A.N Hello, I'm back. I'd like to thank anyone that is still following this story, I sincerely appreciate it. I've spent the past few months travelling so haven't had time to update, but I'm back on British soil now and the story should be finished in the next couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy.
"Dean!" Couldn't that kid leave him alone for five minutes? He was busy dammit. He was...What was he doing?
"SAAAAAAM!" Oh that's right. He was screaming, howling out his brother's name. Only...was he? Was he making any sound at all?
He was floating, gliding along the ground, but he felt so heavy. Why did he feel so heavy when he could move so fast? He had to assess the situation. How did he do that again?
"SAAAAAAM!" Oh, there it was again, that blood curdling scream of panic and despair that felt like it should have come from him...But it hadn't, he hadn't even opened his mouth...Had he?
What was he doing again?
"DEAN!" That's right, he was assessing the situation. That was his job, assess the situation, fix the situation, hold dominion over the situation.
So where was he again? Thoughts kept scratching at the edges of his mind and as soon as he tried to focus on them they flitted from his grasp.
It was dark. That much he could tell. A darkness so complete that it dazzled him, blinded him. But that wasn't right either, because he could see, he could see his fingertips dancing deftly over every tree and branch as he went wiffling through the woods. He thought he was moving too fast to touch everything, but he could see his fingers, moving so swiftly and with such power. But were they his fingers? He couldn't feel the bark beneath his fingertips, but they looked like his, the way his right index finger was slightly crooked from a dodgy break, that hangnail on his thumb that he hadn't been able to stop picking at for weeks now.
But then at the same time he was looking at Sam's hands. They had to be Sam's hands, because Dean didn't know anyone else with hands the size of bear paws. He didn't know what was going on, and he really didn't care. Did he care? It felt like he should care. Or maybe it was Sam that cared, seeing as it was Sam's hands he could see and he was a good four inches higher off the ground than he was used to.
"DEAN!" Maybe it was him that was screaming his own name. He really couldn't be sure of too much at all right now. He thought there might be lots of different voices, all screaming. It was hard to think straight with all these voices in his head...or Sam's head. If they'd just shut up for two freaking minutes maybe he could figure out who the hell he was.
Whoever he was, he was rushing. He could tell from the way the trees flew by so fast. It occurred to him that he shouldn't be moving that fast, it wasn't safe when you had an injury like...like...what kind of injury did he have again?
"DE-AN!" With a bone rattling jolt he found himself on the ground, sucking in a breath of frigid air in desperation. Something was wrong; his limbs were all uneven lengths, what the hell had happened to him? There were too many of them as well, too many arms and too many legs. He was about to teeter over into freak out mode when one of the legs moved without him telling it to and he realised it was Sam. The extra, freakishly long limbs belonged to his brother who was sprawled underneath him.
"Sammy? What the hell? Ow." He snaked a hand across his midsection as Sam wriggled out from under him.
"Dean? Is that you in there?" Sam hauled Dean up to his knees and started pawing at him while Dean did his best to swat his brother's hands away from where they were prodding at his stomach and pulling at his eyelids.
"Dude! Quit it!"
Sam dropped back down so his butt hit the snow, his chest heaving with the effort to get his breath back.
"We're in trouble here, aren't we?"
Dean smirked, "No shit."
"What do you think it is?"
Dean shook his head "I don't..."
"Dean?"
Dean kept his eyes carefully trained on Sam, "Keep looking right at me Sammy. Right in my eyes...Don't look at him."
They stared at each other, not daring to even blink. Hyper aware of the figure standing at the edge of their peripheral vision. Watching them.
"You got a plan Dean?"
"Nope. You?"
"No. What are we going to do? I mean we can't just keep ignoring him and hope he goes away...Can we?" They were keeping their voices low through force of habit, they both knew it could hear everything.
"We could give it a go. I don't have too much else going on right now."
"Can you give the damn jokes a rest for five minutes?! We need to figure out a plan fast! I mean seriously Dean, do you have an extra blood supply that I don't know about or something?"
"Yeah...about that. I uh...get the feeling that it might be sort of...keeping me alive."
The look on Sam's face was part pissed off (though what the hell he'd done to piss his little brother off this time, he had no idea) and part resigned, as if he should have expected this all along.
"Come again?"
"I was talking to him, when he was you and...and he...uh..."
"Dude?"
"Don't...feel so..." Dean's vision swam, Sam doubled, then tripled and then he couldn't tell which set of eyes belonged to his brother. So he closed his eyes, closed his eyes and waited for his vision to clear. When he looked again he was on his back in the snow. Sam was knelt above him, his mop of hair whipping from side to side as he checked the trees frantically. As the shadows crept in again, Dean knew it had been a trick. It was never going to let them go for long.
Xxx
They were darting forwards again. Faster than before, he could almost feel a sense of urgency. Almost, but not quite, because he was being overwhelmed with the invasion of wailing souls. They were everywhere, all hitching a ride in his body, his brother's body, their pain was so complete that he couldn't think, couldn't really focus on anything but the rushing and the screaming and then suddenly he was on the ground again, face buried in an armpit.
He heard Sam groan as he was once again dragged into an upright position.
"This is getting seriously old man."
"Why do you think it keeps letting us go?"
"You're never happy are you Sam?"
"No I'm not. Not when it's clearly playing with us." He paused and Dean could practically see the effort it took Sam not to look away into the trees where he knew it was calling for him. He could feel it calling for him too.
"What did you mean, he's keeping you alive?"
"We can't die here Sam. Nothing dies here."
"Um, there's a shit load of dead bodies that might disagree with you Dean."
"Think about it Sam, back at that church I could barely even stand up by myself, a few hours later I'm falling off cliffs and running all over the freaking woods! That sound normal to you?"
"You were in shock. You lost a lot of blood, it's adrenaline Dean."
"I thought so too, I'm not too sure now, I feel too...normal."
"That's just your brain playing tricks on you. You look like shit!" Despite his words, Dean could hear fresh doubt creeping into his brother's voice. "You still can't walk properly on your own Dean, you're cold, you can barely string a sentence together without stammering."
"Not now Sam, that was before. I mean don't get me wrong, I feel like I've been run over by a semi but...I'm ok. I should be getting worse, not better. And how about you Sam? How are you feeling?"
Sam looked perplexed at this, his brows furrowed and he seemed to ponder it. "Cold?"
"How cold? Frozen through? So cold you don't think you'll ever be warm again? Or just...chilly?"
"Chilly." Sam supplied reluctantly, "But Dean, that could mean anything. We could be in really deep hypothermia or something."
"Aint you Mr glass half full."
"Ok, say you're right. Say it's keeping us alive. What for? And we both saw those bodies Dean, they looked pretty dead to me."
"There still here Sam. They're all still here. They're in the shadows."
Sam blinked, he peered at Dean like maybe he had lost it, like maybe he was delirious and Sam had just wasted precious minutes entertaining Dean's crazy notions.
"I'm not crazy Sam. I know what I'm talking about."
"Do you mean they're...spirits?" Sam was talking slowly now, as if talking to Dean like he were a child would help matters.
"No, not spirits. I don't...know. Can't you hear them screaming Sam?"
"So you're saying they're alive?"
"No, they're not alive. But...they're not dead and...I am aware how this sounds."
"Ok ok, I believe you. It's not like we have anything else to go on."
"This place is wrong Sammy." The intensity in Dean's eyes and the quiet warning in his voice chilled Sam to his very core.
Xxx
He couldn't remember how he'd arrived here again. Flat on his back in the snow, gazing up at the tree tops while his giant of a brother removed his elbow from where it was pressed painfully against his sternum.
"That sneaky bastard." Sam was muttering.
He remembered then, it had used his own voice. A quick, Sammy be careful that isn't me, from off in the woods and Sam hadn't been able to help it, he'd whipped his head round on pure instinct before Dean had been able to utter a sound. It had been fast that time, seizing them with a fury that Dean hadn't truly seen since it had taken him from the church. He'd tried to focus, to force his mind into awareness, but the screaming had overwhelmed him and the hands had pulled him down. He'd wriggled his way as close to the surface of his being as he could. He could see his hands again; the hands that he couldn't be sure were his own. They were grabbing at the trees now, using them to propel him forwards, and then there was something off to the side, something that made his head jerk round to see and then a force slammed him from the side again, slammed him back into his body and back onto the ground.
He squinted up at the trees. "Sammy?"
"Yeah?"
"It's getting light out."
"And?"
"Something about the light...Can't remember."
He struggled to focus what he was sure was crucial information, nestled away at the back of his mind. Something he'd been told?
He didn't have long to consider it because then Sam was hauling him none too gently to his feet. Cold determination on his face.
"Ok, here's the plan. We're just gonna focus on each other and just try and get out of here."
"That's the plan? That's a really crappy plan."
"If you've got a better one Dean then let's hear it!" Without waiting for a response Sam started walking –no-shuffling back the way they'd come. Hands clamped on Dean's shoulders, staring into his eyes with intensity, Sam crab-walked them through the woods.
"Sammy this is stupid."
"Just concentrate Dean."
"Come on man, how long you think we can keep this up? Besides, I don't want my legacy to be that I died...freaking side-stepping away from a monster. That shit's embarrassing."
"We can do it Dean. We just have to stay in control."
"Yeah, till it decides it's easier to just drop me and take you. Dude the only way we're going to get out of this, is if we fight."
Sam finally stopped forcing him to shuffle. "How though? We don't even know what it is we're fighting."
"I know something."
"What?"
Dean scowled "I don't know exactly."
"Huh? Please Dean, be less helpful."
"Damn it Sam, I'm trying!" Dean forced himself to stop, Sam's face was pissed but underneath there was panic, fear. He thought they were going to die. Hell they probably were, or at least Dean was, but he had to keep Sam calm, had to make him believe they'd win this.
"Every time it lets us go it's like...I dunno, like another piece is slotting into place."
"Telling you what?"
"Like I said, I don't know yet." He paused, daring to glance off to see how closely they were being watched. "I think we have to let it take us again."
"Are you crazy? What if we can't get free?"
"We will. Just trust me on this one Sammy."
As he turned away from Sam, he prayed he was right.
Xxx
"Sam, get up. We have to move. Now."
Sam groaned as Dean hauled him to his feet. He tried not to notice the blood flowing sluggishly from the fresh gash on his baby brother's temple. Or the glazed, dull look in his eyes. He wished he could give him time to recover, for the world to stop spinning like he knew it was, but there was no time, time was precious here and they had none to spare.
He tried not to dwell on the fact that he'd barely registered alarm at coming to and seeing Sam lying dazed on the ground. Figured that a head injury was inevitable the way they were being flung around like rag dolls, and that it didn't really matter because Sam couldn't die here.
It was that that unsettled him most, the feeling of complacency. Don't think about it, no time to think about it. They had to move.
"Dean, 'm gonna hurl."
"Not yet Sammy, we gotta keep moving."
"Just stop...just need two minutes...please."
"We don't have two minutes Sam. We have to get as far as we can, before it comes back."
"Why?"
"Dammit Sam! Why can't you ever just trust me. We just have to stall it."
"Him."
"What?" Dean froze, releasing his hold on Sam's jacket, causing his brother to stumble on his unsteady feet.
"What do you mean 'him'?"
"Huh? I didn't...Why does it matter?" Sam squeezed his eyes shut, pressing a hand to his head and inspecting the blood that it came away with.
Then suddenly Dean was aiming his gun at his brother. Funny, he didn't remember pulling it out, didn't even know that he still had it. But there is was, wobbling unsteadily in his hand while Sam stared at him, bewildered and panicked.
Dean blinked and lowered his gun. How had that happened?
"Dean, what..."
"I don't know. Quick, let's move."
He grabbed Sam's arm and after a moment's hesitation, Sam allowed his brother to drag him along through the woods.
Eugh, he really was going to throw up. The world was at a dodgy angle and spinning way too fast. He just needed two minutes to regroup. And what the hell had just happened? Dean had pulled a gun on him, his own brother? And had he really corrected Dean about the freaking gender of the damn monster?
After a few minutes of stumbling along, the fog cleared a little and he realised two things. One, they hadn't heard, seen or felt anything following them in a while. Two, they were running the wrong way. It hadn't let them go this time, just slipped beneath the surface, subtly controlling them like puppets on a string.
As he opened his mouth to tell Dean, a glint of light caught his eye through a gap in the trees. He heard Dean grunt as they were flung to the ground again.
He lay there panting, listening to the silence, the sound of Dean's laboured breathing, the absence of the birds and the whistling of the wind through the trees. The way it rustled the leaves and pushed snow off the branches to thud onto the earth. The wind picked up, shifting the snow around him, biting at the sensitive skin on his face. He sensed Dean rise uneasily to his feet, and stare into the distance. The wind grew stronger, pulling at him, pushing him, driving snow and water into his eyes. He pushed himself up next to his brother, and followed Dean's determined gaze.
It was snowing again, thick and heavy. He squinted through the wind and the snow and on the other side of the blizzard, he could see it standing there, watching them. A hazy, powerful figure, black against the white. He blinked away water from his stinging eyes. The wind whipped around them, through the trees.
"What do we do Dean?" Sam raised his voice above the din.
"Just hold on a little long..." They both jumped back as a tree limb crashed to the ground in front of them. Then they heard something else, out of place, in the distance, getting closer.
"What is that?" Dean turned his head to glance into the shadows behind them and abruptly threw himself at Sam, knocking them both forwards off their feet as a resounding boom shook the ground.
"The trees are falling Sam! Move!" Dean shoved Sam upwards, forcing him to run. They had no choice, it was toying with them, getting them where it wanted them and there was nothing they could do but run straight towards it, to avoid ending up like pancakes. Another crash sounded behind them, too close, Sam judged from the branches scraping down his back. They ran through the wind and the snow, towards the figure in the distance, it didn't get any closer, only forced them onwards.
Until, without warning, everything stopped. The wind died down to a bitter breeze, the snowfall grew softer and the trees stopped trying to flatten them. Sam dared a glance behind, it had been close. About fifteen enormous trees had fallen to the ground. One wrong foot and they'd have been crushed. Like the skeleton and few feet behind them. Sam's eyes darted around. Bodies. All around them, they were right back at the pathway of the dead, where he couldn't stop his imagination from picturing them crawling towards him. Only this time was it his imagination or did that corpse just move? Bony fingers reaching for his ankle.
Imagination.
His stupid, big brain was just inventing more things for him to worry about. Like the way that corpse was propped against a tree trunk, when he was sure that just a few moments ago it had been sprawled at his feet.
Imagination.
It was just his overactive imagination that was inventing the rustling sounds, it wasn't actually the sound of bodies rising from their frozen graves. And it was just the stress of the situation that made his mind picture them moving, crawling.
Imagination Imagination Imagination.
But then Dean was stiffening, placing himself in front of Sam. Ushering Sam backwards.
Imagination?
Sam finally decided this might actually be happening when Dean backed him right into a fallen tree and he toppled over it, wincing as his back made contact with the compact snow, legs stuck comically in the air, followed by the hefty weight of his brother following suit, landing on his chest and knocking the wind out of him.
Sam decided this definitely was happening when Dean let out a high pitched "Shit!" and started squirming and kicking.
Sam tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out from the thrashing force of his brother and the elbows that were digging mercilessly into his ribs.
"Get off you... Sam it's got my freaking ankle." Dean was still squirming and Sam was still stuck, unable to see much of anything from his vantage point of the back of Dean's head.
He craned his neck just enough to see Dean draw back his other foot and bring it down, hard. There was a strange, sickening sound like the crunch of slightly soggy cereal and Dean tumbled, somersaulting backwards off Sam and scampering to his feet.
Dean was moving faster than Sam's mind was processing the information and his brother had already hauled him away by the time he'd even registered the gentle tugging on his jeans from the other side of the tree trunk.
He lifted the hem of Dean's shirt. The wound was still there, ugly, threatening, deadly. Yet Dean was jumping around like he was going for Gold in the Olympics. What was going to happen when they defeated this thing that was keeping Dean alive? If if if, his oh so helpful subconscious provided.
Dean yanked his shirt back down and pulled Sam to his feet, giving him only a split second to witness the grotesque display ahead that was struggling to stand, before he was forcing him over another fallen tree, away from the dead. That strange noise was back, only this time it wasn't so far away, this time it was close, just beyond the line of trees and getting closer.
Dean had stopped and was looking around frantically as the sound grew closer, the sound of footsteps and then they stepped out of the trees in front of them, behind them, all around them.
"Dean..."
"I know, I know."
"Dude what the hell do we do?"
They were advancing, albeit very slowly, dragging long dead limbs towards them. Hollow, expressionless faces, arms reaching out, clawing. Too many to count, like something out of a zombie movie. Sam supposed that's what they were, zombies, sort of. And as he stood back to back with Dean, eyes scanning for an escape route through the approaching mass of decay, he could see it there. Standing in the distance, watching them. Is this what happened to all its victims? When it got bored of playing it just used the bodies of those it had already taken?
"Saaaaaaaaammyyyyyyyyyy." Oh and if that wasn't just too damn creepy. Hearing those dead mouths call his name without moving.
"Deeeeeeeeeaaaaaan." He heard Dean mumble something behind him. He daren't look around, can't bring himself to tear his eyes away from the things that are advancing towards them. The things that were once human, now void of any emotion, any presence of mind, just dead. Not quite though, and once again his oversized brain was right. Because the bodies might be dead but their souls were trapped, trapped in that...thing. It had them all and was violating them even more by using them as its puppets.
They lumbered closer, well most of them did, the ones that had decomposed until only bones were left seemed to be having a hard time doing anything but scattering on the ground without muscle and ligaments to hold them together. A small part of Sam thought it was ever so slightly funny the way that a solitary bony hand was clawing its way towards him. Funny and downright disturbing. He found himself clenching his own hand, wondering if one day, years from now, another person would be standing right where he was, watching Sam's skeletal hand groping for them. He really really hoped not.
There were more than he'd thought, they'd been lying in the trees, they'd probably died crawling towards what they hoped was safety.
At least they seemed to have a problem with coordination, fallen trees were proving to be an issue, the closest ones walked straight into them and immediately hit the ground face down. One wobbly head fell at the wrong angle and rolled sickeningly away. Not quite as sickening as the way the rest of the body got up and kept on coming mind.
Sam had been watching it all with a kind of alarmed detachment, like he was the player in a video game and when they got him (which they definitely would), he'd just start back at an earlier stage, probably on the edge of the cliff, pulling Dean back onto solid ground.
But of course this wasn't a game, this was horrifyingly real and the severed hand that he'd been watching definitely had hold of his foot and was crawling up his jeans. He snapped back into himself, snatched the hand off his leg and hurled it at the head of a corpse, grimacing as a chunk of nose came away with it.
"Dean what do we do?"
He heard Dean grunt and another crunching sound as his brother apparently resorted to violence.
"I don't know, I don't know...sun...Sammy come on."
Before he knew it, Dean had grabbed him and they were hurtling past-no wait-through bodies, Dean had at some point acquired a hefty looking tree branch and was brandishing it in front of him like a sword, sending heads, limbs and torsos crumbling into dust. Typical Dean, he was probably in his element. Sam let himself be dragged through the trees, not noticing the twigs snagging in his hair or the thorns biting into his skin.
They were roughly twenty feet from the (what Sam now thought of as) zombies, when Dean stopped abruptly and spun to face his brother.
"We just have to hold off until the sun comes up. I remember now Sammy. He only has until dawn."
"How do you...?"
"Just trust me ok? Now run."
Sam ran. Dean had given him an order and he was running. Feet flying over uneven ground with energy he didn't know he still had. He let fear take over and he was sprinting through the trees, going faster than the nagging in his head could keep up with. Thinking off nothing but runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun. Almost too fast for the thoughts to seep in, but they did, quietly and discreetly, like they'd never even left. How did Dean know it only had until sunrise? How would they get out of here? What would happen to Dean when they weren't in its world anymore? Why was he alone?
Sam staggered to a halt, feet moving too fast to allow for a graceful standstill. He whipped around.
"DEAN!"
The woods were silent again. No falling trees, no names whispered on dead lips, no footsteps thundering after his own, no answer.
Sam's feet were propelling him forwards once again, before he'd even told them too. Back the way he'd come, always back to that same place.
"DEAN! ANSWER ME!"
Maybe he'd fallen, hit his head? Maybe the thing wasn't keeping him alive anymore? Maybe the zombies had got him? Or maybe Dean was just being the same stubborn jackass he always was.
Because there, up ahead, disappearing up a slope was the retreating form of his big brother. Not concussed, not being dragged, not in a trance, he was running, running away from Sam, back towards the precipice.
"DEAN!" Dean was fast, but Sam was faster, and he wasn't about to let his moron of a brother do what he knew he was about to do.
Sam's lungs screamed at him as he forced his legs to move faster than he thought possible. Nausea rose dangerously in his throat, but he pushed it back down, not thinking about how every breath froze his insides. Just concentrating on going faster, how if he couldn't make his ridiculous body move faster than it was capable that he'd never forgive himself. He was vaguely aware of Dean's footprints in the snow in front of him, but he didn't need them, he knew where he was going.
Even as he broke clear of the trees and felt the wind bite into his skin once more, he didn't stop running. His mind was moving faster than his body, there was Dean, just a few feet in front of him, still running, hurtling himself forward, and ahead, right on the edge, a tall dark figure, beckoning them closer. Sam couldn't focus on the face, but he knew it was grinning. Knew it just as sure as he knew that dawn wasn't too far away, or that he'd never reach Dean in time.
Dean never broke stride, never faltered, just glanced back over his shoulder once, his eyes finding Sam's instantly.
"It always snows here Sammy." Dean's voice, but it hadn't come from Dean's mouth.
Sam was so close, his entire being was screaming at him to just STOP, just make everything stop! He never took his eyes from Dean's, even as he was throwing himself through the air, reaching out with desperate hands; he never took his eyes from Dean's.
Until Dean's eyes disappeared and as Sam's hands closed on what should have been Dean's wrist, they grasped only air.
A.N. The next chapter is well under way and I aim to have this story finished off soon. All reviews are loved and provide much needed fuel. Thanks for reading.