Chapter Text
Dean jerks awake again to the sinking feeling that a lot of time has passed, and to a sudden void, to the emptiness of his own arms. His hands and feet are numb, but his core is warmer, the straw still piled over him, a scratchy but effective layer of insulation. He lifts his head, squints through the darkness. "Cas?"
Cas is lying motionless a few feet away, his back to Dean. His legs stretched out in Dean's direction. As if he'd dragged himself away on his belly.
"Cas." Dean struggles to his hands and knees, crawls over to the angel. There are beautiful slate-blue patterns etched over Cas's face, standing out starkly beneath the pale surface of his skin.
He shakes Cas frantically. "Wake up." Wake up, you stubborn idiot. He struggles to find a pulse, but his fingers are so leaden and clumsy that he can barely feel anything. And...not that he knows whether Cas would even have a pulse, now that he thinks about it. He tries the mouth-on-throat thing again, but it has little effect other than to further freeze his already nerveless lips. Cas still lies rigid on the ground, immobile, as if frozen solid.
And then I will cease to function...
No.
He wrenches the front of Cas's shirt open, stares in dismay at the dark tendrils spreading down from his collarbones, over his sternum and ribcage.
Fuck, no, you're not dead, he thinks. You're not fucking dying on me, you're not.
Painfully, inch by inch, he drags Cas back toward the straw, slowly covering them both with it again. It's slow work, made slower by his wooden fingers.
"You better not...crawl away again...asshole," he mutters, noting blearily that his own voice sounds slurred.
He does what he should have done hours ago, protests be damned, and yanks off his jacket, draping it over Cas. The cold blankets him, a merciless embrace, pervasive, all-consuming. Dean grits his teeth and gives himself a quick shake, trying to shove off the fog that's making his tongue and eyelids heavy. He slides down onto his side, face to face with Cas.
"Hey," he whispers. "Hey. If you can hear me, Cas, I need you to stay, okay? I need you to hang on." If he'd thought Cas was cold before—he's worse now, far worse, the bare planes of his skin like ice to the touch. Dean makes himself ignore the cold, hauls Cas even closer, holding the angel against him, trying to get into contact with as much of Cas's torso as possible. He tucks Cas's arms in close to his body, pulls Cas's head down against his shoulder.
"I need you." His lips brush against the curve of Cas's ear. It's like touching a curl of sculpted marble. "Angel or not. Human or not. Crazy or not."
There's no answer. But Cas is just unconscious, has to be just unconscious, or maybe he's paralyzed, incapacitated by the frost spirit's magic. There's no way he's dead, there's no way Dean is talking to a corpse and not Cas.
He says it out loud. "You're not dead. You can't be dead, Cas, okay, I need, I need you to be alive."
No answer.
"Stay." He thinks he dozes off for a minute because time seems to stretch a little, from that word to the next. "Alive," he croaks, struggling to rouse himself.
Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. Stay awake until...until... He struggles to remember what he's staying awake for. Someone's coming, he thinks. Someone—he can't remember.
"I'm staying, you dick," he mutters. He thinks he hears a sound from Cas, a faint noise like a gasp for breath, but he can't be sure. Encouraged anyway, he repeats himself. "That's right, I'm staying. So you sure as hell don't get to clock out."
He stirs awake again, from a sleep he didn't know he'd slipped into. He doesn't know how much time has passed. It could have been a minute, an hour. "So you see, you can't die, alright? Because...because I need..."
Asleep. Awake. Sam, he remembers. Sam's coming.
"Please, Cas." Don't fall asleep. "Just...stay. Please."
"I'm not going to let you go, alright? Not again."
The barn seems much darker now; he can't see Cas. Or maybe he's just going blind, maybe freezing to death does that to you, before the end. At least he feels a little warmer now. The drowsiness is rather pleasant, actually.
"Fuck, Cas. You're really going to make me say it? Like this? Here?"
"I love you, alright?" He laces his fingers through Cas's. Buries his face in Cas's cold hair. "You fucking son of a bitch. Don't you fucking go anywhere. Okay? Okay?"
No response, and he sighs into the empty, frigid air and lets the darkness have its way. It closes around him once more, this time with an air of finality, and he hangs onto Cas with all his might as he sinks.
***
Various items from Dean's pockets are scattered in the snow outside the dark and silent barn. Sam stoops to gather them up. When he straightens, it's to see Luna clearing the massive pile-up of snow from the barn door with an imperious gesture of her hand.
It's a lot of power, and if Sam weren't so worried about Dean and Cas he'd be more focused on whether Luna is actually going to be able to control it, whether she'll actually keep a clear head, whether she'll actually be able to keep her word bout not hurting anybody else. As it is, he says nothing as he steps past her and wrenches the door open.
The interior of the barn is dark, the moon having risen out of view of the high-set windows. But Luna lifts a hand, and the air seems to shift, dozens of tiny crystals rotating and refracting light, focusing a silver circle of radiance on a point near the back of the structure.
Sam rushes forward, falling to his knees beside the still forms. Dean has his arms wrapped so tightly around Cas that Sam can't get a glimpse of the angel's face. Dean's face, though, is grey and still, his lips and ears blue, his eyebrows white with frost.
Sam's heart stops. "Dean," he says. He grabs his brother's shoulder—fuck, Dean is ice-cold—and rolls him over onto his back, wrestling Cas out of his grip. Cas is—stiff and even colder, if possible, to the touch, his skin spangled with frost. His shirt falls open as Sam turns him over onto his back, revealing tendrils of dark blue inlaid just beneath the skin, tendrils that wind across his chest and stomach, nearly to his navel.
"Oh, God," says Sam. Frantically, he feels the side of Dean's neck and then switches to his wrist, searching for a pulse. "What did you do, Luna, what did you do—"
"I didn't know—" the girl protests. She sounds stricken. Sam barely hears her. He gives up on the pulse, sits back on his heels. He can't make himself let go of Dean's wrist. His heart is hammering.
"Fix them," he says to Luna.
She hesitates. "I don't—"
He doesn't care that she's fourteen and scared, doesn't care that she can't control the powers she's welded herself to. "Fix. THEM."
Irritation flashes in Luna's eyes for a moment; she juts her chin out, and he feels a rippling chill as her anger sends hoarfrost creeping over the sleeve of his jacket. But then she glances down at the two bodies on the floor and her expression goes contrite, instead. She kneels in the straw beside Cas, and reaches out with those withered black fingers to touch the angel's throat, pressing lightly on the midnight-blue patch of ice that clings to it like lichen.
Under her touch, the dark tendrils retract, withdrawing along Cas's body into the ice stain, and then that, too, shrinks into nothing. There's a long, agonizingly empty moment, and just when Sam's heart is about to resume its downward journey into his toes, Cas opens his eyes and draws in a sharp breath. His limbs suddenly relax, as if they'd been held rigid by some immobilizing force.
"Cas," Sam exclaims, relieved. He reaches out, but in that instant Cas's eyes fly wide.
"DEAN!" The angel sits bolt upright, twisting onto his knees, reaching out. Sam pulls back, startled, and the next thing he knows Cas is hauling Dean into a half-reclining position, all but cradling him in his arms.
Sam hangs onto Dean's icy hand, says urgently, "Cas, he's not breathing, I can't find a pulse—"
But Cas already has his hands pressed to either side of Dean's face, is staring desperately at Dean's closed eyes and slack expression of repose.
"Cas," Sam tries again, and Cas doesn't spare him a glance, but he does rasp, "I'm trying, Sam, I'm trying. Dean, Dean, please—"
There's intense concentration on his face, an ironclad look of determination. And something more, a frantic terror. The skin beneath his palms begins to sear with a bright burn of light.
Sam makes himself let go of his brother's hand, makes himself stand up, makes himself trust Cas to do this, to beat this. Because if Cas can't—if he can't—
No. He will. Because Dean just has severe hypothermia, that's all, that's why Sam couldn't find a pulse, that's all—
There's more going on here, questions he doesn't yet know the answers to—what the fuck Luna had done, how she was able to do it to an angel, how Dean had ended up lying curled so tightly against Cas, why Cas is practically in tears now, whispering over and over, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going to clock out, Dean, I need you too, I need, I love, I love—"
And Dean jerks awake with a gasp, color rushing back into his face, a name bursting from his lips.
"Dean," Cas chokes back in response, and bows his head.
Sam, sagging in relief, catches a glimpse of Luna slipping out the barn door. He looks back at his brother. Dean's face is obscured by Cas's shaking shoulders, but one of his arms comes up and crooks around the back of Cas's neck.
"Sam found us," Cas is saying. "Sam found us, you were right, you were right—you made me stay—"
"Damn right I did," Dean croaks. He moves his head, catches Sam's eye, smiles weakly. "Thanks for taking your sweet time, bitch."
"Hey, I saved both your asses, jerk," says Sam, managing to keep his voice from cracking. Relief is making him weak-limbed; he thinks if he keeps looking at Dean's healthy, frostbite-free face and remembering what it looked like a few seconds ago, he'll simply fold at the knees and break down on the barn floor. And—well—he looks at Cas, whose head is still lowered, but who has one hand raised to his own face, to where Dean's palm is pressed against it—whose trench coat is creasing from how hard Dean is gripping the fabric—the barn floor is already contending with enough emotion, right now.
Outside, he finds Luna leaning against the barn wall. Sam studies her and sees that the dark blue and grey tones of her skin have faded; now she merely looks severely bruised, and not carved completely from moonstones and marble and lapis lazuli.
"Thanks for saving them," he says begrudgingly.
Luna reads the message between the lines. "I'm sorry I hurt them," she says. "I didn't mean to, I promise."
Sam nods, lets it go. Pushes down the memory of Dean's blackening lips. "What are you going to do now?" he asks her.
She spreads her hands, studies them. "I'll go back to my family. I think it's contained, now. I'll look normal by the time I get home. Mostly normal."
Sam chews his bottom lip. "Luna..." he starts reluctantly.
She turns earnest eyes on him. "I won't hurt anyone else," she says. "I swear. I'll be careful."
Sam knows he ought to be drawing some line somewhere, something about murder and justice and right and wrong. But he looks at her, standing there with her bony shoulders and her silvery eyes that still manage to look earnest, and nothing comes to mind.
"Your brother," says Luna, "he wouldn't understand."
"No," Sam allows, because for Dean the world has always been a little more black and white. "How did you know he was my..."
She crooks a smile. "I could tell."
Sam nods, accepting that. Luna shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Guess I should go before they come out, then."
"Take care of yourself, Luna." Sam lets his worry spill out across his face, because he wants her to see that he does care, that he wants to help. "I'll keep in touch, okay?"
"I'll be fine," she says, but she doesn't say it like a refusal. She starts off across the snow, leaving no footprints behind.
Sam watches her go. By the time footsteps sound out behind him, she's long since vanished into the monochrome ripples of the landscape.
"Thank you for finding us, Sam." It's Cas, straight-backed and solemn in the barn doorway, relief written all over his face. He's supporting an unsteady Dean with one arm, like Dean weighs nothing—and maybe he doesn't, to an angel.
"Dean, are you okay?" Not that Sam doesn't trust Cas to do a healing right—but this is Dean he'd just seen, lying black and blue and frost-rimed on a barn floor, so he has to ask, anyway.
"I've been—" Dean glances at Cas, such a quick and hesitant motion Sam almost misses it. "—never better," he finishes. "And the ice spirit, did you—did you find it?"
"The girl, who was she?" Cas asks at nearly the same time, squinting out across the frozen landscape.
"I'll tell you about it later," Sam promises. He shoves his cold hands into his pockets, smiles at Cas. "We're finished here, though. We can head back in the morning."
Yeah, there's more to do—he'll need to check on Luna again, definitely, and set up some kind of schedule so they can keep checking on her. She's just a kid, after all, and powers—well, they're tough, Sam ought to know.
But then—Sam also just wants to get home, wants to get back to the Bunker so he can pile blankets on Dean and make Cas put on a sweater, and heat soup on the stove while Dean gripes about how he's doing it wrong, and just—just make sure, really sure, that they're okay.
"What do you know," Dean says, cracking a smile. He has one hand lifted, clasping Cas's wrist where the angel's arm lies draped across his shoulders. "Home for the holidays."
Sam eyes them, the way they're standing, the way their bodies are angled. The way their hands curve almost unconsciously toward and around each other. He catches Dean's eye and Dean's smile doesn't falter.
I'll tell you about it later, Dean's gaze is echoing, and in spite of all the seesawing worry and relief of the last couple of hours Sam suddenly grins, has to grin, from the explosion of warmth inside his chest.
Yeah, they're going to be okay.