A/N: Thanks so much for all the reviews and follows! I'm thrilled you like this thing!

AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG

Chapter Five

"I threw your keys in the water.

I looked back, they'd frozen halfway down in the ice.

They froze up so quickly ..."

-Dar Williams, "February"

Sam cried a little while ago.

But only a little, and only really quiet. He doesn't think his big brother even realized, and he's glad. Sam doesn't cry much these last few years, only the phone rang again, and for an instant he was filled with such hope that it would be his father, with a plan of action for getting the boys out of the dark and taking them someplace light and safe.

But it was only an empty line again.

So he cried, but now he's finished. Even though the radio's stopped working, and even though the green rectangle of light he can make appear on his watch is getting dimmer with every button press. He's rationed the button-presses, unable to stand the thought of having no source of light under his control. Once per half-hour, he's allowed to press the button. Except he doesn't know how long a half hour is until he's already pressed the button and usually what feels like half an hour only ends up being ten minutes. Or two.

"Hey, Sammy, you hanging in there?"

Dean sounds kind of normal, which Sam is grateful for, even though he's not stupid, so he knows better. If everything was normal, his brother would be teasing him for something, or talking about girls, or using rather more swear words than fit comfortably into the conversation, just to show off how many he knows.

Instead, he's asking Sam if he's hanging in there. Which he wouldn't do unless things really, really sucked.

There's only one answer to that question in the Winchester vocabulary, and Sam uses it. "Yeah, I'm fine." Then thinks to ask, "You?"

To which Dean snorts. "I'm awesome."

The boys have stayed on the couch instead of returning to the vent, wanting to stay close to the phone, which has no dial tone but occasionally makes a noise like it's ringing underwater. There's never anybody on the line. The dark in front of Sam's eyes has taken on its own life, twisting and spiraling, with little bursts of color exploding here and there. He knows it's only his eyes playing tricks on him. It's like when you press your hands against your eyelids too long, and when you let them go and open your eyes, you still can't see anything for several seconds, and there are all these loops and spirals and shapes that aren't really there.

Sam thinks maybe the fake images bombarding his straining eyes in the dark are like his memories of his mother, in a way. In the absence of something to look at, his mind has created its own version of sight. He can see her so completely in his head. She's putting him to bed in his crib. She's singing him a lullaby (which he read in a book, so he can't necessarily hear the tune – still, he's sure it's pretty). She's tucking the blankets around him (and he can't quite picture the blankets, but he knows they aren't scratchy like motel comforters or worn through like his favorite blanket in the trunk of the Impala – the blankets in his memory are soft, like his Dad's oldest flannel shirt, but not in a bad way).

Only, he can't remember any of that stuff, not really. He knows he's put the images together from books, and movies, and little bits of information that John and Dean – mostly Dean – have let slip. Still. Sometimes it's nice to close his eyes and look at the scene as if he's really remembering it. To feel like he owns some part of the life that his brother and father still mourn.

So, Sam knows you can close your eyes and see stuff that isn't there. But it's weird to have your eyes open, to blink and feel your lashes touch, then part, and nothing changes in your vision. You're still seeing a muddy brown river of nothing, swirling with eddies of maybe-something-is-moving, maybe-I-didn't-make-that-part-up –

He shivers. Wipes his eyes with the back of his arm.

Sniffs once.

Crap.

The jig is up.

"Sam?" Dean's voice, more solid than any half-imagined memory, grounds Sam and annoys him all at once. "Y'okay?"

"I said I'm fine, Dean!" the statement comes out more forceful than he intended, and he knows he's only digging himself in further.

"'Cause you know I got your back." What Dean means is that he's got Sam's back, and his front, and his every side, and Sam knows this. Nothing is ever going to get to him without going through his big brother first.

But Sam doesn't want anything to go through his big brother at all, whether or not it's on the way to him. This entire situation is freaking him out.

Sam can't decide whether to say "I know" or "thanks" or "don't be stupid," so he goes with, "Shut up." But it comes out affectionate, which is how he means it. He wants to say more, but he is distracted by an odd sensation creeping up his right ankle, like his foot is going to sleep. That doesn't make any sense, though. He's sitting at attention, with both feet firmly on the floor. He's way too tense to stretch out, or curl up, or sprawl the way Dean is doing. Dean's big, stinky feet have been invading Sam's half of the couch for the better part of an hour. Sam keeps shoving at them, and Dean keeps poking Sam in the ribs with his disgusting toes. Sam doesn't need light to tell him his brother's once-white socks are yellow-gray with filth and age and the inability of the elder two Winchesters to ever separate a load of laundry by color.

Sam's way too keyed up to keep his feet anywhere except on the floor, ready to run. Now the odd sensation that started on the right has worked its way to both feet, and Sam wonders if this is only in his head, like the thing with his vision. Like he hasn't moved his feet in so long, he's starting to imagine weird stuff about them.

Or maybe this is what frostbite starts like. With the temperature in the room, that certainly feels possible.

"Sam, I'm thinking it's about time we feel our way to the kitchen, figure out where we left those Doritos last night," Dean says, but Sam barely hears him. After a beat of silence, his brother prompts, "Sammy?"

"Dean, I think ..."

This is all Sam has time to say before he feels himself being pulled clean off the couch.

"Sam!"

Something's got him by the ankles and it's dragging him through the house like he doesn't weigh anything, like he's a sled and it's pulling him empty across the snow. He bumps against one of the cold metal heating vents, then the leg of a chair. Then carpet gives way to linoleum, and a muddy old braided rug, and somebody's discarded boot.

Crap! It's going to drag him out the door.

"Sam, answer me, man!"

Sam is trying. But the cold feeling that started at his feet has gripped his whole body now, and he can't seem to make the words come. This is worse than waking up in the dark to find the heat not working, worse even than the time he slipped and fell in the creek in January (embarrassingly enough, not on a hunt at all, but on a present-finding mission for Dean's birthday when Sam was seven – he wanted to find a really cool fossil for his really cool big brother, who'd been furious he tried to hop the stepping stones by himself). This cold is an entity unto itself, and like the darkness, it is absolute.

He hears the door swing open. Feels wooden steps, then wet mud bumping under his elbows as he forces frozen arms upward to protect his head.

The dark out here is different. Heavy and wet. But wet is good. Wet makes the fingers – if that's what they are – gripping Sam's ankles slip and slide on his skin. He begins to kick, to fight. He remembers that this is what hunters do, and he is a hunter, like his big brother. He twists. He wriggles. When something comes near his face, he bites. Then gags on the taste of mud and something that might be, oh god, oh god, he hopes is not blood.

He hears crashing, swearing in the dark behind him. The door slamming open. He never even hears Dean touch the steps, only hears the dull splash of his brother landing in the mud, already at a run.

It's getting more difficult to move, but Sam hopes he's slowed his captor long enough for his brother to catch up. His legs continue to twitch with all the fight left in them, but it isn't enough. Not when Dean can't see him, is screaming, "Talk to me, Sammy! Give me a direction here!"

Realization jolts. He wraps his right hand around his left wrist. Squeezes, fumbling, for the button. Clicks on, off. On, off. A tiny, waning rectangle of green light. A signal. Somehow he manages to see the numbers, to see that exactly half an hour has passed since the last time he checked his watch. That was a really long half hour, he thinks stupidly.

Then Dean is on him, and Sam finds himself playing the role of rope in a big-brother-verses-mysterious-evil tug of war for entirely too many minutes, before Dean finally just tackles him, rolling across Sam and smashing him face-down into the dirt.

Sam feels his ankles slip free of the thing's grip.

And for just a second, he sees Dean, face flecked with mud, eyes flashing fierce, caught by a light whose source Sam can't identify.

Then all goes dark, and quiet, and Sam isn't sure whether his eyes are closed or open, but it doesn't seem to matter all that much anyway.

To be continued …