A/N: I KNOW, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Oh my gosh.

Okay, here's what happened. I started this story as a diversion after I got divorced. And then I got hurt, had surgery, lost my job, and had to move, and I was like, you know what? FORGET EVERYTHING! And I went into hibernation for a very long while, and I am only just now starting to emerge. I'm not going to even try to make any promises about updating this story on a tight schedule, as life has a way of saying "You like to make schedules, huh? Well, I'LL show you how I can screw up a schedule!" and I don't want to tempt fate to bust open any more of my more relevant joints for surgical intervention. So I will just say this: I promise to TRY to update often and get this sucker finished. Believe it or not, I do still remember what's going to happen.

Again, I'm really sorry! Thanks for sticking with!

And February Was So Long

Chapter Eleven

His arms are empty and he's cold. Only one of these is a problem, but for some reason, they both take up room in his slowly-waking brain.

He is frozen. His joints won't bend. His fingers feel thick and clumsy and he isn't sure he's got toes anymore. He would swear he feels his blood moving more slowly than usual in his veins.

And his arms are empty.

His arms are empty!

The second thought penetrates the thick layer of ice over his brain, and he comes entirely awake, on his feet before he can register anything about his physical situation. Which turns out to be perilous, as an unknown person - creature? - is gripping both his forearms in an icy grasp.

The thing doesn't speak to him exactly, but he can feel its sentience, can detect the presence of another thoughtful being besides himself. And it isn't Sam. Sam he knows, in darkness, in the absence of sensory input, out in freakin' space he would still know Sam. This thing he feels nearby is not his brother. He gets the sense that it's looking at him, that it can see in the dark. Maybe see the swirling lights his brother had been going on about earlier.

Dean begins to tug his limbs free, reminded of Sam trying to get loose from his hold mere hours before. And the thing doesn't tug back, exactly, yet Dean doesn't seem able to escape it. Fingers made of cold and moisture, mist and dew seep into his skin and anchor him to the spot.

"No, dammit," Dean mutters, fear for his brother pushing him to struggle harder against the unseen hands that hold him. "Let me go. Get off me! Now, bitch!" Pushing and kicking, gaining no purchase, connecting with nothing but cold night air, stale and dank inside the shed. Even his voice can gain no ground, eaten up by nothing, silenced by the fog. Heavy silence presses at his ears.

Something, some spark of sensation, catches Dean's attention off to the side, and he whips his head around, the only part of him that can move freely. Underneath the creaking door of the shed, he can see something - he can see something! - some type of light and motion making itself known.

He wants to get to that light.

There are a lot of reasons why. There is the fear, which started up when the dream came - a stomach-twisting, limb-tingling terror of the dark that drives him to seek light, to fight to get to it, to wrap himself in it and be safe.

But Dean has faced werewolves and witches, ghouls and goblins, has faced them all like a professional, with a hitch of his chin and a shit-eating smirk. He recognizes, in a detached sort of way, that the terror of the dark which threatens to consume him is fake, has been manufactured, planted somehow. That knowledge alone is enough to dial it down from a ten to something more manageable. Six. Maybe seven tops.

Much worse - on a scale of one to ten, a twelve - is the terror of not knowing Sam's whereabouts, of having lost his brother out here in the pitch-black fog. He remembers a cold little brother hours ago on the couch, how it took Sam a long time to start talking again once the thing had tried to make off with him. He can't stand the idea of Sam being out there somewhere, cold and scared and silent, and Dean standing here in the shed fighting invisible hands.

"Don't go into the light, Carol Anne," he'd teased his brother only hours before.

There it is: the real reason he has to get to that light. Because it's where Sam must have gone.

Dean struggles against the grip of the thing that's holding him, shocked and horrified at how cold he feels, at how quickly the thing is sapping his energy, eating up what strength he has left after days of crouching in the dark eating crummy old MREs and refusing to sleep. He realizes the situation is dire. If he stays where he is, lets it keep its hands on him, he will continue to be consumed by exhaustion and terror. He will be unable to go on his way. To investigate the light outside the shed. To find Sam.

The thing holding him is made of mist and nighttime. It cannot be touched.

Then, he decides, neither should it be able to touch him. He forces himself to stop struggling, to move slowly, one step at a time. Toward the shed door. Toward light. Toward freedom. The thing continues to hold him, but now that he's gotten a grip on his panic, it is unable to bind him immobile, only manages to move with him, slimy cold fingers sliding up and down his forearms, making him want to gag. He has to work hard not to try running, knowing instinctively that the faster he tries to move, the less he will be able to move at all. This thing is making him afraid on purpose. The calmer he is, the weaker it grows.

Damn sight harder than it sounds, staying calm when Sam is out there somewhere. But if staying calm is what he has to do to get to his brother, then he will damn well do it.

Dean trips over the lawnmower, is bolstered by the feeling of very real metal against very cold toes. The lawnmower is such a mundane object. When he kicks it, the sound is muted by the fog, but he catches a whiff of cut-grass summers past and he thinks of sunshine and summer bugs, little brothers and beach balls, girls in bikinis. He thinks he can smell sunblock, can feel a rough towel against wet skin. The reality of the stupid broken lawnmower is enough to ground him, and he slides one arm free of the cold darkness that holds him. He reaches out into the blackness and gives the shed door a shove, terrified all at once that it won't open.

It opens with a soft whine that he thinks, on a normal day, might have been the squeak of rusty hinges. Ahead, Dean looks at the first thing he has really been able to see in days.

"Well, I'll be damned," Dean mutters. "It is silver."

And every bit as pretty as his goofy little brother insisted, though Dean would never admit to thinking of weather as pretty like some kind of ten-year-old girl. The fog swirls and dances and sparkles and for just a second, Dean is drawn to it for reasons other than the possibility that it harbors his brother. The light fills him with a sense of joy and safety. He wants to walk into its embrace and feel safe, wrapped in light and calm and peace. He dares, for a moment, to hope. Maybe the light isn't bad. Maybe it's come to save him and Sam from this darkness that keeps trying to grip them ...

Except ...

Except.

Dean stops moving, backs a step away from the light, shaking his head.

Except everything Dean knows is black. Nighttime hunts and his father's dirty, work-worn hands and the car he and Sam call home. Darkness is safe. Darkness is where Winchesters live.

Dean closes his eyes for half a second, lights dancing and bursting on the insides of his eyelids, and swallows, choking down the feelings of hope and of peace the light has induced. Manufactured; those are manufactured, too. He is a hunter. He is stronger than this. He knows what his father knows, what he has spent the last few years trying to protect his brother from ever finding out: That the brightly lit safety that most people seek is often an illusion, and one that can be taken away at any time by yellow-eyed monsters or flames or spirits in the night. The only way to be truly safe is to know what's in the dark, to learn to face it.

Dean takes a deep breath and whirls to face the thing behind him. In the light from the mist, he is able to make out a face - a terrible, inhuman face - and hands - long, misshapen hands. Hands that grasp, hands that are both still full even though Dean has managed to free one arm.

The creature holds Dean's arm in one hand.

And Sam's in the other.