Chapter Text
Dean was sent off to war dreading the trenches in France.
He sat with shell-shocked soldiers in the tight quarters of the Colchester Garrison, watching as their hands shook and their eyes stayed wide as the dead. Stories reached the American shores in waves, long before President Wilson ever dreamed of scattering his little toy soldiers across the globe. They knew all about the poison gas and diseases of the mind, soldiers rotting away in the mud and sleet of Belgian soil. Flanders, once an unknown stretch of land, became a kind of benediction, like the prayers his little brother whispered before bed.
The British soldiers in Kent watched them pass with their eyes lowered, their lips pressed thin, and at that very moment Dean was certain his body was destined for the trenches.
He considered his odds over a deck of playing cards, a game of solitaire laid out on the tin floor. He figured most men died with a bullet through their rib cage, that’s what he heard anyway from the Brits who made it back. But once his cards were laid, Dean knew with absolutely certainty that he wouldn’t die with a body left to bury.
And he was right, in a way, because nothing gets buried in Siberia.
Dean sits with his back to an abandoned train car, the snow packed to ice beneath him by hundreds of marching boots and the bodies of soldiers laid out while they were still warm. He has a cigarette in his pocket and a half empty matchbook lifted off a dead Cossack soldier. Dean fantasizes about lighting it up, the momentary flash of heat against his fingers, but he’s saving that rush of nicotine for his last breath.
He shifts a little, careful not to stay in place too long in case his uniform freezes to the ground. For a moment, the scrape of his boots against the ice is the only sound in the whole world. Siberia is silent, at least until the Cossacks come.
Dean knows it’s only a matter of time, that they’re out of ammunition and oil both. There’s word of evacuations from Vladivostok, whispered around the fires by men with blue lips, but Dean knows that any aid will come too late. They’re flanked by Cossacks to the south and Bolsheviks to the east. Not even the whole of the White Army could save them now. So Dean sits against the side of an empty train car and he waits for the firing to start.
When the monotony of earth and ice and evergreen trees studded with bullet holes becomes too much for him to bear, he likes to think of Kansas. It’s not hard, not usually, to imagine that the patchy snow covered horizon is just Christmas in Lawrence.
Kansas is wide-open farmland, stretching for miles and miles without a dip in the ground. In fall, there’s nothing but golden fields of wheat, just like in the songs, and corn rows high enough to lose yourself in. But by the time December rolls around, the fields have all been burned to cinders and there’s nothing but soil left. When it snows, in some ways, it looks just like Siberia.
He thinks of Sam at six years old, his little hand pressed to the glass as he watched snow fall from their bedroom window.
“Jesus, Sammy,” he whispers to himself, feeling his stomach clench at the thought of his little brother, waiting at home for a letter that will never come.
He closes his eyes and begins counting down from thirteen in an attempt to calm the sudden lurch of panic, the adrenaline rush of his racing heartbeat. Dean might be waiting for that last cigarette, but sometimes his body reminds him that it’s not ready to die.
When his pulse is settled and he opens his eyes again, it’s to the distant silhouette of a figure stalking out of the forest. He stumbles when he hits the ice and pauses to lean heavily on a tree trunk. Dean reaches for his rifle like it’s muscle memory, but it only takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the fit of an American uniform.
Dean slowly slips his hands back into his pockets, settling once more onto the ground. Men wander into the woods for all kinds of reasons these days, though most of them never make it back. The soldier steadies himself, adjusting his coat and his boot laces with quick, gloved hands before he sets off in a march towards the train.
Dean watches intently as the soldier makes for one of the cargo transport cars with its side doors wedged open. His black hair is damp and curled at the ends, long enough to be visible despite the fur-lined cap pulled down over his ears. Dean wonders how long he’s been out here and how much of his regimen is still alive.
He’s not ten feet away when he finally spots Dean and he stops walking mid-stride, eyeing the rifle laid across his lap. Dean nods, what he hopes passes for one anyway, against the stiff collar of his overcoat. The man lingers, for just a moment, before nodding back.
Dean turns away, pretending to gaze at the wooded horizon, but he watches out of the corner of his eye as the soldier climbs into the train with barely a rustle of his coat.
The run rises higher, taking center theatre in the afternoon sky, and he knows it’s only going to get colder now. No one else passes by Dean’s little hideout, and soon he feels himself beginning to nod off, lulled by the temporary warmth of sunlight and the silence of the forest. It’s a hypnotizing combination and he thinks that dying of exposure really wouldn’t be half bad. He’s heard it’s just like falling asleep and sometimes, when morning comes, it’s a bit of a disappointment.
This time, when he wakes, it’s to gunshots.
He hears the distant sound of shells bursting on ice, coupled by the sudden rush of soldiers fumbling for their weapons and loading pistols with gloved hands. Dean is standing before he even registers moving at all, and a voice from down the tracks is shouting something, growing closer and closer until Dean can finally make out what he’s saying.
“It’s the Cossacks! Cossacks from the south!”
The voice stops abruptly and Dean begins to run. He slides along the ice as he checks that his rifle is loaded, and he makes it as far as the open train car before a hand is grabbing his arm and pulling him to a stop.
The soldier from the forest is crouched on the wooden floor, a finger to his lips. He tugs once more on Dean’s arm, before letting go and motioning for him to climb inside. Dean listens to bullets hit bodies four hundred yards away. He thinks of that cigarette in his pocket and his little brother waiting at home and he straps his rifle to his back and follows him.
The soldier is eyeing the battlefield through a bullet hole in the opposite wall, watching the carnage that Dean can hear from a distance. He moves silently, shifting down to gaze through another set of holes made by a spray of machine gun fire, seeking out a different vantage point.
He sets off towards the door connecting the train cars without bothering to check behind him, as if he’s certain Dean will follow. He pulls at the complicated levers with confidence that comes from experience, and Dean spares a breath to wonder just how often he’s wandered through this train. Frankly, Dean isn’t sure where he gets the energy.
He opens the door enough for a single man to slip through and balances one foot on the connecting platform before loosening the second latch to the telltale whine of frozen steel.
Dean pauses for a moment, watching the spot where the soldier disappeared from view. The gunshots grow louder, close enough to drown out the screaming, but still muffled from inside the train. His breath turns to mist in the cold and Dean decides that if he’s going to die anyway, he’d rather not do it alone. He takes one last look at the forest before he steps into the shadows of the connecting cars and closes the door behind him.
He follows the soldier through three empty cars, both of them walking low to the ground, as if bullets will rip through the metal at a moment’s notice. Dean tries to mentally count off how far they have to go until they reach the caboose, a burned out box car filled with ash.
The soldier stops walking once they reach an old storage unit still littered with wooden creates, long ago emptied of any useful cargo. Dean watches as he cups his ear and sets it against the metal, listening for movement outside the train. He imagines it must burn, the cold bite of steel on skin, but the man doesn’t seem to feel it. He waits for a moment or two in his careful crouch, before he pushes off from the wall and immediately begins kicking through the wooden crates.
The sudden noise is deafening compared to the distant rain of gunfire and Dean can’t help the adrenaline rush of panic that thrums through his fingers. The soldier uses the butt of his rifle to smash through the thick wooden planks and he pries rotted boards from the lids with split fingernails. He doesn’t so much as glance at Dean while he works, so after a moment or two of watching, Dean joins him.
He nods in approval as Dean stands on one end of a plank and pulls hard on the other, snapping it into jagged pieces. He collects armfuls of the shattered lumber, and begins to wedge fragments of wood into hidden notches in the door handle. He runs his gloved fingers along the hinges, and works splinters into the cracks in the metal.
He repeats the process on the other side, a pain staking procedure, surgery with wooden stakes, until at last he seems satisfied. He gives each door an experimental tug, and the metal groans with the effort, but they remain closed.
Dean can hear the sounds of battle still and he stands listening to the symphony of gunpowder pops as the soldier sinks against the wall.
After another rattling blast from an artillery shell, Dean unhooks his rifle and takes a seat against the opposite side, his back to the forest and what’s left of the afternoon sun. Light siphons through a cluster of bullet holes from a careless round of target practice. Now, he’s willing to bet that the soldiers wish they’d saved their ammunition.
Dean’s thankful for the light, either way. Without it, the train car would be pitch black, with nothing but the gaps between the floorboards to see by.
The soldier’s eyes are closed and his head is back against the wall, his chest heaving like he ran miles in the snow. Dean spots it then, the metal gleam of a tin disk with his last name and regiment stamped into the front. The leather strap is twisted, caught on one of his coat buttons, but Dean can still read it by the filtered light: Cassidy, U.S.A., 75th PI. Penn.
Dean wishes he had the energy to introduce himself, to say anything at all, but instead he closes his eyes to the pinprick of grief and the memory of Sammy reading stories of Hopalong Cassidy from an old book with no cover. Dean would stitch the pages back himself each time the binding began to fray, and Sam would smile up at him with those puppy dog eyes and wait by his side until he finished.
He counts backwards from thirteen at least a dozen times, breathing deep and steady like he’s taking aim at ten yards. The sound of gunshots is beginning to fade, static into silence.
“Cassidy,” he says, his voice dry and deep from the cold. “Hope you don’t mind if I call you Cas. It’s a bit easier on me.” Despite everything, he tries for a bit of the roguish, self-conscious charm that made women adore him in Kansas and forced the boys to pretend that they didn’t despise him for it.
Cas looks up at him with wide, blue eyes. He tilts his head and turns away, tucking his coat tighter around his shoulders.
Dean takes it as permission granted. “My name’s Winchester, like the gun. For what it’s worth - ”
Cas moves suddenly, lunging forward and pressing one hand to Dean’s mouth, leaving the other flat against the wall. Their knees knock together and the jagged eyelets from his boot dig into Dean’s thigh. He’s about to protest, to drag Cas’ gloved fingers away from his lips, but he hears it then. Between the whisper of Cas’ breath against his cheek and the distant sounds of artillery fire, he hears voices.
He can’t make out the words, but he recognizes the intonation, the obvious pull of Russian melody to their speech. Cas lowers his hand, but doesn’t dare to move. They stare at each other, eyes wide, afraid to do more than breathe. Cas’ arm begins to shake from where he’s braced against the wall, and Dean steadies him with a hand to his chest.
They hear the unmistakable metal cry of doors being wedged open, but he can’t tell how close they are. They could be right outside or a dozen cars away. Their voices echo through the train and Cas bows his head like he’s praying. His hair feels brittle, frozen against Dean’s temple, and he can’t help but tighten his grip. It’s instinct, he thinks, to want to die with something to hold onto.
The voices draw closer and Cas exhales, a soft sound of acceptance, and Dean knows for certain now that they’re right outside. Cas slowly lifts his hand, placing it gently back over Dean’s mouth. He’s thankful for the muffled cover of his glove, because for all of Cas’ silence, Dean can’t help but breathe like his lungs are fit to burst.
He listens to the men speak as they step across the joining platforms, reaching for the door with wood splintered into every available gap. Dean never believed much in angel wings, but he prays, for just a moment, that Cas’ work will hold. There’s a heavy jolt of metal, followed by soft murmurs of confusion and an angry command. The soldiers try again to open the door, but the lever doesn’t move.
Cas’ lips are moving wordlessly and Dean wonders if he really is praying. Dean never had much time for church and he’s not sure what it is you’re supposed to say before you die. The Catholics believe in confession, but Dean’s sins are stacked higher than all the snow in Siberia. Besides, there’s not many Catholics left in Kansas these days. If he’s going to pray for anything at all, other than the strength of the wood wedging the door shut, Dean thinks that he’d pray for Sammy.
He closes his eyes to the warmth of Cas’ fingers and hopes that the war ends before the year is through, so that his little brother never has a chance to enlist. He’d give his life for that much, he thinks. It’s not such a terrible sacrifice.
The rattling on the door stops suddenly, followed by a rapid discussion with clipped tones. Dean knows a few words of Russian, picked up from the White Army soldiers that buffer the American ranks. He knows ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ little bits of profanity and ways to compliment women. He knows the slow, steady countdown from ten. He knows ‘ice’ and ‘snow’ and ‘wind’ and ‘rain’, and for a moment he thinks he hears it from the other side of the door, tossed with a harsh accent between the soldier’s open mouths. ‘Ice,’ they repeat, in soft argument. ‘Ice, ice, ice.’
There’s one last rattling blow to the door, a gloved fist against the metal, and then they begin to move back across the platform. Dean’s eyes open to the sudden shift of Cas’ weight. He stumbles up and onto his feet, frantically tugging at Dean’s hand. Dean allows him to reposition them both, pulling him along the wall and into the darkened corner at the farthest end of the train car.
Cas eyes the bullet holes as if he’s mentally tracking the angle of the shot and the length of the shadows. They sit side by side, with their knees pressed against their chests, trying to tuck their bodies into what little bit of darkness they have left.
Cas settles his forehead against his knees, looking like a child braving a thunderstorm, but Dean can’t keep his eyes off the wall. The voices are growing closer again, along with the sound of boots on packed snow. It’s a familiar sound, like the rise and fall of Slavic accented Russian. He thought it was beautiful, at first, the flow of foreign syllables. It’s nothing like the lispy sounds of French or the finalities of German. But now, he thinks, he’d be happy to never hear it again.
The soldiers stop outside and he watches the shadows of their silhouettes as they each pass by. Dean presses his own hand to his mouth this time, muffling his breathing with gloves that smell of blood and paraffin. Cas has not moved an inch. He sits statuesque at Dean’s side, with only his body heat to provide any hint of life.
A shadow passes over the nearby flurry of bullet holes, and Dean can almost see the color of the eye that bends to peak through. Dean’s lungs stutter to a halt as the soldier adjusts to the dull light of the train car. He seems to stay there for a lifetime and Dean’s chest burns for air, but finally he straightens.
The Cossack soldier calls to his comrades with a note of confidence in his voice, but he still pauses at a few more holes in the wall as he passes by, just in case.
Their voices begin to fade into the distance and Dean notices for the first time that he can no longer hear the sound of gunshots. Siberia is silent once more, and for a single, panicked moment, he wonders if he and Cas are the only two Americans left alive.
Dean can’t bring himself to speak. Their thighs are pressed together, but neither of them move. He’s not sure if he welcomes the body heat or if they’re both simply too terrified to put any distance between them. Part of him wants to light up that last cigarette, but every sound is amplified by the frozen metal. Even his inhale is bound to echo.
Dean slowly becomes numb from the cold and the stillness, but Cas doesn’t seem to feel anything at all. He is looking at the wall, following the pinpoints of light against the metal as the sun slowly lowers behind them. Finally, when the light from the bullet holes turns as gold as Kansas wheat, Cas’ fingers begin to move.
He flexes and forces his hands into fists inside his gloves, rocking his feet back and forth within his boots. He rolls his neck with an audible click that Dean recognizes from his own stiff shoulders. It’s like watching a statue come to life and Dean doesn’t turn away.
Slowly, as if testing the remains of the floor beneath his feet, he stands. He has the unmistakable posture of a soldier, the iron spine that Dean could never quite replicate, even after basic training in Kent. He’s caught staring the second Cas glances down at him. Dean feels like a schoolboy again, looking away but not quick enough.
Cas holds out a hand, and Dean allows him to pull him to his feet, wincing slightly as the floor creaks under their weight. It sounds deafening, but Cas looks unconcerned. Dean stretches the best he can in the cramped boxcar, trying to keep his muscles from seizing. He feels like his limbs are full of lead, left to sink into his bones in the aftermath of his adrenaline surge.
Cas is at the door, slowly pulling at his wooden reinforcements, and Dean’s blissful haze of frostbite and unexpected survival begins to fade. The sun will set in a matter of hours and after that they’re sure to freeze to death. Maybe that’s what Cas really wants and this whole thing was just an excise in dying peaceful. Dean’s too exhausted to question it, so he stands at his side and helps to remove the last pieces of wood.
The door opens to the screech of steel and Cas tenses, just for a moment, still gripping the wheel above the handle. Dean has his hand on his rifle, as if expecting soldiers to burst through the walls.
He’s not sure what Cas is waiting for, but clearly it comes and goes because he’s stepping through the doorway without a glance behind him. The Cossacks who searched the cars left the doors flung open and Dean can see straight down the length of the train. A few hundred yards away, darkness fades into a warm glow of light from the storage car.
Dean feels like a giant as he follows Cas through the train. He’s clumsy and weak from cold and the onset of hunger. Cas moves like he doesn’t have anything to focus on but the silence of his footsteps. He reminds him of the children he saw in Vladivostok, who could steal a slice of bread from a soldier’s open palm. He wonders if there’s kids like that out in Pennsylvania too.
Dean nearly trips and falls onto the hard packed earth as Cas leads them out into a sunset. The forest is bathed in gold and nectarine orange, straight from the vine. For one single, frozen breath, Dean thinks it’s beautiful. He exhales and the spell is broken. Bodies litter the ground, clothed in the dull grey-blue coats of American infantry.
“Oh,” Dean breathes, taking the first few stumbling steps towards a man lying on his back, looking up at the sky.
Cas catches his arm.
“He might be alive,” Dean says. His eyes are still open, they reflect in the light.
Cas’ fingers dig into his skin and he tugs hard, pulling him towards the trees.
“No, I need to - ”
Cas turns him around with both hands on his collar, forcing Dean to look away from what remains of the battlefield. He shakes his head, just once, loosening his hold for long enough to wipe a tear from Dean’s cheek with a scrape of his woolen glove, before turning and marching towards the forest.
Dean hastily wipes at his eyes, surprised by the sudden lump in his throat. He’s seen death before, he’s carried the bodies.
Despite the carnage, Cas doesn’t give him time to mourn for their countrymen. He’s already disappearing through the trees.
The ground is softer in the forest, with thin stretches of ice that shatter like spun sugar under his boot. Cas weaves through the debris of broken branches like he’s following a trail he’s walked a hundred times. Dean follows closely, matching his footsteps print by print.
He fingers the cigarette in his pocket and resigns himself to the knowledge that Sammy will receive a telegram with typewriter ink spelling out M.I.A. He always thought that Navy wives had a kinder lot. When a ship goes down, you know better than to hope. In the army, families can wait years on a set of dog tags. He hopes that Sam is smarter than that.
The sun has dipped low enough that they’re walking in the half-light when Dean begins to shiver. The cold sets in with the hunger and the shock and he feels it in his heart, like it’s pumping through his bloodstream.
“Cassidy,” he rasps.
He doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t even turn to acknowledge him.
“Cas,” he says again, and this time he stops. “I can’t do this anymore. Just let me - ”
His words stumble to a halt as his eyes adjust to the twilight of the forest. In front of him, a shelter of logs packed with dried mud is built into the ground, set along a natural dip in the earth. Inside, pitched meticulously along the guiding lines of the wall, is a canvas tent. There are rocks piled before the laced entrance, burnt charcoal black.
Cas sets his hands on Dean’s shoulders, pretending he hasn’t heard a word, and guides him to sit. The ground is clear of frost and ice, and there is nothing but earth and dead leaves beneath him. Cas walks along the other side of the makeshift wall, out of sight, though Dean can still hear him. It’s as if he’s making an effort, letting Dean know how far away he is as he piles his arms with dry twigs snapped from low branches.
“Matches,” Dean says, when Cas kneels in front of him and begins to build the base for a fire. “I have matches.”
He holds out the book with shaking fingers and Cas tears out a set of two before folding it back into Dean’s palm. He strikes the matches on a soot-covered rock and holds them to a pine branch. Dean watches as the needles catch and sizzle, popping like distant gunfire or New Year’s crackers.
After a moment, Cas reaches forward and unlaces the flaps to the tent, revealing a pile of military-issue wool blankets and a series of rucksacks, damp but packed tight. He realizes in a distant kind of way that Cas must have been hiding out here for days before he returned to camp. He wonders what he hoped to accomplish, running from the battlefield and into the forest. It’s easy to be a deserter in France, where villages dot the countryside, but there’s nowhere to go in Siberia.
Cas gestures him into the tent after pulling a blanket from the stack and wrapping it around his own shoulders. Dean watches for a moment as he tends to the fire, before crawling into the tent and pulling blanket after blanket onto himself. He pillows his head on an unfamiliar brown overcoat and the second Dean closes his eyes all thoughts of Cas’ plans fade into the dark. He falls asleep to the warmth of the fire and the smell of pine trees, like Christmas in Kansas.
—
He wakes to the nauseating ache of cold and to shadows cast by the dying flames of the campfire. With shaking hands, Dean opens the flaps of the tent and crawls out, reaching immediately for the kindling left stacked by the makeshift wall. He works twig after twig into the base of the fire where the stones glow brightest.
He allows himself a moment tucked close enough to the flames for the smoke to sting his eyes and startle his breathing, before he stands and looks around their sunken shelter.
The sun never does fully set, not yet anyway. Through some ironic trick of the seasons, the frost in Dean’s lungs is the end of summer in Siberia. The sky stays a distant haze of blue, like perpetual dusk, brightening the forest outside of the little circle of firelight. He doesn’t bother to look around, he already knows that Cas isn’t here. He does his best not to worry and it comes easier than he expects as exhaustion and hunger sap his energy. He crawls back into the tent, settling closer to the fire and curling in on himself beneath the pile of woolen blankets.
Dean closes his eyes to fever dreams of Cossack soldiers and his little brother waving a wooden rifle and the next time he wakes, it’s dawn and Cas is stoking the flames. His cheeks are flushed and his cap is left drying on a pile of stones. Dean can’t bring himself to move, but Cas seems to know he’s awake.
He rustles through his pockets, before moving to kneel at Dean’s side. Cas opens his hands like he’s been keeping a spring butterfly cupped in his palms. He has black bread wrapped in linen, dry from the cold and crumbling. Their rations don’t have anything that looks quite like that, but he’s too tired to ask where it came from. He expects there are as many Russian bodies laid out in the fields as there are Americans, anyway.
Cas sets the bread aside and whisks a leather flask from inside of his coat. He packs it with the newly fallen snow piled at the base of one of the larger oak trees and leaves it close enough to the coals to melt into water. He pulls off his gloves, setting them aside to dry, and for the first time Dean can see the shine of scars along his knuckles and the backs of his hands. He looks away as Cas reaches for the bread, because despite everything, it still doesn’t feel right to stare.
He hands Dean a small piece of bread and watches intently as he does his best to keep it down. He’s starving and light headed but the second he tastes rye, his stomach churns. Cas waits until Dean no longer has a hand pressed to his mouth before handing him the flask of lukewarm water. He takes small sips on instinct and Cas nods in approval.
He breaks off piece by piece, waiting each time until Dean has managed a few sips of water before handing him another. He seems well versed in starvation. Even with their mother dead and buried in the flatlands of Kansas and their father two-thirds into a fifth, his family never went hungry.
Once half the bread is gone, Cas packs the flask with more snow and makes quick work of the rest, leaving not even crumbs behind. They both sit close to the fire, their knees to their chests, and every few minutes after Cas checks to see if he’s still awake, he hands Dean the water flask again.
He feels fit to burst, like he’d swallowed a whole Thanksgiving dinner instead of half a ration of Russian black bread. He keeps drinking though, whenever Cas hands him the flask. He might be a farm boy where it matters, but Dean knows a man will die without water sooner than he’ll die from hunger.
Once the sun rises high enough to shine over the low walls of their shelter, Cas stands and stretches out his arms and legs in the most methodical way, tilting left and right, bending forward at his waist. Dean finds himself smiling as he watches him, though he quickly schools his features as Cas kneels at his side and begins pulling the packs from the tent. He rearranges their contents, stuffing leather gloves into one pocket and leaving a thin, moth-eaten blanket folded on the ground.
Dean watches as he begins to pull steel stakes from the ground with bare hands, wrapping the waxed rope around their jagged edges. He knows he should offer to help, but he’s not quite ready to move from the remaining warmth of the fire and Cas doesn’t seem like he really needs another set of fumbling hands in the way of what is clearly a well-tested routine.
Cas packs up the tent in the same meticulous, practiced manner that he does everything. Dean has managed a few more sips of water by the time Cas carefully folds its many loose parts into a rucksack not unlike the one Dean left at camp.
He holds out one hand to pull Dean to his feet, and gestures at the remaining bag with the other. Dean shoulders it and reaches down to rub at the ache in his knee. Maybe next time, he’ll do some stretching of his own.
Cas nods his head and they leave the last of the fire to burn itself out.
—
They walk until mid-day, when the sun is directly above them. Cas makes sure to keep the flask full of melting snow, but the water is ice cold without the fire to warm it and it sinks into Dean’s lungs. Eventually, though, he stops feeling it at all.
He remembers overhearing a second lieutenant in Byelorussia describe the soldiers that they’d found out on the ice, half frozen to death and too far into the grips of hypothermia to save. He remembers hearing him say that they felt warm, as if the shock of their dying bodies offered them that one final solace.
His hands don’t hurt when they curl into his pockets, they don’t feel like much of anything. Thinking that this may be his final chance to actually enjoy the nicotine rush before the delirium sets in, Dean stumbles to a stop and leans against the base of a fallen tree.
“Cas,” he calls. “Cas, wait.”
He fumbles with his cigarette and searches for a dry match among the pack. Cas watches him, silent, as he struggles to get the cigarette lit.
He reaches out after Dean’s second wasted match and pries the little paper bill from his fingers. He leans in close, gently rolling the match along the wool cuff of his sleeve, before striking it hard against the cloth. Dean hums in approval as the match flares to life, but Cas is already leaning forward, cupping his hand around the back of Dean’s neck to keep him still. He holds the flame to the crumbled end of the cigarette and Dean inhales.
He blows smoke up towards the sky, groaning at the familiar bite of tobacco. He breathes deep and holds it until his chest burns.
“Here,” he says, holding out the cigarette for Cas to take.
Cas shakes his head, but sits beside him anyway, crossed legged on the crackling leaves. Dean shrugs his shoulders and takes another drag, exhaling through his nose until there’s nothing left to stamp out.
Dean begins to stand, but Cas stops him with a soft touch to his knee. He unwraps another piece of cloth from the folds of his coat, revealing little slivers of dried meat. He hands two to Dean and keeps one for himself, tucking the rest back into his pocket.
“Thanks, Cas.” Dean scarfs the first bit of jerky down far too quickly, but he works slowly on the second, chewing on it as they walk and savoring the taste.
Cas’ frequent water breaks are now peppered with little offers of food pulled from the depths of his uniform. He hands off pieces of black bread and flat, flavorless crackers. Once, he even hands Dean a dried apricot, like the kinds they bake into harvest bread back home.
Dean has long since settled into the monotony of marching, the trance that comes to soldiers after the first few miles are behind them, when suddenly Cas stops. He grabs Dean hard by the shoulders and pulls him down behind the thorny branches of a cypress shrub. Cas’ hand is back over his mouth, a repeat gesture that would have Dean swinging in any other world. Here though, in an unfamiliar forest with the sudden audible crunch of boots on the dry ground, Dean is thankful for it.
Cas peeks through the gaps in the branches as he quickly sheds his pack and over-coat, stripping down to a light brown uniform that Dean hadn’t noticed beneath the layer of imported American wool. Cas reaches for his rifle and sets one finger to his lips, gesturing for him to stay.
“Cas,” he mouths, frantic with the sudden realization that Cas is getting ready to stand. “No.”
Cas gives him one last pleading look, before climbing to his feet.
Dean hears a distant shout of Russian and the sounds of weapons being cocked. He flips onto his stomach, watching through the branches as Cas holds up a single hand in greeting. The Russian soldiers are wearing long coats of dusty brown, with black accents to match the red of Cas’ sleeves.
Cas lowers his hand and begins to speak. His voice is deep, his spine is set to a general’s rigidity, and the two soldiers quickly lower their weapons. Cas’ Russian sounds beautiful, the way it did when Dean first stepped foot in Siberia. They speak for a moment longer, and Dean squeezes his eyes shut, unable to tell their voices apart.
After a moment, Cas gesture with his hand and the two men nod in aborted agreement and disappear back through the trees. Cas watches them go, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. Once the sounds of their footsteps fade back into the silence of Siberia, Cas crouches behind the bush, digging through his pack and producing a black overcoat. He hands it to Dean, refusing to meet his eyes.
Dean takes the hint, shedding his American uniform and wrapping himself in the nondescript black overcoat. Cas is changing into a dark grey uniform with medals pinned to the breast, working quickly as if he expects more soldiers to appear at a moment’s notice.
The second Dean’s coat is buttoned, hiding the light blue of his under shirt, Cas is pulling him roughly to his feet and leading him west towards the setting sun.
They set up camp in a clearing of tree roots and dead leaves, a mile away from the soldiers who stumbled across their path. Dean is exhausted and the second Cas has their tent standing he crawls through the opening and wraps himself in every blanket he pulls from his pack. Cas doesn’t start a fire, not at first. He sits at the entrance to the tent and listens with his eyes closed.
Dean sits hunched forward against the cold and watches him.
“Do you speak English?” He asks, finally.
Cas opens his eyes, an apologetic quirk of his lips. He looks tired.
“English?” He says again, slower this time.
Cas shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “No.”
“Okay,” Dean says, nodding to himself. “Okay, alright. So you’re a Rusky after all.” He thinks for a moment, tracing his fingers along the nylon floor, feeling the bumps and grooves of the earth beneath them. Cas doesn’t fidget, but he doesn’t meet his eyes either.
“Cossack?” He asks, finally, dreading the answer.
Cas gestures vaguely at his uniform. “Bolshevik,” he answers, a hint of exasperation in his tone, as if he expects Dean to know better.
Dean shuffles himself towards the entrance until he’s close enough to grab a fist full of snow in his gloves. It’s old snow, damp and melting, and he does his best to say the Russian word from memory. He always struggled with this one, more than he had with the flirtatious little phrases he learned from women in Vladivostok. The way Cas looks, though, makes him think he must have gotten close.
Cas nods, repeating it back to him.
“Snow,” Dean says, in English this time.
“Snow,” Cas says, with just a little too much emphasis at the start.
“Close enough,” he murmurs, before pointing to himself. “Dean.” It’s easier than Winchester by half, and Cas won’t know the difference either way.
“Dean,” he repeats and this time it sounds close to perfect.
He gestures to Cas, a questioning tilt to his head.
He looks away, tugging idly on the stolen set of dog tags still slung around his neck. “Cas,” he answers finally, a questioning lilt to his voice.
“Yeah, alright,” Dean says, settling himself on the floor of the tent and leaving enough space for another body at his side. “You can be Cas for now.”
—
They keep a steady pace as they march across the Siberian landscape. Cas seems to count their miles by markers that only he can see. They rarely stop walking before sundown, even when Dean lags behind from a reliable combination of hunger and exhaustion. Cas will simply hand him the flask and tuck a dried apricot into his palm. He knows better by now than to eat it all at once.
Dean passes the time by exhausting his Russian vocabulary and exchanging English words in return. Soon he relies instead on naming objects they can point at - tree, sky, rifle, boot. They quickly run out of those too, but it doesn’t stop him from trying to find more words to trade back and forth in an attempt to fill the silence.
He prefers not to think of where Cas’ uniform came from, whose body those dog tags were stolen off of. Russian vocabulary words and English nouns are a far simpler pastime.
They’re sitting around a fire, sharing another slice of black bread between them, when Cas catches his hand and says, “Ruka.”
Dean can’t roll his r’s like the Russians do and he struggles to repeat it back to him. Cas nearly smiles, though it’s barely a twitch of his lips.
“Hand,” Dean offers. He repeats it easily and Dean sighs, playing at exasperated. “I bet you were a nerd like my little brother in school.”
Cas hums a sentence of Russian consonants.
“Yeah, yeah.” He says, reaching for the water flask. “Whatever you say.”
—
The silence of the forest can become so oppressive that Dean takes to talking to himself once he’s out of vocabulary words to sift through.
“My baby would make quick work of this,” he says, breathing heavy but smiling at the idea of his beloved Murgese mare that their father bought off of an Englishman out in Fort Worth. “She wouldn’t like the cold though. Italian bred, meant for that seaside heat. That’s what Sammy told me anyway, and with all the books he gets his hands on, he’s usually right.”
Cas stops and studies him at first with a long, hard look. He seems to decide for himself that Dean just needs to ramble on because he nods his head and continues to walk.
Dean distracts himself for a moment by picturing every step in his baby’s grooming regimen, from her mane to her hooves. He’d shoed her with the help of the farrier in town just before he left for England. Dean counts out the months on his fingers, imagining it can’t be farther along than August, and thinks that Sammy will have to bring her in for another fitting soon.
“He’d better remember, every six weeks,” Dean says out loud. “She’s always been prone to cracking if you don’t keep a close eye on her. Brought her once to the farrier in Kansas City and never made that mistake again. I can’t believe he’s still in business.”
Cas nods his head like he’s listening and Dean smiles in response. “Bet you could shoe a horse,” he says, just a little out of breath. “If you can survive in Siberia, you can probably do that much at least.”
He eventually quiets down, after another half-mile of idle chatter, because his breathing turns heavy and he can hardly keep from coughing. Cas seems to notice and slows his pace, allowing Dean to catch up for the first time all afternoon.
“Thanks,” he says, and Cas nods his head, just the same.
—
They’ve been marching all day in the light mist of oncoming rain. Dean is damp and exhausted, lagging farther and farther behind Cas with nothing but trees to cut the scenery. He stops walking, finally, his hands resting on his knees.
“Dean?” Cas says, jogging to his side.
“Where are we going?” He asks, keeping his eyes closed.
Cas watches, waiting for an explanation.
“Where,” he snaps, gesturing at the forest around them. “Vladivostok? Moscow? Petrograd? Where?”
Cas nods. “Where,” he repeats, as if he’s considering it.
“Bolshevik,” he says finally, pointing behind them, to the east. “Cossack,” he says, pointing to the south. Cas looks out in front of them and gestures through the trees. “Snow,” he decides.
“Right, okay, so we’re definitely going to die out here. That’s great.”
“Dean,” Cas says, with a hand on his shoulder. “Walk.”
“Christ, I need to get you some better vocabulary words.”
Cas pats him on the back and continues forward.
—
It’s well before sundown when Cas darts through the trees, inspecting the base of each trunk like he’s looking for something. Dean doesn’t bother calling after him. Instead, he carefully follows the prints of Cas’ footsteps through the damp leaves, like a half-hearted game of follow-the-leader. Cas is already well ahead of him when Dean finally notices the ropes. There are rabbit snares hanging from the bare branches of every other tree. Some are still set, left undisturbed, and others host the remains of furs, picked clean of meat by scavengers.
Cas reappears carrying three limp hares by the ears. He catches Dean’s eye and motions towards a clearing where the remains of campfires appear like charcoal smudges against the ground. Dean is suddenly starving, ravenous and impatient.
“You make the fire,” Dean says, pointing to Cas and imitating the striking of a match. “I’ll skin.”
Cas watches him for a moment before answering with, “Fire.”
“Alright, fine.” Dean hands over his book of matches. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“No, Dean,” Cas says, pushing the book back into his hand. “Fire.”
Cas doesn’t wait for an argument. Instead, he whisks a hunting knife from the inside of his coat and kneels before a flat rock with white cut marks engraved into the face. The stone is blood-stained in a shade that looks almost like sand, and before Dean can even open the book of matches, Cas neatly takes off the rabbit’s head and begins to skin it.
“You’ll want to take the innards out first,” Dean says, collecting dry twigs from the branches of neighboring trees.
Cas pauses and glances at him with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah, alright.” Dean murmurs, rolling his eyes. “Do it your way then.”
Cas has all three rabbits skinned by the time Dean’s fire is worth more than a few sparks. Dean spent more time than most boys his age in the kitchen, skinning rabbits for roasts and stew while Sammy watched on in distaste. He would take his time and hum along to the old country lullabies his mother used to sing him. If he closes his eyes to the sharp tang of blood and firewood, he can almost feel the flour on his fingertips and Sammy tugging at his shirt.
Cas works like a soldier, cleaning the offal and laying them out to cook on a stone next to the coals. Dean always tossed the insides to the chickens, but it seems silly to even think of now, as his hands shake with hunger.
“Rabbit,” Dean says absentmindedly as he rotates a makeshift skewer over the fire to keep the branch from catching.
“Rabbit,” Cas repeats, as he works the last of the meat off the bones. He doesn’t look up, just repeats, “Rabbit, fire,” like he’s testing out the sounds.
“Soon enough you’ll talk as good as me.” Dean assures him.
Cas lays the pelts over stones as well, setting them as close as he dares to the flames.
It seems like it takes an eternity to cook. Cas sets up their tent while they wait, pausing only to hand Dean a stone to drive the stakes into the ground. He suspects it’s a calculated attempt at distraction, because Cas has never asked for his help before.
Cas inspects the skewers closely, sticking his blade through the meat to check the color. When he gives the first piece his nod of approval, he hands the whole of the stick over to Dean.
Dean takes a bite and moans at the taste. It’s unseasoned and gamey, but right now it’s better than any chess pie. The heat sears his tongue but he can hardly bring himself to wait for it to cool. Dean nibbles charred bits of meat from the end of the stick as he reaches for another.
“Dean,” Cas says as he chews through a pale slither of offal. “Slow.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going slow.”
Cas hands him a flask of water, and Dean hums a bit. “In a minute.”
“Dean.”
“Drink,” Dean says, taking a grudging swig from the flask. “You might as well learn it, instead of just saying my name with that look on your face. Drink,” he repeats.
For a minute Cas looks like he might not say it, a silent protest to Dean’s perpetual attitude. “Dean,” he says finally. “Drink.”
—
“You know what I would do, if I made it back alive?” Dean asks. They’ve spent the morning walking in relative silence, brought on by Cas’ careful detours through the trees. He wonders who he’s more afraid of encountering in the woods – the Cossacks or what remains of the White Army?
As usual, Cas doesn’t answer.
He stares up at the fawn of tree branches above him, crystallized with ice and the slush of week-old snow. His feet are warmer now than they’ve been in days and blessedly dry from where Cas packed the inside of his boots with rabbit pelts.
“I’d move to Texas, that’s what I’d do. It don’t snow much in Kansas, but it snows enough.”
“Dean,” Cas says with a soft question to his voice.
“Sam wouldn’t mind. He can marry a nice country girl. One with manners. We grow ‘em mean out in Kansas.” He sighs then, his eyes pinched closed. “Fuck, I miss Kansas.”
“Kansas,” Cas repeats slowly, curiously, his voice nearly lost to the wind.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Kansas. It’s a place. Vladivostok, Moscow, Kansas.”
Cas says a word in Russian, slow and careful so that Dean can hear every lispy vowel. He thinks he knows what it means without having to ask.
“Home,” he says, nodding.
“Home,” Cas repeats. “Home.”
“Kansas is my home,” he says, thumping his hand on his own chest. “Cas?”
“Home?” Cas asks, for confirmation. “Petrograd.”
Dean winces, but Cas doesn’t seem to notice. Even sequestered in Siberia, Dean knows Petrograd is set to fall. Rumor had it that German troops were days away from the city’s borders, with its people left starving and defenseless. He can’t imagine there’s anything left of it now.
He’s not seen much of Russian cities, so all he can really picture is stone and ice and ashy cathedrals. When Cas sighs the word Petrograd, he wonders what it is that he thinks of.
—
Dean gets used to walking, after a while. Before they were cornered by the Cossacks, American soldiers did little for the war effort other than wait. Dean has waited in caravans and train cars and in the barracks of transport ships. He’s waited on grassy knolls in France and in military tents in Vladivostok. It was maddening. But when they walk, Dean feels none of the anticipation and nervous, pent-up energy that he felt on the train to their Siberian station. His head is clear of everything but the next step and each frigid inhale.
He thinks he could go on like this for months, maybe even years. He could march through Siberia, pulling rabbits from traps and setting up camp, lighting fires while Cas grimaces at his technique, all until Sammy is grown and set to marry that whip-smart blonde from down the street.
Sometimes, when he’s beginning to fall behind Cas’ mountain-man pace, Dean likes to watch him. He’s light on his feet when he walks, barely making a sound at all as he follows his invisible yellow brick road through the trees. Dean wonders how many times he’s crossed this forest and how many times he’ll cross it again before winter comes.
When the sun first begins to set, filtering gilded light through the trees, Dean falls back just a bit. In this light, with his hair curled into damp ringlets, Cas looks ethereal, like he belongs here. The soldiers in Vladivostok told him about the fairies that live in the forests, disguised as beautiful women that lead travelers astray.
Dean snorts a laugh at the thought and Cas pauses, turning to look back at him.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Dean says. “Keep on walking. It’s almost dark.”
—
Dean hums to himself without even realizing it. He’s used to working that way on the ranch, singing to keep his brain busy while his body does the heavy lifting. He’s three bars into a song he borrowed from the snowy streets of his childhood when Cas stops walking.
“What is it?” He asks, pulling his rifle from his shoulder.
Cas looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Dean,” he says, gesturing vaguely.
“What?”
Cas continues to stare, as if he’s not sure exactly what to say.
“Is it the singing?” He asks finally. “Singing,” he says, slowly so Cas can catch the syllables, before letting out an audible approximation of the doh re mi he learned in the schoolhouse.
He nods. “Singing.”
“I know,” he flashes the smile he uses at the shop girls back home. “I’m like an angel, aren’t I?”
Cas watches him for a moment and says something in Russian, a one-word wisp of consonants with that slight roll of the tongue that Dean can never manage.
“Thank you?” Dean offers. “I think.”
Cas nods his head and begins walking again.
He sings louder now that he knows he has an audience. He cycles through all the Christmas songs he can remember, although it’s nowhere near December. The cold has given his voice a deeper, scratchy quality that he isn’t used to hearing. On certain notes, he sounds just like his father.
“What about you, Cas?” He asks, falling into step beside him. “Any songs from Russia?”
When Cas tilts his head, Dean points at him. “Singing?”
He shakes his head. “No. No singing.”
“Aw, come on. I bet you know a Russian song or two.”
“No singing,” he repeats, so Dean belts out a lascivious old shanty in retaliation. Cas shakes his head, an exasperated expression on his face, and although Dean knows he can’t understand the words, he suspects he gets the point.
—
After days of damp and wet earth, they wake one morning to dry air that never breaks. The ground isn’t thawing so much as it’s simply drying out. It’s a strange thing, camping on permafrost after settling in to melted snow. Most nights he wakes thirsty and it hurts just to inhale.
“Water?” He asks, the words stuck in his throat.
He knows Cas is awake, just like he knows it’s hours from morning despite the dawn-blue haze of light on the horizon. He wonders, sometimes, if one night he’ll simply wake to darkness or if the change will be gradual, a slow loss of summer light. He’s heard all about the dead of winter and the nights that never end, and he knows they’re coming soon.
Cas sits up, making a questioning noise, like he hadn’t quite heard him.
“The water,” Dean repeats, his voice rough with sleep. “Where is it?”
Cas gestures to the pack set closest to the entrance of the tent. “There is it.”
Dean shocks himself by laughing and winces when he swallows dry. He reaches for the flask and gulps down cold water, aware that Cas is watching his every move.
“What?” He asks, finally.
“What,” Cas repeats, frowning.
Dean smiles, rubbing at his eyes. “There it is.”
“Ah,” Cas breathes, nodding his head. “There it is.”
“You were close though,” he says, lying back down with his head pillowed on hard earth. He says goodnight in Russian and Cas murmurs it back to him, his eyes already closed.
—
Dean idly writes his name in the dirt. With the ground growing drier the farther north they go, Dean reverts to his childhood pass-time of tracing shapes with the end of a sharp stick in lieu of pencils and paper. When they were young, he and Sammy used to crouch at the edge of Bobby’s field after harvest had turned the soil to dust and draw little cave-man depictions of their lives.
He doesn’t feel much like drawing, but he hasn’t seen much of English letters in what feels like a lifetime. Cas watches curiously as he digs his stick deeper and begins on ‘Winchester.’
“What is it?” Cas asks.
“Dean.” He says, pointing at his name. He reads it out for him, letter by letter, and Cas nods in understanding.
“Hey, you wanna learn the alphabet?” He asks, after a moment. He writes out a shaky ABC and gestures for Cas’ benefit.
“Yes,” he says.
Cas settles in beside him with a stick of his own and Dean begins writing out a clumsy rendition of the alphabet that hung on his schoolhouse wall. He always did have shit penmanship and the rocky earth isn’t doing him any favors.
Dean points at each letter and approximates the sound he associates with them. Cas traces his letters with a surprisingly steady hand, murmuring the sounds as he works.
“Dean,” he says, tracing his name again.
“Yeah, you’ll get there eventually. Show me the Russian one?”
The fire is healthy and bright, feeding off of the dry timber instead of popping and flickering its way through the night. Dean watches carefully as Cas begins tracing out a series of Russian characters under his own attempt at the alphabet.
“Yeah, alright. Some of the same letters, none of the same sounds. Got it.”
“Dean,” he says, tracing out a Russian word.
“Oh, that’s my name then?”
Cas makes a noise deep in his throat, like he isn’t fully sure.
“Sort of my name, then.”
He looks up. “Sort of?”
“Sort of,” Dean says with a nod. “You are sort of Cas.”
He nods, considering this. “Sort of,” he agrees and Dean smiles.
—
Dean remembers girls in Lawrence cutting strips of cloth from the hems of their finest dresses and handing them off to their sweethearts in uniform as a comfort in the trenches. Boys by the hundreds went to war with hair ribbons and pieces of lace collars and silky chiffon clutched between their fingers, but he can’t imagine that it did them much good in the end.
Dean watches Cas set up camp and bundles himself close to the fire as he hums the tune to a lullaby. He never had a piece of cloth for comfort, but he hasn’t thought once about the girls he used to court, the shy kisses exchanged in the brick alley behind the post office. He thinks of nothing but Sam and Bobby and food. Good lord, does he think of food. Constantly, like a starving man. And sometimes, in the gentle dusk of night, he thinks of winter, and the fear sets his pulse racing.
“Hey Cas,” he begins, a sudden nagging thought at the back of his head. “Do you have anyone at home? A girl, a wife?”
“Wife?” Cas asks, squinting.
Dean mimes a ring around his forth finger. “Yeah, do you have a wife?” He hums the hymn of church bells that used to sound on Sundays.
“Ah,” Cas says. “No.”
“Dean?” he asks after a moment, warming his hands by the fire. “Do you have wife?” He looks worried, like he hadn’t considered it before.
“No, God no, don’t worry. I was always too busy to really court a girl. Then I was sent here, with you.”
“I am sorry,” he says, softly.
“Don’t be. No widows this way. Besides, love’s no comfort in war, is it?” Ribbon and thread can do little against bullet holes and mustard gas and the growing, looming start of winter.
Cas shrugs like he understands, but Dean knows he doesn’t.
—
Without the damp and humidity of the south, it gets even colder. The dry air is soon accompanied by wind that leaves Dean’s skin red and sore to the touch. The seasons are beginning to turn, and Dean can’t tell if it’s his imagination or if the sun is setting earlier each day. He’s paranoid now of the nineteen hours of darkness their colonel once promised.
Cas catches him shivering as he feeds dried leaves into their fledgling fire. “Dean,” he says softly, shrugging off his inner layer, a wool coat knit white but turned grey with use. He holds it out as instruction more than offering.
“I’m fine,” he insists, clenching his jaw. The cold comes from the inside these days, seeping through his chest and soaking in. It makes him shake and shiver and at night he breaks out in sweats that freeze to his skin by morning.
“No,” Cas says. “You are cold.”
“Cas, I’m fine. I’m not taking your coat,” he juts his chin out, an attempt to convince him. “You’ll freeze.”
“I am Russian,” he says with what almost passes as a smile.
Cas wins the short, silent battle of eye contact and Dean finally pulls on the knit jacket. It’s still warm and slightly damp to the touch. He wraps his uniform around himself and sits closer to the fire just as Cas murmurs something in Russian, a frustrated sigh. He gets up and adjusts himself next to Dean, leaning in close. With one hand he digs out the lighter, waterproof cover that he keeps in his pack, coal black and distinctly German. He wraps it length-wise around their shoulders, shifting even closer.
“Well alright,” Dean says, and his tone must be sufficient translation because Cas scoffs beside him.
“You’ll freeze,” he mimics.
“You’re getting too good at English. I’m cutting you off.”
Cas doesn’t answer. He leans forward enough to jostle the fire and adjust the wood before settling back into Dean’s side.
He lets himself relax into it, after a moment, the unfamiliar comfort of body heat. It reminds him of sitting in that abandoned train car and the weight of Cas’ hand against his lips.
After a small meal of leftover rabbit meat packed in waxed cloth, Cas adds a final layer of kindling to the fire and nods towards the tent. Dean takes the hint and begins his nightly routine of burying himself under a layer of blankets, expecting Cas to continue his vigil at the fire. Instead, he crawls in behind him and begins to unlace his boots.
“You’re going to sleep already?”
“Sleep,” Cas confirms and instead of lying on his back, a hands-width away, he lifts up Dean’s makeshift wool cocoon and slides beneath it.
It was once such a familiar feeling, lying in bed with another person tucked against him. For most of his life, it was Sammy, who grew like a weed once he hit the age of twelve and always ended up sprawled over his body come morning. Sometimes, it was the farmer’s daughter from down the road, blue-eyed and slight and meaner than fire. They knew better than to be caught in the same bed past dawn, so she always slipped out before the roosters could call.
This doesn’t feel all that different, but he can’t help but tense up at the unexpected contact.
“Dean,” Cas says, shifting onto his side, his back warm and solid against him. “Sleep.”
—
Dean wakes with Cas’ hands on his shoulders, keeping his thrashing body pinned to the ground and repeating his name.
“That’s all I hear you say, these days.” He’s barely out of his nightmare, a recreation of the Cossack slaughter that he heard from the safety of the train car. Only in his dream, as he sat crouched in the shadows, he could hear the tremble of his brother’s voice from the battlefield.
“Dean,” he says again, but Dean ignores him, shrugging off Cas’ hand as he forces himself to sit up.
He rubs at his eyes, avoiding Cas’ unblinking stare. “Nightmare,” he says.
Cas nods, like this word doesn’t need a translation. “Nightmare,” he repeats.
Dean crawls to the entrance of the tent and stands on unsteady feet as he gathers his bearings. He walks into the forest to relieve himself while simultaneously escaping Cas’ careful attention. He knows that he’s starting to unravel, he can feel Siberia pulling at his seams. Cas watches his every move like he’s just waiting for the moment when he finally falls apart.
When he returns to camp, Cas is trying his best to boil water in a tin cup.
“Sit,” he says evenly, not even glancing at Dean. “Eat.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Dean says, reaching for his ration of black bread, topped with the prunes that Cas has been saving for especially bad days. He hated prunes when he was a kid, but now he savors every bite.
“Dean,” Cas says gently, handing him the tin cup with a glove wrapped around the handle.
“Thanks,” he says. Usually, Dean does his best to use whatever Russian vocabulary he can think of, but he just doesn’t have enough energy this morning to shape his syllables.
Cas seems to notice. “You are welcome.”
They’re silent for a moment, taking their time over their rations and melting what snow they can find into drinking water, until finally Cas says, “Sammy?”
Dean’s head snaps up so quickly that they both hear the tired click of his vertebrae. “Where did you hear that?”
“Your nightmare,” Cas says, fitting his English together like a puzzle. “Sammy.”
Dean’s throat clicks when he swallows. “My brother,” he says. “Sammy’s my brother. Here.”
He reaches for the stick Cas has been using to kindle the fire. He draws four figures on the hard ground, hoping that these at least might be universal. “Mother, father, sister, brother,” he says.
Cas nods, like he understands.
“Big?” He asks. “Small?”
“Small,” Dean says. “He’s my little brother.”
“Little brother,” Cas repeats with a distant look. He picks his words carefully. “I am little brother,” he tells Dean.
“You are a little brother,” Dean corrects him, in an automatic sort of way.
“I am a little brother,” Cas repeats, nodding his thanks.
Dean’s chest aches and he wishes Cas hadn’t said anything at all. He looks down at his rations, suddenly unable to stomach the rest.
“You are,” he says slowly, like he’s practicing still, unaware of Dean’s broken heart. “You are a big brother.”
Dean smiles, despite himself. “Yeah, I am.”
Cas nods to himself and returns to his food. Dean watches him for a moment, and wonders if he has an older brother somewhere, worried sick and missing the way his mop of curls always falls into his eyes or how he smiles like it’s a surprise each time. He imagines the telegram Cas’ phantom older brother might receive; M.I.A, never to be seen again.
Or maybe they’ll both be dead, before this war is over. Maybe his brother is already buried in the rubble of Petrograd. Maybe he’s got more than one.
Dean gulps the water down, allowing it to scald his tongue, and he counts his one and only true blessing. Sammy is safe in Kansas and Dean has no letters to wait on.
—
One morning they wake and the sun doesn’t rise.
He thinks for a moment that it was the dry air that woke him, the thirst or the cold. But Cas is no longer beside him, sleeping shallow and warm, so he knows it must be dawn. Cas wakes like clockwork and Dean can see his shadow against the wall of the tent, jumping and stuttering by the light of the campfire.
He stares at Cas’ silhouette and takes a deep breath as his throat works itself into a bowline knot. Tears burn behind his eyes and Dean wants nothing more than to scream and shout and pull down the tent around him because what the fuck are they supposed to do now? Overnight, Siberia has plunged into the oblivion of winter, and Dean mourns for the sun.
“Dean,” Cas says softly, untying the flap and peaking inside.
Dean refuses to pull his hands from his eyes, sticky and wet with tears. He hopes that Cas will just go away and leave him to suffocate to death as his breathing begins to hitch and his body thrums with panic.
“Dean,” he says, a little more urgently this time. He crawls into the tent, not bothering to kick off his boots or lace the entrance closed. Instead he lays at Dean’s side and pulls their bodies together, chest to chest, his hand cupping the back of Dean’s neck.
Cas is repeating one word over and over again, taking deep, steadying breaths in Dean’s ear like it’s a demonstration. Dean tries to mimic him, to get his breathing under control, but he thinks he must be dying, his heart finally caving to the cold.
“Dean,” Cas says desperately, before pulling back far enough for Dean to see his face by the soft glow of the fire. Cas breathes loudly in through his nose, and exhales through his mouth, nodding in approval as Dean does the same.
He closes his eyes and forces himself to follow Cas’ slow pattern, in and out. He’s murmuring gentle, encouraging words that Dean hasn’t heard before, but the sound is calming, distant. He focuses on Cas’ voice and he breathes.
His hand strokes absentmindedly through the shorter strands of hair at the back of Dean’s neck and eventually, when his chest no longer aches and tears slide silently down his temple, Cas sighs his name.
Dean’s face is tucked into the crook of Cas’ throat, where he smells of winter cold and sweat, a cloying combination that settles on soldiers after a few weeks in Siberia.
Cas is trying to say something in English, mumbling words that Dean doesn’t quite understand. “One,” Cas says, before sighing, a frustrated sound. “The sun,” Cas says. “The sky.”
Dean can’t help but smile against his skin, though he doesn’t say a word.
“The sun,” he begins again. “It is slow.”
“I noticed, Cas. It’s winter now,” he says thickly.
“No,” Cas says, followed by a groan of Russian words. “One.”
He stops trying after that. They lay silently, with Dean’s cheek pressed against the scratchy cotton of his uniform. His eyes flutter open and closed, lulled by Cas’ body heat and soft patterns he traces against his shoulders. But before he eases himself back into sleep, the sun begins to rise. Dean breathes in sharply through his nose at the sight of it, white-gold and glowing. He whispers a barely audible, “Oh.”
“One,” Cas repeats, his thumb resting on Dean’s wrist.
“One hour, huh.” Dean mumbles. “It’s one hour later now.”
Cas nods his head. “No winter.”
“Not yet,” he says. “But it will be soon.”
Cas doesn’t respond and they watch the soft glow of the sunrise as it bleeds into the tent.
—
Dean is staring into the fire as he tries to focus on breathing normally, in and out. They set up camp early today, well before the sun even moved from the center of the sky, and Cas goes about his normal routine as if this isn’t completely out of character for him. Dean knows better than to protest.
He catches the sideways glances Cas keeps throwing his way, the small frown at his lips as he carefully monitors Dean’s eating habits. He’s slowed his pace over the past few days, falling into step beside him instead of gallivanting off a few yards ahead. Dean should be annoyed by it, but mostly he’s just tired. He hardly notices when Cas reaches over to catch Dean’s hand.
“What’d you want?”
Cas is looking closely at his hand, inspecting the thin, bruised skin and the pattern of blue veins that crawls around his palm.
“I’m fine,” he says, pulling away.
“Dean,” Cas says, and this time he doesn’t sound exasperated or impatient. Dean knows that tone, it’s the same one he used when Sam caught a bad cold a few years back that got into his chest and stuck.
“I’m fine. And hey, look. When I do end up dying out here, at least you bought me a few weeks and a fighting chance.” He knows Cas doesn’t understand a word, but Dean feels better for saying it.
Cas says something then, a soft whisper of Russian, and Dean would give their last apricot to know what it was.
“We’ll be fine,” he says, instead. Cas doesn’t look at him. He reaches for Dean’s hands again and folds them into his palms, breathing warmth between their fingers.
“We have a fire for that, you know?” He doesn’t pull away and Cas doesn’t answer him.