A/N I wouldn't have managed it without my beta, FictionalNutter, so huge thanks to her!

Chapter 4

"Will you stop acting like mother hen?" Seeing Dean entering their motel room with another blanket, Sam decided to finally rebel. "One more of these and I'll look like a friggin' mummy!"

"Stop bitching, Sammy. You've just had a bath in freezing cold water in April in Alaska. You'll thank me when you don't get pneumonia," Dean answered firmly. "Did you drink your cocoa?"

"Nope. Too hot."

"It's supposed to be hot! You need to get warmer," Dean insisted.

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean I'm supposed to burn my tongue with it!" Despite his protests, Sam was forced to take the fourth blanket. "Dean!" he moaned in a last pathetic attempt to protest. "Where I landed it wasn't even deep. The water didn't reach higher than my knees!"

"It wouldn't if you hadn't landed on your ass," observed the older Winchester. "If you drink your cocoa, I'll get you a glass of whiskey," he tempted.

Sam gave up and decided to change the topic. "By the way, don't you think that Lady's behavior was somehow strange? I mean, they say that animals can sense the supernatural."

"Yeah, something must be in that lake," Dean agreed, looking content as his little brother took a sip of the steaming cocoa. "We'll have to come back in the night, now when we know where to look. We need to be sure about what we are dealing with."

"Okay, but you'll have to lend me a jacket. I don't think that one is going to get dry enough, and the dark one is still covered with Louisiana mud."

"Which reminds me, we'll have to finally do some washing," Dean laughed, sure that Sam had already noticed he'd been wearing the same T-shirt for three days now. "But Sam, I'm not sure if you should go there tonight," he said with concern, looking at his younger brother still shivering a bit under the blankets.

"Why not? Dean, come on, it's still a few hours till the night. I can sit here, get warm, drink hot cocoa... and whiskey, if you give it to me," Sam looked at Dean with his best puppy impersonation.

"You promise to be a good boy?" Dean grinned.

"Promise. Now give me that damn whiskey!" Sam laughed.

"Alright, kiddo. Here's your whiskey. Stay in bed, get warm, and call me if you need anything." Dean put the empty mug he took from Sam on the table, and reached for his jacket.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked with surprise.

"To Sophie. I have just enough time to see how she's doing. Don't worry, I'm not gonna flirt with her," he added, seeing the concern on his brother's face. "It's normal to be interested in the well-being of my lost cousin's girl, isn't it?" He grinned, although it wasn't a normal, one-hundred-percent-happy Dean grin. There seemed to be something forced there, something unsure, which worried Sam even more. "I said don't worry, I'll be good," Dean promised, more seriously this time. "You better be too," he warned and disappeared behind the door.

"Dean!" Sophie looked genuinely surprised by his visit, but she also seemed to be happy to see her unexpected guest.

"Hi!" Dean sent her a charming smile. "I thought I'd drop by to see how you're doing."

"Come in," she invited him with a warm smile. "I was just making apple pie."

"Apple pie?" Dean echoed her, his eyes bright. "I love apple pie! Were you expecting me?"

"Yeah, sure," the girl laughed. "You know, I love cooking, especially if I'm in a bad mood," she explained more seriously.

"In such cases I'd rather eat," he grinned. He hung his jacket on the hatstand in the corner and drew a long breath, enjoying the appetizing smell that filled the house.

"That's great, cause I need a poor victim who's going to eat all that. If I did it myself, that door would be too narrow for me." Her melodious laugh filled the air, and Dean suddenly felt much more relaxed he had been feeling in a long time.

"Where's your brother?" she asked him when they sat down in the cozy living room.

"I think he's catching some cold. I left him in the motel with a warm blanket and hot cocoa so he'll be fine." It surprised Dean a bit how glad he was that Sam wasn't there with him. I'm just paying her a friendly visit, nothing more, he warned himself.

"Oh, I know how hard the climate here can be for someone from the south," Sophie said, concern on her face making her appear even more beautiful to Dean. "I couldn't get used to these low temperatures for a long time. In fact, I don't think I'm fully used to them still."

"You're not from here?"

"No, I'm from LA. I studied environmental studies. I came to Alaska as a volunteer and I met Chad here. We both loved nature, so what really united us at first was wildlife protection, but then we realized we had much more in common..."

Dean nodded, looking at Chad's pictures taking up more than two thirds of the room's walls. See, Sammy, I'm just politely listening to her talking about her lost boyfriend, no need to worry, he smiled to his thoughts, recalling Sam's expression back in the motel.

"You two were together long?" he asked, trying to cover his lack of attention, when he realized he got lost in his own thoughts for a while.

"A couple of months. I came here last year, when the holidays begun." She smiled a sad smile. "I'm the one who talked Chad into staying in Alaska. I convinced him there's so much to do here, that this was the place we were needed in. Maybe if we..." Her voice trailed off and Dean came to the conclusion that her good mood was just a cover-up of completely different emotions. He did it so often himself, played happy when deep inside he wanted to scream. Went out and partied on, when all he wanted was to hide somewhere deep and never come back. He felt so sorry for the girl sitting next to him. But he knew better than to address the topic openly... or maybe he knew less, because it was something he avoided so often he didn't even know any more how to do that any other way. So he ignored the tears filling her bright eyes and made a struggle to divert her attention from what was bothering her.

"Yeah, it's been obvious Chad was gonna be a nature freak since he was a toddler. He wasn't even steady on his feet and already he chased ladybugs to put them into jars or tried to catch dragonflies that were bigger than his hand."

"Really?" There was a glint of genuine interest in Sophie's sad eyes.

"Of course. But he wouldn't try to pull out their wings like other boys did, nothing like that. He loved to just observe them, see all the details, even the smallest dots on their wings, and when he took a good look, he'd always let them go in the end." Dean smiled to the memory of little Sammy, flushes on his cheeks, running to his father or older brother to tell them about the pattern on some butterfly's wings, the color of some dragonfly or the length of some earthworm. "Although he once tried to eat an earthworm," he added with a laugh.

"Yuck!" Sophie wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"I'm not joking. Dad... I mean, his dad, took it away from him at the last moment." For a second Dean completely forgot it wasn't his brother he was talking about. At least not explicitly, because he shared much more similar stories with Sophie that afternoon, all of them coming from his childhood memories of Sam. The girl listened with fascination to so many new stories about her boyfriend's childhood, and Dean enjoyed sharing them, even though he had to be very careful not to mistakenly use his brother's name. At one moment a thought passed through his head that had Sam been there with him, he would have criticized his older brother for his behavior. But it wasn't that he was lying to the girl to attract her, was it? He was just slightly modifying the truth, and only to make her feel better. And, apparently, it worked. Sophie seemed to forget a little bit about her sadness without forgetting about the one whose loss made her so sad.

The talk continued long, the apple pie was delicious, and it wasn't until he got a message from Sam that Dean recalled he had a work to do that night. Not really eager to leave yet, he forced himself up from the couch, excusing himself with the need to get aspirin for his brother.

"Poor Sam," Sophie said, a genuine concern in her voice. "Wait, I'll at least pack some pie for him," she offered and ran to the kitchen.

Dean thanked the girl, slightly surprised when she kissed his cheek in return. She's treating you like a family member, he reminded himself. Back in the car, it occurred to him that Sam might really need some aspirin after his earlier bath in the ice cold lake, so he stopped at the gas station and bought a bottle of pills. That way his excuse wasn't a lie any more, but he also figured both of them may need it if they were forced to spend a few nights outside in the cold Alaskan wilderness.

Dean pulled up in front of the motel and turned the ignition off, reaching for the package laying on the seat beside him. He hesitated for a moment, but the temptation was too strong. He unwrapped it and caught the rich smell of the pie. There were four big pieces of it in the package.

"Sorry, Sammy," Dean smirked, taking the first one. He planned to eat just this one and bring the remaining three to his brother, but he quickly rediscovered what an excellent cook Sophie was. "You wouldn't appreciate this anyway," he muttered and stuffed the next piece into his mouth. With a pang of guilt he quickly wrapped the last two pieces, smoothed the paper with his hand, and got out of the car. He made sure there were no crumbs left on his clothes, then he put his most innocent face on and reached for the door handle.

Sam had already crawled from the bed and now he was sitting on the couch in his warmest hoodie, laptop on his lap, waiting more and more impatiently for his brother to return. They had a job to do. If they didn't want to miss the nymph or whatever it was that haunted that lake, they needed to arrive there before it got dark. Meanwhile, the sun was already setting, and Dean was apparently too busy with his new hook-up to notice such details. It wasn't that Sam didn't like Sophie. She seemed to be a nice girl, but also a girl whose beloved boyfriend had just disappeared under mysterious circumstances. And "disappeared" was the key word here. There was no proof yet that Chad Adams was already dead. Especially if the creature they hunted was a nymph, there was a great chance that her victims were still alive and held captive somewhere. That was why Sam didn't like the idea of his brother getting too close to that girl. Besides, the older Winchester rarely treated his flirtations seriously; they were more like an opportunity to relax after a day of hard work to him. There were exceptions, of course, but even if one of them felt something towards a woman, both brothers knew too well it would never work out in their line of work, that they would inevitably finish the job keeping them in the place and hit the road again, looking for new monsters to kill, new people to save. There was no place for a stable relationship if you were a hunter and you had to accept it, suck it up and live on. And Sophie was definitely not the type of girl for one night, Dean must have known it as well as his brother, and the way he was drawn to her despite it all worried Sam even more.

Hearing the door open, Sam stood up and made a face, ready to scold his brother. To his luck, however, Dean had brought him two pieces of apple pie, which placated Sam for the time being, and fifteen minutes later the Winchesters were heading back towards the lake. Sam was wearing his brother's spare jacket, which was definitely too short for him and which, as he himself stated, looked as if he had borrowed it from his younger brother. That statement was enough to engage Dean into brotherly banter which continued for the rest of their ride.

NOW

Sam was walking slowly up a narrow path winding between trees and bushes. He knew the way almost by heart, due to how many times he and Dean had walked it during the past few days. All in vain. That first night they had been close to seeing the creature. They had felt the wind, sudden and strong, had seen it make the previously calm waters rise in waves, and the clouds move to let the moon shine through. The epicenter had seemed to be located in the very place Ed had brought them to a couple of hours earlier. However, as they had run to the spot, having to literally fight their way through the thickness of the forest, it had been calm and quiet as if nothing had happened there at all.

When the next morning they had come back to the town, cold and tired, they had learned that Mick, the bar owner hadn't returned home that night, and a few hours later his car had been found in the woods, not far from the road leading to the lake. The next two nights the brothers had spent wandering along the overgrown lake shore, but they hadn't heard or seen anything out of ordinary again. The only thing they had acquired during their nightly investigations was a few encounters with the Alaskan fauna (although, to Dean's disappointment, they hadn't seen a bear) and, in Sam's case, a runny nose. Days Dean had spent with either Sophie or Mandy, officially trying to offer them consolation after the loss of their loved ones, in reality hoping to find out something that could give the brothers any lead in the case, although Sam suspected there was more to his brother's intentions than just that. Sam, on the other hand, had been looking for any information connected with the lake, the forest surrounding it, and any deaths that had happened there. Sadly, the town was really small, and there was not much written record on its history, so he hadn't been able to find anything helpful yet. It seemed nothing out of ordinary had ever happened there until a few months earlier, when the men had began to vanish into the thin air. The small number of citizens had its disadvantages. Since the day they arrived everybody had seemed to know them, their names, the reasons for their visit; they had had been greeted on the streets by people they barely recognized, offered condolences and words of consolation or thanked for their care for Sophie.

Finally, the weekend ended and Sophie returned to work, so Sam wasn't surprised that his brother lost his interest in returning to the town for these few hours before the dark came and they would have to start everything all over again. Truth be told, he also liked the idea of just staying where they were, and going through all they already knew for the umpteenth time in peace, instead of being crammed with his bored brother in the small motel room or going to the only bar, which, despite the owner's disappearance, was the main place of gathering of the whole community. But, to his surprise, when he got back to the clearing the Impala was parked in, his brother was already inside, the ignition on.

"Finally!" Dean greeted him. "I thought a bear's eaten you!"

"You should've called if you wanted me back." Sam shrugged. "Something's wrong? I thought you wanted to sunbathe."

"You were out of reach," Dean explained. "It's too cold to sunbathe," he added matter-of-factly, as if it wasn't him who had suggested it in the first place. "Besides, I've just got a call from Sophie. She wants to see me. She was crying."

"Oh, okay." Sam decided to ignore the way his brother emphasized the last piece of information, as if he was expecting some comments or protests from him. "Drop me at the library, I'll look again, we must have overlooked something." All in all, Sophie probably really needed a shoulder to cry on right now, and if it had to be his brother's shoulder? Well, fine, as long as it was only that. But, truth be told, whatever there was between these two, Dean was an adult, so was the girl, and no matter how worried he was, Sam had to ignore the situation and concentrate on their job. Well, someone has to, and since Dean is too busy... He smiled to his thoughts as he closed the car door and sent the mysterious lake one more look before it disappeared behind the trees.