Standard Disclaimer: The show Supernatural and its characters do not belong to me.

Damaged

by Liz Bach

Previously...

Sam scanned the opposite shore, trying to discern the figure he'd seen. The air around them was heavy with potential energy. He turned to ask Dean what he thought they should do when the hair on the back of his neck prickled.

Part II

Dean was opening his mouth to say that they would come back tomorrow when Sam suddenly turned to him and yelled for him to duck. Dean didn't hesitate, and Sam brought the shotgun around, firing where Dean's head had just been. He heard the sound of wood splintering in the distance, and then a high-pitched shriek filled the air. Dean reflexively brought his hands up to his ears.

"What the fuck?" Dean questioned at the same time Sam bit out a tense, "Oh, shit!"

Dean heard Sam fire the shotgun again, and the same shriek rang out once more.

"Well, that was worthless," Sam muttered breathlessly.

"I can't see it," Dean informed his brother. "Can you see it?"

"I did for a couple seconds."

"What did it look like?"

"I don't know." Sam was frantically scanning the trees again. "Like a…like a shadow or something. Some kind of dense apparition."

"Did it look solid?"

"No, but I don't feel like finding out for sure."

Dean handed over two more rounds of rock salt, and Sam quickly loaded them into the double barrels.

"Let's get the hell out of here before whatever it is comes back," Dean suggested, cautiously getting to his feet. "The rock salt didn't affect it?"

Sam shook his head curtly. "It didn't seem to."

"Nice," Dean grimaced.

Then suddenly, the shriek sounded once more, and a thick black silhouette rushed past Dean.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, starting to run. The figure took chase, following him steadily. "Do something!" he called over his shoulder.

Dean started after them, pulling the 9mm from his pants. "Do what?" he demanded. "I still can't see it!"

The frigid air stung Sam's lungs. He raced over the uneven ground, dodging branches, trunks, and roots. He reached the edge of the lake and spun around.

But the figure was no longer behind him. Everything was still and quiet.

Sam breathed heavily, dropping the useless shotgun at his feet and bending down with his hands on his knees. He saw Dean burst through the tree line and skid to a halt, glancing around tensely.

"I think," Sam panted, "it's gone."

No sooner had he spoken, then something dark rose straight out of the snow between them.

"Sam!" he heard Dean yell.

Sam dropped to his stomach and heard Dean madly firing round after round over his head. When he looked up, the shadow was still moving towards him. Sam stood again and tried to get a good look at it, but it was as if there was nothing to actually see. It was just a horrible, thick darkness with no form. When it was only feet away from him, the dark mass pulled itself into the shape of an irregular ball.

Sam thought it looked like it was preparing to launch itself at his head, so he ducked and rolled on instinct, just as a solid object went hurtling past him, passing through the mass and skittering out onto the frozen lake.

With one last shriek, the shadow disappeared. Evaporated.

Sam lay on his back with his eyes closed, struggling to catch his breath. After a long moment, he was almost breathing normally again. He opened one eye, and Dean was standing over him. Sam held out a hand, and Dean hauled his brother to his feet.

"Dude, I told you that thing would come after you."

Sam didn't answer, just wrapped an arm around his stomach.

They were silent for a moment.

Dean stooped to pick up the shotgun. He rested it at his feet, then took a deep breath and said, "Somebody's gotta go get that gun."

Sam nodded absently, looking out onto the frozen lake. It was true; they couldn't just leave a weapon behind. When he turned back to his brother, Dean was still looking at him. And smiling.

"What? No. Why me? You threw it out there!" Sam shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, the very thought of walking out onto the ice sending a chill across his shoulders. "Who throws a gun at an apparition, anyway?"

"Hey." Dean held out both palms and shrugged innocently. "I was out of ammo, and that thing was headed straight towards that pretty little head of yours."

Okay, he had a point. So Sam changed his argument. "But I'm heavier than you."

Dean held up a finger. "No, no, no. You may be taller than me, but look at this body, man!"

Sam looked. He didn't seem impressed.

"Nothing but pure muscle." Dean flexed a bicep and kissed it through his sleeve. "Seriously. I'm telling you, dude, it's like lead."

Sam leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh.

"'Atta boy, Sammy," Dean said, giving Sam a small push towards the frozen shore, then shoving his own hands into his pockets in an effort to keep warm. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, and the already frigid temperature was creeping ever lower. "Before we freeze, okay?"

Sam put one foot gingerly onto the ice and pushed. It felt solid enough. Another foot, and the ice was holding his weight. He looked out towards the gun, and it seemed far away.

"You're so going to regret this if I fall in," he muttered over his shoulder to Dean, who was bouncing on his toes.

"Less talking, more walking," Dean said, watching his breath float up and away like a cloud.

He must have been about sixty feet out onto the water before he reached the spot where the gun lay. Back towards the shore, the ice had been thick and a white-ish shade of clear, but here, Sam noticed, it was more opaque with only a dusting of white frost. The gun was in front of him now, and he bent down slowly, reaching out a hand. His fingers were so numb, he wouldn't remember whether he ever touched the cold metal of the gun or not.

It was one of those moments that seemed to happen in slow motion, but fast enough that Dean couldn't do anything to stop it. He had the presence of mind to think it was like dropping something precious, like a diamond, and watching it tumble down the drain. It was one of those things over which you would berate yourself for days after the fact. If only you had done one thing differently. If only you had that one critical moment back to make a different decision.

One minute Sam was bending down to retrieve the stupid piece. Then there was a loud crack that seemed to move all the way from one edge of the lake to the other, like lightning moved across the sky. Next came a deep moan of ice scraping against ice; it sounded almost supernatural itself, like some kind of angry spirit or wounded monster. One minute Dean was watching Sam bend down for the gun, and the next minute his kid brother was gone.

:


The 38-degree water below the surface ice immediately shocked Sam's system. For a brief moment, he had no clue what had just happened. Then, almost immediately, he realized his whole body was submerged in the near-frozen lake, including his head, and he was overwhelmed by an impulse to breathe. His first, uncontrollable reflex was to gasp for air, and he was rewarded with a mouthful of freezing water.

Amidst his panic, Sam could feel his heart rate quicken, and he attempted to kick his way to the surface. But his jacket and clothes were now drenched and heavy, weighing him down, pulling him down into the lake, black like night. After only seconds, he felt like he had been under for minutes, and after only a brief struggle, he couldn't kick anymore, couldn't move his arms or breathe.

But he was still thinking. And he thought how, given their lives and the things he and his brother and father had seen and done, this would be such an absurd way for him to die. So absurd, in fact, that he convinced himself it wasn't actually happening. And if it wasn't happening, there was no need to struggle anymore. So he just stopped moving, stopped trying to hold his breath, and waited to wake up.

The idea that this was a nightmare…well, that was absolutely within the realm of Winchesterland. So he would just wait for Dean to come and wake him up. Lately, Dean had always been there when he woke up. If Dean wasn't there soon, he would know he was dead.

He relaxed, distantly aware that the water was steadily leeching the heat from his extremities and head. The water was wrapped all around him, enveloping him in its cold embrace. He felt almost as if the lake had grown fingers that were running up and down his arms, his legs, across his chest, through his hair. The fingers turned to hands, and he was no longer sinking. The hands were soft, strong, and many, and they held him up. Suspended him just below the shelf of ice over his head.

And then the water spoke.

Sam mentally shook his befuddled head. In a split-second of rationality, he reminded himself that he was drowning in a lake in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. He was hallucinating his last conscious moments away.

Dreaming of voices in the water chanting, "Rain. It's rain."

:

"Sam!"

One thing about the Winchester lifestyle was that it had taught the Winchester men to think fast. Sam had gone under without so much as a splash, and after several seconds, Dean couldn't see that he was making any effort to resurface.

With numb fingers, Dean unzipped and tore off his coat and the flannel he wore beneath it. He threw them to the ground and then made his way to the edge of the lake.

He moved out cautiously, but as quickly as he dared, onto the ice. While it seemed to have taken Sam only minutes to cover the distance out to the gun, Dean felt like it was now taking him hours to get there. He wanted to move faster, to run, but he couldn't risk splintering the ice further and falling in himself.

He grimaced and kept his eyes on the spot where his brother had been, willing the ice to hold. He should never have made Sam go out there.

When he noticed the ice getting darker and more opaque, Dean slowed down and dropped to his hands and knees. Here it looked like the ice had thawed and then frozen over again, making it weaker more likely to break. He sprawled out completely on his stomach, lying flat in an effort to distribute his weight as widely as possible against the fragile surface.

He inched closer to the hole and saw it: Sam's head, just below the surface of the water. Almost as if someone or something was holding him there. Dean didn't have time to be relieved that his brother was still there. He knew freezing water could stop a healthy heart. He plunged an arm into the lake and grunted loudly as the cold hit him.

"Son of a bitch!" he yelled, gritting his teeth.

After fumbling for far too long, he finally found Sam's coat and grabbed onto it. He shifted his weight and put his other arm in, trying to hook Sam under his arms. But the water was quickly turning him to ice, and Sam when he was dry was no lightweight. Dean could barely feel what he was doing because of the biting cold, and he couldn't find a good angle from which to gain leverage.

As he pulled, he struggled to remember the last thing he had said to Sam. He knew it had been something petty. That was what they did. It was how they operated. But he would be damned if the last thing his little brother heard in his life was some empty, smart-assed comment from Dean. And he would be doubled-damned if this was the way Sam went, slipping under in silence.

Because Dean had thought about it before. He'd thought about his tremendous burden, his self-assigned mission to keep his brother safe and alive. And in his darkest moments, he'd admitted that, as strong and determined as he was, he wasn't sure he could do it. So he had imagined his brother's death, whenever it happened, as an earth-shattering event. Sam would go down fighting; Sam would go down in a blaze of glory; in the grand scheme of things, Sam was that extremely important. Sam's death would be catastrophic, and in its magnitude, it would take Dean down with it. And from their demise, lives would be saved.

As that dire thought forced itself into Dean's consciousness, he was suddenly pulling his brother out of the water. Slowly, laboriously, he dragged Sam onto solid ice. As Dean got to his feet, he draped one of Sam's arms over his shoulder and hauled him the sixty or so feet back to the shore, where they both landed in a heap next to Dean's discarded clothes.

Panting, he put both hands on either of Sam's cold cheeks and froze like that for the briefest of moments before Sam sputtered, lake water spilling out of his mouth. Then he was coughing weakly, his eyes still closed.

"Sam, get up," Dean ordered, a wave of premature, giddy relief washing over him. He struggled to pull his brother to a sitting position in the snow. He grabbed a coat sleeve and pulled one arm out, then the other, and threw Sam's saturated coat to the ground. Then he grabbed Sam's shirt at the back of his neck and proceeded to pull it off over his head.

Dean noticed distractedly that Sam's torso was an unnatural shade of bluish pale, and he knew time and the dwindling sun were working against them. Not wasting a second, he pulled Sam's arms through his own dry flannel, then took the coat he'd shed and wrapped it around Sam's shoulders.

"Okay, Sammy boy, get up," he repeated, trying to drag Sam to his feet. "I need you to walk, bro. Can you do that?"

Sam opened his eyes and nodded slowly. He was shivering. He hadn't been in the water long enough for hypothermia to set in, but Dean knew there was still a chance of it developing if he couldn't get Sam warm and dry soon.

Eventually, he maneuvered Sam into a somewhat standing position. He tucked Sam's wet clothes and the shotgun under one arm, and they started walking. Most of Sam's weight was against his older brother, but Dean could tell he was at least making an effort to move towards the Impala.

Then suddenly, mid-step, he stopped.

"What?" Dean demanded. They didn't have time for this.

"Dean, wait," Sam rasped, the words slightly slurred.

"For what? I'm wearing a wet t-shirt here, man. You think this can at least wait until we're in the car?"

"But Dean," Sam all but whined, leaning more heavily against Dean. "We have to go back."

"We'll go back. We'll go back tomorrow when we have more clothes on, okay?"

"But Dean, the gun. I forgot the gun. I went to pick it up, but I think I left it back there on the lake."

Dean rolled his eyes and started walking again, propelling Sam along with him. "Forget about it, Sammy. The gun's in the lake now, and you're not going back to get it. Now come on!"

"But Dean – "

"Sam, if you don't help me get your ass back to the car pretty damn quick, we're both going to freeze to death!"

Finally, that shut him up.

:

It seemed like it had taken forever for Dean to drive them into town, the Impala's heater dutifully forcing warm air all around them. Sam sat hunched in the passenger seat, his arms pulled close to his body, his teeth chattering. His eyes were closed tightly, and his forehead rested on the window, brown curls laden with water droplets as his hair began to thaw.

Dean pulled into the lot of the first motel they encountered, an appropriate dive called The Drake. The tiny front office was being warmed excessively by a noisy space heater sitting propped on a small, round table in the corner. The attendant was perched on a stool behind the counter, his arms folded across his chest, watching a thirteen-inch, black and white television across the room. He stood when Dean entered.

"I need a room," Dean had blurted out, pulling a wad of cash from his back jeans pocket.

The man gave Dean and his still-wet t-shirt a skeptical look.

"Today!" Dean demanded urgently.

Someone said something on TV, and the speaker erupted with canned laughter.

"Just one night?" the man asked, unhooking a key from a board beneath the counter.

"Probably a couple," Dean said, glancing back out at the car. It was dark now, and he couldn't see his brother inside.

The man nodded, handing over the key. "It's 50 bucks a night. If you've got a credit card, we can settle when you're ready to leave."

Dean flipped through the bundle of bills in his hands and plunked down two twenties and a ten. "Just give me the key," he grunted.

The man shrugged, sliding the key onto the counter. Dean snatched it.

"Room number three around back!" the man called after him as Dean rushed back out to the car.

He drove around to the back side of the single-story motel and parked in front of their room. He pocketed and keys and then hurried around to open the passenger side door.

"You ready to warm up?" he asked his brother, helping him to stand.

Sam didn't acknowledge him, just allowed himself to be led to the door and into the relatively warm room. Compared to where they'd been for the past hour or so, the motel actually felt downright tropical.

Dean sat Sam down on the edge of one of the beds and went back out to the car to get their bags from the back seat. The box Sam had found back at the McCray farm was sitting on the seat, so he grabbed it, too, and brought it inside.

Sam was where Dean had left him, sitting stiffly with his arms folded tight against his chest.

"You're lucky I like you," Dean muttered, pulling back the bed covers. His fingers were still numb as he quickly got Sam out of his remaining wet clothes. He went to Sam's duffel and pulled out a warm-looking pair of track pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, then helped his brother put them on.

"Why is it so fucking cold?" Sam complained, his eyes still closed as he laid down in the bed. Dean pulled the covers over him and then grabbed the comforter from the other bed and threw that over Sam as well.

"Hey, you quit your bitching."

Dean found a small glass in the bathroom and filled it with warm water. Then he let the water get hot and tossed a couple towels into the sink.

He brought the glass out to Sam and gently propped him up slightly, pressing the glass into his hands.

"Drink it."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"It's a fucking Shirley Temple," Dean snapped, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "Jesus. It's water, Sam."

Sam recoiled slightly. "I'm so sick of water, Dean."

"Yeah, I bet," Dean grimaced. "Just drink it, Sammy. It'll help with the cold."

Sam brought the glass to his lips and took several tentative swallows.

"Keep drinking," Dean ordered, going back to the bathroom, where the towels were soaked through. He shut off the faucet and wrung the excess water from the towels. Then he took them out into the room.

Once again, Sam was exactly how Dean had left him. Dean took the glass from his hands and set it down on the bedside table. Then he wrapped a hot towel around Sam's neck and tucked one on either side of his torso.

"Is it getting any better?" Dean asked. He reached out and briefly stroked a wet lock of hair from Sam's forehead.

"Yeah," Sam mumbled. "But I'm getting wet again."

Dean closed his own eyes and took a deep breath. He wiped both hands over his face and shook his head. Satisfied that Sam was out of immediate danger, Dean stood and pulled a dry shirt from his bag. Then he went to the window and cranked up the heating unit until hot air was billowing into the room. He changed shirts and looked over at his brother.

Dean's legs suddenly went all wobbly, and he slumped down into a hard chair near the door. He leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"The next time you don't want to do something, Sam, just don't do it." He watched the rise and fall of Sam's chest wearily. "Dying is a shit ass way to get back at somebody."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sam murmured drowsily, his eyes still closed.

Dean heaved a sigh that shuddered only a tiny bit. "I'm serious," he said quietly.

Sam didn't respond. Dean wondered if he was really asleep.