Fic: Spirit of Winter's Chill (3/3)
Part II
It was the twenty-second of December, the day the Winter Lord was strongest in the north. Jack Frost felt a prickling under his skin, as he always did.
He was particularly busy that day, and if he was using it as an excuse to push away other thoughts, well, nobody had to know that.
When he felt the tug in his gut, late at night when the stars were out, he scowled. He’d warned Sam to stay away from him. This time he would kill the hunter, and feel not a shadow of regret. Jack Frost didn’t have room for regret, and humans weren’t worth regretting.
But it wasn’t Sam who confronted him outside the pentagram.
This man was a hunter too, but he didn’t have Sam’s gentleness or warmth. He was shorter than Sam, stockier, harder, and his black eyes glittered almost as coldly as Jack’s ice-blue ones. He had a gun loaded and pointing at Jack.
“Here you are at last,” the man snarled. “Sam must be getting soft if he couldn’t take you out. Or maybe he’s still mourning.”
“Mourning?” Jack asked despite himself.
“Oh, please. Don’t act innocent. Everyone’s talking about how you killed Dean Winchester.”
Dean? Sam’s brother? Had Jack frozen him without realizing it? That would explain Sam’s behaviour, and although Sam had lied to him, Jack felt a little better with the understanding that it had been to avenge Sam’s brother. It meant Sam wasn’t a bad person. Why that should matter to him, Jack didn’t want to think about.
But if he’d killed Sam’s brother, maybe he deserved to die.
Jack met the hunter’s eyes squarely. If this was the end, he wasn’t going to fight it. He’d dealt out enough death to have lost his fear of it.
“Jack Frost,” the hunter said speculatively.
Jack wished he wouldn’t draw it out. He was in the pentagram. He was helpless. The man should just shoot him and be done with it.
Then the door burst open.
“No!” Sam yelled as he barrelled into the room. “No, Mark, stop!”
“Sam? You still in town?” Mark asked in astonishment. “Well, good. You’re just in time to help me get rid of Jack Frost once and for all.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Sam grabbed Mark’s gun, tugging it to the side. “He’s not a bad person.”
“He’s not a person at all,” snarled Mark. “Are you out of your mind? This is the thing that killed your brother, Sam. This thing killed Dean!”
Jack flinched. That was what he was to hunters, a thing, a monster.
But he’d thought he wasn’t a thing to Sam.
“Mark, listen to me.”
“Get out of my way!”
And then everything happened at once. Mark wrenched his gun free of Sam’s grip and fired. Jack steeled himself for oblivion.
But oblivion never came.
A heavy weight fell against him, and Jack suddenly found himself with his arms full of Sam. Sam, who’d leapt in front of him, pushing him aside, and now had blood oozing from a bullet wound in his chest.
Sam, who’d sacrificed himself for Jack.
“No,” gasped Jack, even as Sam slumped into his chest. Sam’s movement had scuffed the pentagram, and Jack felt power surge into his body. “No.” He supported Sam’s weight easily with one hand, raising the other and pointing it at Mark. “You.”
“Don’t,” Sam rasped weakly. “Don’t… kill him.”
“He hurt you.”
“Please.” Sam tugged pathetically at Jack’s sleeve. “Please don’t.”
Jack hesitated. He was furious as he’d never been furious before. He wanted nothing more than to blast the man who’d hurt Sam with all his strength until he froze to death where he stood.
“Please.”
Jack sighed, lowering his arm to wrap around Sam instead.
“Get out,” he snarled at Mark.
He didn’t watch to see if his order was obeyed before he scooped Sam up easily and stepped through space to Sam’s motel room.
“I’ll call you an ambulance,” he began, but Sam shook his head. Jack laid him down on the bed. “Sam, you need help. You’re going to die if I don’t get you a doctor.”
“Going…” Sam clutched at his hand. “Going… to die… anyway. Stay… please.”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
Sam shook his head again. “You… already… said it.”
And Jack remembered his words from the previous day. The next time I see you, Sam Winchester, you will die. He was Jack Frost, the spirit of the winter chill. What he said would come to pass.
“I’m sorry,” Jack whispered, though he knew that wasn’t enough. He deserved to be hunted; he was a monster. “I’m so sorry.”
Sam’s grip on his fingers tightened. “Forgive… you.”
“You shouldn’t.” Jack’s vision was blurring and his eyes were burning. What was happening? “Please don’t die. Please. Please, you have to live so you can kill me yourself. I’m a monster.”
“No.”
“You’re the only person who’s ever been nice to me.” Jack squeezed Sam’s hand so hard his own fingers hurt. “Please don’t die.”
There was no response. Sam was gone.
Jack dropped his head to Sam’s chest and cried for his only friend.
Outside, the church bells chimed midnight.
It was the twenty-third of December.
Jack Frost’s tears had frozen as they’d rolled down his cheeks, landing as little balls of ice on Sam’s jacket. Sam’s hand was still clutched in his.
Jack felt an odd burning heat in his chest, and wondered if that was his heart breaking. He’d never cared for anything enough to mourn it. Maybe his heart was so rusty from disuse that this had been too much.
If he was going to die of a broken heart, that would be poetic justice.
But he wouldn’t see Sam again, and that hurt more than he’d imagined possible. Sam would go to Heaven, if there was one. And Jack was going to go to whatever hell was reserved for people so vengeful and pitiless that they cursed their friends to die.
Another tear trickled out of his eye and down his face, but this one didn’t freeze. A droplet of water soaked into Sam’s jacket.
Jack rubbed at the tiny wet spot, though he knew Sam wouldn’t feel the damp.
Well, well, came a familiar voice. He did it after all.
Jack looked up into the merciless face of the Winter Lord. “What did he do?”
He taught your frozen heart to feel, Jack Frost. It took a tremendous sacrifice, but perhaps nothing else would have worked. Anyway, it’s done.
“What? What’s done?”
Look at yourself.
Unwillingly, Jack moved away from Sam to stand in front of the motel room’s cracked mirror. He looked strange. His eyes were darkening to green. The whorls of ice were fading from his skin.
“What’s happening to me?”
You’re human again.
“I’m…” And Dean Winchester returned to awareness. “No. Sammy!” He turned and dived for the bed to shake his brother. “Sammy. Hey. Come on. Wake up. You did it. You saved me. Sammy!” He shook the limp form again. “Sammy, don’t you dare! You saved me. You don’t get to leave me! Come on. Come back.”
Nobody’s ever managed it, the Winter Lord went on. I suppose nobody ever really tried.
Dean didn’t give a damn. “Talk to me,” he begged Sam. “Please, kiddo. I can’t live with myself if I’ve killed you. You have to come back, please.” He turned to the Winter Lord. “Please, can’t you bring him back?”
The Winter Lord shrugged. I do not have power over life and death once a soul has been taken, Dean Winchester.
“There has to be something.”
Perhaps. But it is not my province to find it. Jack Frost is gone for good, which means I have a great deal to do tonight. Farewell.
The Winter Lord vanished, leaving Dean alone with his brother’s body.
Dean smoothed down Sam’s sleeves, brushing hair off his face. Jack Frost had cried, but Dean Winchester’s grief ran too deep for that.
Then he glimpsed the little balls of ice that had been Jack Frost’s tears. They melted as he watched, but they didn’t sink into Sam’s jacket. They stayed there, droplets of water quivering on the dark material, before they started to move. They trailed up Sam’s chest to where the bullet wound was and melted into it.
With trembling fingers, Dean undid Sam’s jacket and shirts.
The bullet wound was healing, broken skin knitting together until it looked like the blood on Sam’s chest might have belonged to somebody else.
Dean fetched a wet washcloth and wiped the blood away carefully. He hardly dared to hope, but as he worked he felt the flutter of Sam’s heart as it started pumping again, and the easy rise and fall of his chest as his lungs drew in air.
“Sammy?” Dean whispered.
Sam didn’t stir. But he was alive, and something in Dean knew that it was only a matter of time. His body was still healing, and he must be exhausted.
Sam would wake up when he was ready.
Dean squeezed Sam’s hand. “I’ll be waiting, little brother.”
It was the twenty-fourth of December.
Dean had kept vigil by the bedside of his unconscious brother for seventeen hours when, at last, Sam began to stir. Dean went on full alert at once.
“Hey,” he said softly, knowing that, if Sam couldn’t hear him yet, he would be able to soon. “Hey, kiddo, you coming back? You ready to wake up now?” He glanced at the window, through which he could see snow falling again, fat flakes piling up against the glass. “It’s beautiful outside, Sammy. Just the kind of night you’d like. Remember that time we built a snowman when you were five?”
“Dean?”
Dean let out a relieved breath. “Hey, Sammy. About time you woke up. Do you have any idea how scared I’ve been?”
“I’m… sorry.”
Sam still sounded too weak. It bothered Dean, but he forced himself to smile like nothing was wrong.
“Don’t be. You saved me… did the impossible. I think even the Winter Lord was impressed.” Dean patted Sam’s cheek. “Do you want to try sitting up?”
“Yeah.”
It was slow going, because every movement made Sam dizzy. Eventually, with Dean’s help, he managed to sit.
“Are you… you OK?” Sam mumbled through panted breaths.
“I’m fine.” Dean laid his hand on Sam’s arm. “See? Warm. Human. Not Jack Frost anymore. You did it, Sammy.”
“You’re OK.” Sam’s arms were tight around Dean’s middle, his face smushed into Dean’s shirt. “I was so… so… scared. I thought…”
“Shhh,” Dean hushed, wrapping his own arms around Sam. He knew how scared Sam had been. He’d been that scared, too, waiting for his little brother to wake up. “It’s over. We’re both OK, we’re both alive… You’re clearly going to need some more rest, and I’ll make sure you get it. That’s what big brothers are for, right?”
“Dean.”
“You want some soup? Hot chocolate?”
Sam shook his head, clutching Dean tighter, clearly wanting nothing other than to know that his brother was alive and safe and there.
Dean understood, and he usually indulged Sam’s need to be clingy after one of them had been in mortal peril, or, as in this case, both of them. But his brother’s weakness was at least partly due to the fact that he’d eaten nothing in nearly an entire day, and he’d probably been surviving on coffee and the occasional protein bar since Dean had been cursed.
So he gently nudged Sam away and settled him back down on his pillows.
“We’ll start slow, I don’t want you getting sick. Soup, and if that stays down we’ll see about something solid. You going to be OK by yourself for a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” Sam said reluctantly.
Dean laughed. “That’s my boy.” On his way out the door, he paused. “I’m sorry, Sammy, I don’t have… We… I thought…” He sighed. “Before all this… crap, before we knew what killing Jack Frost would mean, I wanted us to have a nice Christmas this year. I didn’t have time to do anything, though. I don’t even have a present for you. I’m sorry.”
“Dean,” Sam said, conveying absolution and affection and big-brothers-worry-about-stupid-things with one single word.
Dean smiled a real smile for the first time in days.
It was the twenty-fifth of December.
Sam was still weak, but he’d gained enough strength to sit on the front steps of their motel room, wrapped in so many layers he looked like a walking marshmallow. He’d protested when Dean had thrust the second jacket at him, but no amount of puppy-dogging could get Sam his way when his health was on the line.
Dean was sitting next to him.
Together they watched the road, though there was nothing much to see. Everyone was at home on Christmas morning, probably just being woken up by children who positively couldn’t wait another minute to open their presents. The streets were empty.
Almost empty.
Snow fell in thick flakes that swirled and eddied. As Dean watched, he remembered, as though it had happened to someone else, what it had been like to control those flakes, to be the spirit of the winter chill.
Without thinking, he wrapped an arm around Sam.
“You think he ever found peace?” Dean asked.
“Who?”
“The first Jack Frost. I could… I could sort of feel him, like he still existed in some way. When I told you all that about my family abandoning me and stuff… it was like it had happened to me.”
“Dean. You know I would never do that to you.”
“I know, but… It was weird, Sammy. I can’t imagine… Being alone like that, no friends, everyone hating you… No wonder it warped his mind.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Sam said honestly. “But if you really did feel him, and a part of him stayed alive in every Jack Frost who came after, then I think he must have found peace eventually, when you taught him what it was to care about someone.”
“I didn’t teach him anything.”
“Of course you did. I couldn’t have saved you if you hadn’t had it in you, Dean.”
“You’re the only one who could’ve saved me.” It was comfortable sitting on the steps, Sam settled against his side, feeling like they were alone in the world. “Sammy -”
“Don’t you dare thank me.”
“OK,” Dean said, smiling. “I won’t.” He tugged Sam in closer. “I wish I could’ve given you a better Christmas, though.”
“There’ll be other Christmases,” Sam murmured.
They sat there another hour before Dean decided Sam had had enough exposure for one day and chivvied him back inside the motel room.
Both Sam and Dean stopped short as soon as they were inside.
The room, which had been bare of everything but some mildewed furniture and a couple of ugly pictures on the walls, had been transformed. Icicles glittered like diamonds as they hung from the mantelpiece. The walls were covered in intricate patterns, frosted swirls and whorls that didn’t melt when Dean touched them. Even the lamp was covered in a rime of ice that turned the cheap shade into a sparkling prism.
On the coffee table was a covered tray from which wafted smells that made Dean’s stomach grumble.
There was a folded piece of paper on Sam’s pillow.
Sam picked it up and unfolded it.
It said simply For those who do the impossible - with my best wishes.
“I guess the Winter Lord’s not all bad,” Sam said, tucking the note into the pages of his journal.
“No,” Dean agreed. “I guess he’s not.” A slow grin was spreading on his face. “Merry Christmas, little brother. I still don’t have a present for you.”
“We’re both still here,” said Sam. “I got you back. That’s present enough. Merry Christmas, Dean.”
THE END
It was the twenty-second of December, the day the Winter Lord was strongest in the north. Jack Frost felt a prickling under his skin, as he always did.
He was particularly busy that day, and if he was using it as an excuse to push away other thoughts, well, nobody had to know that.
When he felt the tug in his gut, late at night when the stars were out, he scowled. He’d warned Sam to stay away from him. This time he would kill the hunter, and feel not a shadow of regret. Jack Frost didn’t have room for regret, and humans weren’t worth regretting.
But it wasn’t Sam who confronted him outside the pentagram.
This man was a hunter too, but he didn’t have Sam’s gentleness or warmth. He was shorter than Sam, stockier, harder, and his black eyes glittered almost as coldly as Jack’s ice-blue ones. He had a gun loaded and pointing at Jack.
“Here you are at last,” the man snarled. “Sam must be getting soft if he couldn’t take you out. Or maybe he’s still mourning.”
“Mourning?” Jack asked despite himself.
“Oh, please. Don’t act innocent. Everyone’s talking about how you killed Dean Winchester.”
Dean? Sam’s brother? Had Jack frozen him without realizing it? That would explain Sam’s behaviour, and although Sam had lied to him, Jack felt a little better with the understanding that it had been to avenge Sam’s brother. It meant Sam wasn’t a bad person. Why that should matter to him, Jack didn’t want to think about.
But if he’d killed Sam’s brother, maybe he deserved to die.
Jack met the hunter’s eyes squarely. If this was the end, he wasn’t going to fight it. He’d dealt out enough death to have lost his fear of it.
“Jack Frost,” the hunter said speculatively.
Jack wished he wouldn’t draw it out. He was in the pentagram. He was helpless. The man should just shoot him and be done with it.
Then the door burst open.
“No!” Sam yelled as he barrelled into the room. “No, Mark, stop!”
“Sam? You still in town?” Mark asked in astonishment. “Well, good. You’re just in time to help me get rid of Jack Frost once and for all.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Sam grabbed Mark’s gun, tugging it to the side. “He’s not a bad person.”
“He’s not a person at all,” snarled Mark. “Are you out of your mind? This is the thing that killed your brother, Sam. This thing killed Dean!”
Jack flinched. That was what he was to hunters, a thing, a monster.
But he’d thought he wasn’t a thing to Sam.
“Mark, listen to me.”
“Get out of my way!”
And then everything happened at once. Mark wrenched his gun free of Sam’s grip and fired. Jack steeled himself for oblivion.
But oblivion never came.
A heavy weight fell against him, and Jack suddenly found himself with his arms full of Sam. Sam, who’d leapt in front of him, pushing him aside, and now had blood oozing from a bullet wound in his chest.
Sam, who’d sacrificed himself for Jack.
“No,” gasped Jack, even as Sam slumped into his chest. Sam’s movement had scuffed the pentagram, and Jack felt power surge into his body. “No.” He supported Sam’s weight easily with one hand, raising the other and pointing it at Mark. “You.”
“Don’t,” Sam rasped weakly. “Don’t… kill him.”
“He hurt you.”
“Please.” Sam tugged pathetically at Jack’s sleeve. “Please don’t.”
Jack hesitated. He was furious as he’d never been furious before. He wanted nothing more than to blast the man who’d hurt Sam with all his strength until he froze to death where he stood.
“Please.”
Jack sighed, lowering his arm to wrap around Sam instead.
“Get out,” he snarled at Mark.
He didn’t watch to see if his order was obeyed before he scooped Sam up easily and stepped through space to Sam’s motel room.
“I’ll call you an ambulance,” he began, but Sam shook his head. Jack laid him down on the bed. “Sam, you need help. You’re going to die if I don’t get you a doctor.”
“Going…” Sam clutched at his hand. “Going… to die… anyway. Stay… please.”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
Sam shook his head again. “You… already… said it.”
And Jack remembered his words from the previous day. The next time I see you, Sam Winchester, you will die. He was Jack Frost, the spirit of the winter chill. What he said would come to pass.
“I’m sorry,” Jack whispered, though he knew that wasn’t enough. He deserved to be hunted; he was a monster. “I’m so sorry.”
Sam’s grip on his fingers tightened. “Forgive… you.”
“You shouldn’t.” Jack’s vision was blurring and his eyes were burning. What was happening? “Please don’t die. Please. Please, you have to live so you can kill me yourself. I’m a monster.”
“No.”
“You’re the only person who’s ever been nice to me.” Jack squeezed Sam’s hand so hard his own fingers hurt. “Please don’t die.”
There was no response. Sam was gone.
Jack dropped his head to Sam’s chest and cried for his only friend.
Outside, the church bells chimed midnight.
It was the twenty-third of December.
Jack Frost’s tears had frozen as they’d rolled down his cheeks, landing as little balls of ice on Sam’s jacket. Sam’s hand was still clutched in his.
Jack felt an odd burning heat in his chest, and wondered if that was his heart breaking. He’d never cared for anything enough to mourn it. Maybe his heart was so rusty from disuse that this had been too much.
If he was going to die of a broken heart, that would be poetic justice.
But he wouldn’t see Sam again, and that hurt more than he’d imagined possible. Sam would go to Heaven, if there was one. And Jack was going to go to whatever hell was reserved for people so vengeful and pitiless that they cursed their friends to die.
Another tear trickled out of his eye and down his face, but this one didn’t freeze. A droplet of water soaked into Sam’s jacket.
Jack rubbed at the tiny wet spot, though he knew Sam wouldn’t feel the damp.
Well, well, came a familiar voice. He did it after all.
Jack looked up into the merciless face of the Winter Lord. “What did he do?”
He taught your frozen heart to feel, Jack Frost. It took a tremendous sacrifice, but perhaps nothing else would have worked. Anyway, it’s done.
“What? What’s done?”
Look at yourself.
Unwillingly, Jack moved away from Sam to stand in front of the motel room’s cracked mirror. He looked strange. His eyes were darkening to green. The whorls of ice were fading from his skin.
“What’s happening to me?”
You’re human again.
“I’m…” And Dean Winchester returned to awareness. “No. Sammy!” He turned and dived for the bed to shake his brother. “Sammy. Hey. Come on. Wake up. You did it. You saved me. Sammy!” He shook the limp form again. “Sammy, don’t you dare! You saved me. You don’t get to leave me! Come on. Come back.”
Nobody’s ever managed it, the Winter Lord went on. I suppose nobody ever really tried.
Dean didn’t give a damn. “Talk to me,” he begged Sam. “Please, kiddo. I can’t live with myself if I’ve killed you. You have to come back, please.” He turned to the Winter Lord. “Please, can’t you bring him back?”
The Winter Lord shrugged. I do not have power over life and death once a soul has been taken, Dean Winchester.
“There has to be something.”
Perhaps. But it is not my province to find it. Jack Frost is gone for good, which means I have a great deal to do tonight. Farewell.
The Winter Lord vanished, leaving Dean alone with his brother’s body.
Dean smoothed down Sam’s sleeves, brushing hair off his face. Jack Frost had cried, but Dean Winchester’s grief ran too deep for that.
Then he glimpsed the little balls of ice that had been Jack Frost’s tears. They melted as he watched, but they didn’t sink into Sam’s jacket. They stayed there, droplets of water quivering on the dark material, before they started to move. They trailed up Sam’s chest to where the bullet wound was and melted into it.
With trembling fingers, Dean undid Sam’s jacket and shirts.
The bullet wound was healing, broken skin knitting together until it looked like the blood on Sam’s chest might have belonged to somebody else.
Dean fetched a wet washcloth and wiped the blood away carefully. He hardly dared to hope, but as he worked he felt the flutter of Sam’s heart as it started pumping again, and the easy rise and fall of his chest as his lungs drew in air.
“Sammy?” Dean whispered.
Sam didn’t stir. But he was alive, and something in Dean knew that it was only a matter of time. His body was still healing, and he must be exhausted.
Sam would wake up when he was ready.
Dean squeezed Sam’s hand. “I’ll be waiting, little brother.”
It was the twenty-fourth of December.
Dean had kept vigil by the bedside of his unconscious brother for seventeen hours when, at last, Sam began to stir. Dean went on full alert at once.
“Hey,” he said softly, knowing that, if Sam couldn’t hear him yet, he would be able to soon. “Hey, kiddo, you coming back? You ready to wake up now?” He glanced at the window, through which he could see snow falling again, fat flakes piling up against the glass. “It’s beautiful outside, Sammy. Just the kind of night you’d like. Remember that time we built a snowman when you were five?”
“Dean?”
Dean let out a relieved breath. “Hey, Sammy. About time you woke up. Do you have any idea how scared I’ve been?”
“I’m… sorry.”
Sam still sounded too weak. It bothered Dean, but he forced himself to smile like nothing was wrong.
“Don’t be. You saved me… did the impossible. I think even the Winter Lord was impressed.” Dean patted Sam’s cheek. “Do you want to try sitting up?”
“Yeah.”
It was slow going, because every movement made Sam dizzy. Eventually, with Dean’s help, he managed to sit.
“Are you… you OK?” Sam mumbled through panted breaths.
“I’m fine.” Dean laid his hand on Sam’s arm. “See? Warm. Human. Not Jack Frost anymore. You did it, Sammy.”
“You’re OK.” Sam’s arms were tight around Dean’s middle, his face smushed into Dean’s shirt. “I was so… so… scared. I thought…”
“Shhh,” Dean hushed, wrapping his own arms around Sam. He knew how scared Sam had been. He’d been that scared, too, waiting for his little brother to wake up. “It’s over. We’re both OK, we’re both alive… You’re clearly going to need some more rest, and I’ll make sure you get it. That’s what big brothers are for, right?”
“Dean.”
“You want some soup? Hot chocolate?”
Sam shook his head, clutching Dean tighter, clearly wanting nothing other than to know that his brother was alive and safe and there.
Dean understood, and he usually indulged Sam’s need to be clingy after one of them had been in mortal peril, or, as in this case, both of them. But his brother’s weakness was at least partly due to the fact that he’d eaten nothing in nearly an entire day, and he’d probably been surviving on coffee and the occasional protein bar since Dean had been cursed.
So he gently nudged Sam away and settled him back down on his pillows.
“We’ll start slow, I don’t want you getting sick. Soup, and if that stays down we’ll see about something solid. You going to be OK by yourself for a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” Sam said reluctantly.
Dean laughed. “That’s my boy.” On his way out the door, he paused. “I’m sorry, Sammy, I don’t have… We… I thought…” He sighed. “Before all this… crap, before we knew what killing Jack Frost would mean, I wanted us to have a nice Christmas this year. I didn’t have time to do anything, though. I don’t even have a present for you. I’m sorry.”
“Dean,” Sam said, conveying absolution and affection and big-brothers-worry-about-stupid-things with one single word.
Dean smiled a real smile for the first time in days.
It was the twenty-fifth of December.
Sam was still weak, but he’d gained enough strength to sit on the front steps of their motel room, wrapped in so many layers he looked like a walking marshmallow. He’d protested when Dean had thrust the second jacket at him, but no amount of puppy-dogging could get Sam his way when his health was on the line.
Dean was sitting next to him.
Together they watched the road, though there was nothing much to see. Everyone was at home on Christmas morning, probably just being woken up by children who positively couldn’t wait another minute to open their presents. The streets were empty.
Almost empty.
Snow fell in thick flakes that swirled and eddied. As Dean watched, he remembered, as though it had happened to someone else, what it had been like to control those flakes, to be the spirit of the winter chill.
Without thinking, he wrapped an arm around Sam.
“You think he ever found peace?” Dean asked.
“Who?”
“The first Jack Frost. I could… I could sort of feel him, like he still existed in some way. When I told you all that about my family abandoning me and stuff… it was like it had happened to me.”
“Dean. You know I would never do that to you.”
“I know, but… It was weird, Sammy. I can’t imagine… Being alone like that, no friends, everyone hating you… No wonder it warped his mind.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Sam said honestly. “But if you really did feel him, and a part of him stayed alive in every Jack Frost who came after, then I think he must have found peace eventually, when you taught him what it was to care about someone.”
“I didn’t teach him anything.”
“Of course you did. I couldn’t have saved you if you hadn’t had it in you, Dean.”
“You’re the only one who could’ve saved me.” It was comfortable sitting on the steps, Sam settled against his side, feeling like they were alone in the world. “Sammy -”
“Don’t you dare thank me.”
“OK,” Dean said, smiling. “I won’t.” He tugged Sam in closer. “I wish I could’ve given you a better Christmas, though.”
“There’ll be other Christmases,” Sam murmured.
They sat there another hour before Dean decided Sam had had enough exposure for one day and chivvied him back inside the motel room.
Both Sam and Dean stopped short as soon as they were inside.
The room, which had been bare of everything but some mildewed furniture and a couple of ugly pictures on the walls, had been transformed. Icicles glittered like diamonds as they hung from the mantelpiece. The walls were covered in intricate patterns, frosted swirls and whorls that didn’t melt when Dean touched them. Even the lamp was covered in a rime of ice that turned the cheap shade into a sparkling prism.
On the coffee table was a covered tray from which wafted smells that made Dean’s stomach grumble.
There was a folded piece of paper on Sam’s pillow.
Sam picked it up and unfolded it.
It said simply For those who do the impossible - with my best wishes.
“I guess the Winter Lord’s not all bad,” Sam said, tucking the note into the pages of his journal.
“No,” Dean agreed. “I guess he’s not.” A slow grin was spreading on his face. “Merry Christmas, little brother. I still don’t have a present for you.”
“We’re both still here,” said Sam. “I got you back. That’s present enough. Merry Christmas, Dean.”
THE END