside first. It turned out to be the right decision as the weighted tail that had knocked him cold before flew inside the mill and crashed into the floor in a shower of wood and splinters as it broke through. The tail whipped back out and Dean waited, keeping his long-knife up.
The ahuizotl's head lunged through the door suddenly with its jaw opened wide to show rows of teeth. As Dean hoped, the narrow opening caught the creature's shoulders and he took his shot. Dean stabbed the blade down into the monster's remaining eye, bursting it in a shower of blood and gore to run down its scaled head as it screamed. Rather than try to escape, it clawed at the outside wall of the mill in rage trying to reach him.
Dean grunted with the effort of keeping his grip and staying away from the powerful jaws. He took the hilt of the long-knife with both hands and put all his weight behind it, driving it further into the ahuizotl's skull, twisting it as he went in search of its brain while the howls filled the small mill and deafened him.
Dean gave his own howl of effort, shoving the blade in to the hilt. The ahuizotl gave a sharp scream. Its head lurched to the side, catching Dean in the chest and throwing him back onto the millstones. Dean groaned, blinking away the spots in his vision as he fought to stay conscious. He pushed himself up and looked over in time to watch the creature's head thump down to the floor hard enough to rattle the walls.
"Son of a bitch," Dean groaned softly and couldn't feel any satisfaction as a long tongue rolled from its mouth and it finally stopped moving with the hilt of his long-knife protruding from its eye. He slid off the stones and fell to his knees with a wave of dizziness. "Shit." Dean crawled across the floor to the massive head. He reached out when he was close enough and gave it a punch in the jaw. It rocked slightly from the impact, but the ahuizotl showed no signs of life and Dean sagged to lean against the wall next to it for a moment. He marshaled what energy he had left and used the wall and the creature to get back to his feet. Dean leaned against the scaled muzzle and took hold of the hilt of the long-knife. It took him several minutes to work the blade back out of the eye-socket, and it emerged in a flow of red and grey things he decided he'd rather not think about just then.
"Ok, Sammy. I'm c-comin'." Dean's shivers were starting to lessen, but he was still frozen and knew hypothermia was having a go at setting in. "Dammit." He climbed up the head of the ahuizotl, groaning with each twinge of abuse muscle, not interested in using the other door and having to climb back down into the water. He slid across its neck and down the side of its shoulder, giving it an irreverent pat. "Don't…don't g-go anywhere." He moved towards the back of the monster and the mill and only had time for a quick, surprised gasp as the long tail twitched without warning and flew toward him. It slammed his back into the mill wall, and Dean slid to the ground in a daze. He watched the tail thump back to the rocky ground and realized it had just been a reflex, since the creature itself didn't so much as twitch. He tried to catch the breath that had been knocked from him, but his body had finally had enough. Dean's last coherent thought was of his brother, sending out a silent prayer that Sam was alright, as he slumped sideways to the ground, unconscious.
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Sam woke in stages, first hearing a bird calling somewhere overhead, then feeling the hard, stony ground beneath his cheek. He was cold and confused and tried to remember where he was. He cleared his throat and moved his head and an agonized moan tore itself from his throat with the motion. Pain crashed back and forth through his skull like waves on a beach that went straight to his stomach and made that roll as well.
"D…Dean," he gasped in desperation. Sam couldn't imagine where his brother was. Dean was always there when he hurt. He drew his brows together as a flash of memory came to him. He saw something large and scaled rushing at him. He remembered hearing Dean's voice screaming his name and then…Sam moaned, unable to remember anything else. He tried to open his eyes and wondered when night had fallen, it was so dark. It had been daylight, he was sure of it. How long had he been out? And if he had been unconscious that long…his fear suddenly ratcheted up a notch as his thoughts returned to Dean. Where was he? He moved carefully, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes and clear them and hissed out a breath at the sudden stab of pain from his back.
Sam wrapped his other hand around his head, as though he were holding it together and slowly, so slowly, managed to push up. He felt something rough at his back, a tree, and used it to prop his shoulder against while his head swam. He blinked his eyes furiously trying to see anything, and confusion began to give way to panic. No matter how deep the night might be in the forest, he should be able to see…something. Anything.
"Oh, God," Sam whispered. He knew he was holding his hand in front of his face but he couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything but blackness. The thought "cave" briefly crossed his mind – it would account for the total and complete darkness, but…no. He was leaning against a tree and could hear birds. He swallowed hard when understanding slammed into him and could no longer be denied. He was blind. The panic won, and fear moved through him in a cold rush that left his head spinning and him lunging to the side to spew what little he'd eaten that day onto the ground. He gasped and heaved and leaned back to hold his head again when the pain refused to stop.
"Dean." Sam whispered it and then steeled himself. "Dean!" The sound of his own voice raised in a shout made him moan miserably as he held his head. His fingers slid back through his shaggy hair and he found a bleeding welt over a large bump on the back of his head. The memory rushed back at him then -the ahuizotl attacking and then being flung away while his brother tried to rush in to save him.
"DEAN!" This time Sam screamed it and ended up slumped to the side yet again with the pounding in his skull. There was no answer except for the sounds of the forest and his fear hit a whole new level. What if his brother was just feet away and unable to answer? What if he was…Sam crushed that thought before it could finish. Dean would be fine. He had to be. Sam needed him to be. Unconscious. He must just be unconscious somewhere nearby. That's all. Or maybe he'd gone after the creature to finish it off. Maybe that was it.
Sam pushed himself up again so he was leaning on the tree and fumbled in his back pocket for his phone. It was a slim hope that there would be any cell service to speak of up there, but it was worth a try. He pulled his phone out and sobbed a breath, realizing he couldn't possibly see it to dial. Sam shook his head carefully and flipped his phone open. He knew Dean's number. He just had to find the right keys. It took him two tries but finally he heard the phone dial and nearly cried when it actually rang; he was getting a signal. His relief was short-lived, however. Dean didn't answer and Sam tried to not to think about the implications of that. He hadn't heard his brother's ring tone, so he was nowhere nearby and that brought a whole new wave of fear. The ahuizotl dumped its victims in the river.
"Dean," Sam gasped when his brother's voice mail picked up. "Really…really hope you're not being…being drowned or something right now. I can't, um…I can't see…any…anything." Sam's breath hitched anew with panic and he worked hard to shove it down. "I'm gonna…gonna try and find the…the river and you, ok? Dean? Really wish you were…just, don't be dead, ok?" Sam closed the phone and carefully put it back in his pocket.
He turned cautiously and used the trunk of the tree to get unsteadily to his feet. He leaned his forehead into the rough bark and wished his sight would come back. Sam didn't even want to think of how hard a hit to the head he had to have taken to go blind like that. It wasn't good, of that he was sure. He realized as he stood there that there were little flashes of light at the edges of his vision. They only seemed to make the disorientation worse and he fought the need to throw up again.
Sam curved his hands around the width of the tree and smiled a little in relief when his left hand brushed over a wide swath of moss. He remembered Bobby teaching them when they were young that moss always growing on the north side of a tree was crap. They lived in the northern hemisphere and that meant moss on the south side of the tree. He knew he needed to head generally east to find the river and moved until he was facing the mossy patch, then turned to his right.
It took more willpower than he wanted to think about to step away from the tree into virtual nothingness. When they were kids, their father had conducted training drills with them blindfolded in order to teach them to rely on their other senses in anticipation of just such a situation arising. But that had been a long time ago, and training with a blindfold in a safe situation was very different than the position he found himself in now – alone and hurt, probably with a deadly predator in the vicinity and a missing, possibly injured brother he needed to find. He steeled himself and took the first step, swaying dangerously with a lack of balance but finally managed to stay on his feet. Sam put a hand back to check he hadn't turned in a different direction and sighed, finding he was still facing east…he hoped. He took a few stumbling steps and kept one hand on his head, trying to will the crashing pain under control as he stumbled forward with his other hand held out in front of him to hopefully stop him from walking right into another tree.
Sam couldn't stop the feeling as though the world was spinning around him and had to fight the urge to over-correct his course. He strained his ears, hoping to hear the sound of the Crystal River near the mill. "Dean!" Sam called his brother's name every few minutes, waiting in vain to hear a response. His seeking hand slapped into another tree, and Sam gave himself a moment to lean his head against it and regroup. Even without the blindness, Sam would have known he was concussed and the chill under the forest canopy out of the sunlight wasn't helping. He started walking again, hoping that he was still moving on the right path and almost went to his knees on a sob of relief when he realized he could hear running water ahead - the river.
He gave a breathless laugh that he hadn't turned himself around and started toward it. "Dean? Dean!" Sam shouted as loud as he could without splitting his own head open with the sound. He had visions of his brother dancing through his head, but over-topping them all was the one sight he wasn't sure he'd ever escape, seeing Dean laid low by the juiced-up taser and looking pale and long-dead. "No." Sam told himself firmly.
Sam resisted the urge to quicken his steps and risk falling on the uneven ground. The stones and packed dirt of the forest floor began to give way to the bedrock at the river. He could feel the difference through his shoes as he walked, and it gave him another rush of hope. He was definitely moving in the right direction. Sam stopped so fast he swayed as a new smell rolled over him. It was powerful and smelled of rotting things, meat and vegetation both, and it hadn't been there a moment before. Perhaps it was the lack of his sight, but the smell seemed so powerful he could almost taste it and it made him want to gag. He swallowed convulsively several times to try and avoid that. He turned his head slowly from side to side, listening so hard it almost hurt but all he could hear was the river.
And then it struck him; all he could hear was the river now. The crickets had stilled and the bird that had been cheerfully calling when he woke was gone silent. There was nothing but the nearby sound of rushing water. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold ran down Sam's spine and he slapped a hand to his back for his gun. He dropped his head with a groan; of course it was gone, lost when the ahuizotl attacked him. He'd never have been able to find it anyway without his sight. He felt at his left side and found the silver long-knife still at his hip.
"Ok. I can…I can do this," Sam told himself softly and pulled the blade free. He held it out in front of him and started toward the sound of the river once more. He snorted softly at the ridiculousness of it - a blind man with a knife looking for a fight. Dean would get a kick out of it, no doubt…if only Dean would reappear.
"Dea…" Sam broke off on a gag as the horrid smell intensified and took his breath away. His intuition told him he wasn't alone any longer and every inch of his skin itched with the need to run, to escape and find Dean. He strained his senses for anything, any sound that would tell him what direction the danger was in. Sam could feel it like a physical thing hanging in the air. He breathed through his mouth to keep the vile odor from choking him. Sam spun, swinging out with the blade. He caught himself as he overbalanced and swung back. The blade caught and swung through something, surprising him, and for a second, he thought he'd hit a tree. A short howl of anger filled the air from so close to him that Sam gasped in shock. He tried to step backward reflexively but his balance wasn't up to it and he went down hard on his butt.
"Crap. Crap!" Sam pushed backwards, trying to put some distance between himself and whatever it was he'd hit. He swung out with the long-knife again and heard it whistle through the air without hitting anything. "DEAN!" he screamed it this time, making his head explode in fresh pain with the strength of it, and then hands were on him. They were bigger than they should be. He could feel that much in his darkness, and the blade was twisted easily from his grasp without any way to see what was happening.
"Who are you?" Sam yelled and felt himself dragged up. A scruffy hand clamped over his mouth, and he was held awkwardly with a massive arm over his chest, pressing him back into a muscled, hairy chest. The idea of a bear went through his mind as he was carried and was quickly discarded. No bear would pick him up like that and muffle him. He struggled futilely in the thing's grip. His feet didn't even touch the ground. The thing that held him shifted its hand and Sam began to panic again in earnest as his nose was covered along with his mouth and he lost the ability to drag in a breath. He wished again that he could see anything but blackness and those little flashes of light…that he could see his brother again, if only to know he was alright before…his head swam as he lost his fight to breathe and slipped into unconsciousness wondering vaguely if he would ever wake up again.
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The sound of Sam's voice jerked Dean awake. "Sam?" He shook his head, groaned and pushed up from where he'd collapsed to his side. "Sam!" He called, knowing he had heard his brother yell his name. He rubbed a hand over his face, looking at the body of the ahuizotl that still lay dead. "Shit," Dean made himself move and stand. "Sam!" He tried again, grimacing, and moaned at the renewed pain in his body from the beating the creature had given him. Dean looked over its body to the river and saw nothing. "Sam! Over here!"
Dean waited and heard no response. The relief that had briefly washed through him hearing his little brother alive and at least well enough to have found him quickly fled on a new burst of fear. He jumped, startled, when the phone in his back pocket chirped at him. "Shit." He dug it out and saw that he'd missed a call. Dean flicked it open, surprised that someone had managed to get a signal up there, and then he saw it was from Sam. His fingers went numb…more numb than they already were. He was still freezing and shivering, and his hands shook as he hit play and put the phone to his ear.
Dread filled him listening to his brother's voice; Sam sounded disoriented, hurt, and - Dean went to his knees in reaction when he heard Sam say he was blind. "Son of a bitch. No, no, no," Dean lowered the phone and stared for a moment. Blind was bad. Blind was very bad and meant whatever was wrong, his little brother probably didn't have a lot of time before blind became permanent.
Dean staggered to his feet again and picked up the blade he'd dropped. "Ok. River." He went wide around the ahuizotl, giving its tail a wide berth this time and headed in the direction they'd originally walked. It stunned him to think that Sam had somehow managed to find his way from where they'd been attacked back to the river without his sight. Dean smiled with pride for Sam even as he choked with fear for him. It was nearing dusk as Dean splashed across the river again and the cold took him to his knees again once he reached the other side.
"Sh..shit." He wrapped his arms around himself and got to his feet again. "Sammy?" Dean yelled, teeth chattering and stumbled up the rocky bank to the trees. He stepped through them, looking furiously for any sign of Sam and caught a flash of metal in the underbrush. He jogged over and knelt, reached down and came up with Sam's silver long-knife. Dean whipped his head up and looked around. "Sam!" He couldn't imagine how Sam's blade would have gotten there, but his brother be nowhere in sight. Dean got up on a knee and then to his feet only to drop down again a few feet away and slap a hand into the ground. Pressed into the hard-packed dirt were the vague impressions of Sam's sneakers and, around them, the deeper prints of the five-toed thing that had invaded the cabin before they arrived.
"Sam?" Dean whispered in fear and looked out into the darkening forest. "SAM!"
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To Be Continued…
