True north- Sam
“We can’t take the bridge, Dean,” Sam pointed out patiently, mainly because he was only half listening to his brother’s complaints.
“Why the hell not? New York only has a bazillion of them!”
Sam stopped in front of a small, green boat. The paint was peeling and the deck was covered in bird droppings, but the price tag on the rental was very enticing and he was pretty sure the guy renting it was too scared of him to have been lying when he said the thing would run. “None of them connect to this particular island.”
Dean paused, wrinkling his nose at the smell of boat diesel and seaweed from the still waters of the docks. “What about a tunnel? A subway tunnel?” he asked half-heartedness. “There has to be one that goes there, right?”
Few things made Dean despair so openly as the inability to drive his car to a particular destination, Sam was aware of that. The fact that the only way to get to the North Brother Island was by boat, was not sitting well with his brother’s view of the world.
“We’re taking this one,” Sam gave voice to his decision, more to put an end to Dean’s wild alternatives than to ask for his input in the type of boat they were taking.
Dean tried to hide his sulking, but the crossed arms and sour face were doing a poor job of it. “Do you even have any idea how to work this ugly assed thing?”
~o~
As it turned out, driving an outboard motor boat was pretty much the same as driving a car. Except for the fact that it had no breaks. And there was no road.
It had taken Sam a couple of tries to get the engine running and, after that, to find his way into how much throttle to give without slowing the boat’s speed, or choking it to a complete stop.
Dean, on the other hand, seemed to have discovered a new mode of transportation that he hated more than airplanes. Flimsy, stinky, outboard boats as he called it.
Each time the front of the boat surged up, whether because Sam had pushed the throttle faster or because the boat was riding up a wave, Dean turned a new shade of green that almost matched the boat’s coat of paint. His hands, gripping tightly to the edge of his seat, were cramping into claws.
Sam was pretty sure there would be nail marks on those wooden boards when they finally arrived at their destination.
According to the map, North Brother Island was only a short distance away from Shore Haven Harbor but the tiny piece of land, sitting in the middle of the East River, seemed to drift away from them with each mile they boated closer.
Dean was humming, probably focusing on not losing his dinner over the edge of the boat, when Sam felt the first drop of rain fell on the back of his neck. “Looks like the weather’s turning,” he shouted over the noise of the motor. Almost as if the clouds had been waiting for his permission to open up the floodgates, the wind began to blow stronger and heavy drops of rain started to fall.
Dean gripped the bench seat tighter. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he urged. His eyes kept darting from New York City’s lights, slowly shrinking behind Sam and the large dark shape ahead of them, the North Brother Island.
He seemed to be trying to guess which place was closer. But Sam was not letting some wind and crispy water make him turn tail and go back. Dean wouldn’t have either, a couple of months before. Now... Sam had his doubts. “We’re nearly there.”
The city provided all the light they needed to see which direction to go, but the rain was making it harder and harder to keep their gazes steady. The wind, stronger now, kept pushing the boat off-course, making Sam sweat under the downpour to correct their bearing.
In between the cold rain and the river water, that seemed fixed to join them inside the boat, Sam and Dean were thoroughly soaked in less than a minute, even if they were both too busy to notice it.
While Sam did his best to get them to the island as fast as the old boat could, Dean kept busy trying to bail some of the water out.
From where Sam was sitting, Dean was Sisyphus, rolling his stone up a hill, only to see it roll back as soon as the top was in sight. Pointless.
“We’re nearly there,” Sam kept whispering to himself, like a mantra, a prayer, too soft for Dean to hear. “Nearly there.”
The ominous, grinding sound of wood scraping over rock was louder than the storm itself, strong enough that the Winchesters felt it in their bones.
They could both guess what was going to happen next. It was clear in the panicked look that Sam threw his brother’s way.
“SAM!”
The boat broke cleanly in half. Sam’s side, weighted by the engine, started sinking backwards as waves hit them from all sides.
Sam watched his brother trying to reach for him, but everything was happening too fast. He felt the water closing in over his head and thought bitterly that he should’ve taken a deep breath. It was too late for that now.
Dean’s arms flailed, pushed around the half boat by the angry waters. His fingers brushed against the familiar fabric of their duffel bag, the one where they’d stuffed whatever gear they’d managed to fit.
His fingers closed around the handle of the bag just before he was thrown in the water too.
Both Winchesters were good swimmers. It was one of the few things Sam had enjoyed about their training, one he had always been more than willing to practice until perfection. Dean had always been more than happy to join him in his quest for ‘perfection’, since most of time it amounted to nothing more than two siblings goofing around in the water.
This, however, had little to do with swimming. The liquid they found themselves in tasted like water, felt like water, but it moved like a living thing.
Icy fingers made of water grabbed and pulled at Sam and Dean, holding onto their clothes, trying to drag them further and further below.
Sam emerged for a few seconds; mouth opened in a desperate breath, trying to fill his lungs with air and cough out the water that was already there, all in the same motion.
The result was less than graceful.
He couldn’t see Dean anywhere. Even the bright city lights seemed to have disappeared in favor of the black water.
Trying to fight the water and swim his way to the island on the surface of the angry lake was madness. Sam tried to venture his best guess at where the island was, took one more shaky breath and dove under the surface.
A few feet below, the current was still pretty strong but manageable, with inner streams that seemed to pull in every direction. Sam pushed and pressed against the current.
Even though it felt like he was standing still, Sam knew he had made some progress when his knees hit sand. He dragged himself to the shore, exhausted.
Catching his breath, Sam rolled over, coughing out what felt like a stomach full of river water. The sand around him was slowly filling with the debris of their boat. “Dean?”
The way the currents were pulling, there was no telling where his brother might’ve ended up. The possibility of Dean having drowned was one that Sam refused to consider.
Dean was part fish, their father used to say. Fish don’t drown. “DEAN?”
Pushing himself to his feet, Sam looked around. His legs were shaking, muscles tired like he’d just run the marathon and his breathing still sounded wet.
There was a dark shape a few feet ahead, long and slim against the sand, motionless. Sam blinked against the wiping winds and falling rain. Walking toward it at first, his heart jumped to his throat and he began racing towards it. He stopped short as he was close enough to see what it was.
A log.
A rotting, broken and peeling piece of dead wood. Sam made a feeble attempt to kick at it in frustration but exhausted legs wouldn’t cooperate and his foot missed its mark. “Dammit,” he hissed and bent at the waist, catching his breath for what felt like the millionth time since exiting the water. A second later, he founds himself smiling.
Dead wood was a lot better than dead Dean.
Sam unfolded, pulling his wet hair back as he did. His fingers came back holding a piece of seaweed and he threw it away in disgust. How the hell was he going to find Dean in that darkness?
Something moved on the log, catching Sam’s eyes. It was probably just a crab or some other shore animal. Still, he moved nearer, alert.
There was an arm draped over the log. Dean’s arm.
“Dean!”
Dean’s eyes were closed, hair plastered to his forehead, trapped in the pained lines etched there. Above his right ear, Sam could see his brother’s hair matted with something thicker than water. Blood.
The gash underneath was jagged, but in the cold water, it had already stopped bleeding. “Dean, come on, man,” Sam called to him, shaking his brother’s shoulder. “Enough with the nap.”
As if on cue, Dean eyelashes fluttered sluggishly, water dripping from them and swirling down to the sand. “Says the guy who’s... always tellin’ me to sleep.”
Sam sunk into the sand, relief robbing whatever was left of strength in his legs.
“F’king boat,” Dean muttered as he rolled over to cough up half of the East River. “Told ya.”
His other hand, the one he hadn’t used to grip the log, was tangled in a piece of fabric. Sam pulled at it, finding their duffel half buried in the sand beneath Dean.
“You got our stuff,” Sam started with a relieved sigh. Without their gear, they were as good as any other tourists in that island.
His joy, however, was short lived. While Dean had managed to hold on to the duffel inside the turbulent waters, the same couldn’t be said for the duffel’s zipper. “It’s busted,” Sam informed Dean. From the weight of the bag, he could already tell that most of their equipment was gone.
“Fuck.”
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