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Dean Winchester has never really liked water.
The ocean is something he’ll gladly appreciate from the shore, and lakes, ponds, and rivers tend to act more as an annoying obstacle when hunting than something to enjoy. Especially after working that case in Wisconsin with the vengeful spirit haunting Lake Manitoc. Not to mention all the various supernatural water creatures that take delight in dragging their victims to a watery grave. So, yeah, it gives him the creeps. It’s not quite as bad as flying in a plane, but you won’t find him volunteering to take a case in the middle of the Atlantic any time soon. Dean prefers to stay right where he belongs, firmly on solid ground.
Maybe that should have been enough of a clue for him to avoid their current case. The uneasy feeling in his stomach, the tremor in his hands—it all should have been enough for him to turn them away. But he is a hardened hunter, Dean had insisted to himself; he could tough it out for the sake of saving people’s lives. He insisted they investigate the matter and power through the underlying anxiety that twisted through his veins.
He’s regretting that decision now, of course.
He always does.
They had come across a series of mysterious drownings—something that happened just a little too often with too many victims to be natural. They were in the area, of course; that’s why it was on their radar in the first place. The latest victim was the fifth in the past year and the second this month. Whatever haunts the lake, it’s angry and out for blood. Water spirits are tricky because you have to get into their domain to kill them, usually putting you at a disadvantage. Especially when you’re not exactly sure what it is. Water spirits appear in lore across many cultures, and while the main idea is the same—death by drowning—how to deal with them is different.
So this leads them to their current situation: digging around a lake late at night, looking for any clues as to what they might be hunting. It’s eerily nice out, with a soft breeze cutting through the warmth of the night and the moon reflecting beautifully off the still surface of the lake. It’s one of those things where it’s too perfect, and it’s setting Dean on edge. He's not sure if the fact that they're in such a remote location is a blessing or a curse. Apparently, it’s some sort of local romantic getaway spot where couples can have a nice view to watch the sunset as they make out in their cars. Dean chuckles to himself. It’s the exact type of move he would have used himself, except for the fact that this place is now off-limits because the rocky ledge above the lake keeps crumbling and sending people careening into the water below. Or something like that, at least. He isn’t sure what the official cover story is.
All he knows is that there’s nothing good about this place.
"Find anything?" Dean asks, turning to where his brother was standing. He shines his flashlight across the distance between them, pointing it directly at his face.
"No, you asshole," Sam says, putting up his hands to cover his eyes. "And put that down." He scowls and Dean laughs, taking what little amusement he can in annoying his brother.
"I think we should split up." He says after a moment, breaching the topic that he actually wanted to bring up.
Sam’s face sours immediately, and he opens his mouth to protest.
"Just hold on a moment," Dean says, holding up his hands in a defensive gesture. "I can explain myself."
Sam crosses his arms and stares at his older brother, unimpressed, but doesn’t say anything.
"Look, we’re not getting very far, and this lake isn’t that big. We split up here and work our way around the edges, then meet back up on the other side. We’ll cover more ground that way, and hopefully, we can get out of here before sunrise. I don’t want this to take any longer than it needs to."
"You're not going up on that clifftop alone," Sam says abruptly, as if he could see through some trap Dean was trying to set up.
"I’m not trying to go up there alone." Dean defends himself. "You know I’m not that stupid. Besides, I’m afraid of heights."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Fine. We split up, walk our separate ways, and met up on the clifftop."
"Great." Dean nods. "You go right, I go left." He says, as if the left path isn’t shorter and will let him reach the clifftop first.
Sam rolls his eyes. "See you in an hour. I’ll call if I’m running behind." He says, seriously before his voice takes a teasing tone. "I wouldn’t want you to worry about me."
"Keep that up, and I’m going to push you off that cliff myself." Dean threatens. Sam snickers at the line of defense his brother has thrown up now that he’s been caught showing that he cares.
"I love you too, Dean." He says with a cheeky grin, and his older brother throws him the finger. Sam just spins on his heel and walks away.
It’s peaceful at first, trudging through the tall grass along the edge of the lake, but the allure quickly wears off. What they don’t tell you about hunting is that it’s often boring. About 80% of the time it's research, interviewing witnesses, or looking for subtle clues. Of course, the other 20% of the time you’re fighting for your life, so Sam can be quite partial to the boring parts of the job. If he stops and looks hard enough, he can make out his brother’s figure from the other shadows across the lake. They’re lucky that the light provided by the full moon illuminates the area so well. Unless, of course, the full moon makes their creature stronger, which Sam can only hope it does not.
He’s glancing around him when he first hears it. Someone is crying. Quite loudly and ungracefully. Like, full-on sobbing and wailing. It’s unsettling, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, sending a tingling feeling down his spine. He turns and sees someone else standing there. He carefully moves closer to investigate. He doesn’t even realize where he is going or what is happening; he is just focused on the person in front of him.
It looks like a young woman. She needs help. Sam is drawn forward by it, dropping his flashlight in the grass, not paying attention as he steps closer to the shore. The flashlight rolls into the water and the light is swallowed by its murky depth. The crying continues, and the sounds of the crickets grow fainter, replaced by the lapping of water against the shore.
Water pours into his shoes, wetting his socks and creeping up the bottom of his pants as he steps deeper into the lake.
He doesn’t notice.
There’s a woman who needs help. What is she doing here? Doesn’t she know that this area is off-limits? It’s not safe for her to remain. Sam should tell her to go home. And what is it that she’s wearing? Sam continues to get closer, trying to pick out details about her in the moonlight.
He wades through the lake, the water up to his knees now, making it harder for him to advance. It climbs up to his thighs, the mud sucking at his shoes. His fingertips trail through the water, leaving ripples in their wake.
He doesn’t notice.
Is that a white dress? It looks like a nightgown. She shouldn’t be out here wearing something like that. Doesn’t she realize how cold it is? She continues to cry. She looks weird in the moonlight—translucent almost, as if she isn’t quite solid. But that doesn’t make any sense. It must be a trick of the light.
The water settles around his waist, thoroughly soaking the hem of his shirt. He continues to wade further in but his momentum has considerably slowed. The water eventually reaches his stomach, and his arms hang uselessly at his sides. His phone is surely useless as well, so now any promise to call his brother is for naught.
He doesn’t notice.
Her hair looks weird too. Almost green. It looks unkempt like there are other things tangled within the strands of long hair. As he gets closer, he can make out the details better. Is it… plants? Sam can’t understand why someone would have plants in their hair.
The water laps at his chest, the cold of the prolonged exposure this late at night settling a permanent chill through his bones. He feels tired, waterlogged, and out of breath. His range of motion is extremely limited. Other things move in the lake, swirling the water around him.
He doesn’t notice.
The woman turns to face him, and she stares at him with red eyes and mascara running down her face. They highlight something like freckles that decorate her cheeks, but they’re that weird green color again, just like her hair. He’s never seen freckles that look like that. She steps closer. He should say something to her. Try to get her out of here before the thing they are hunting finds them.
He doesn't.
He stares at her a moment longer, stopping as the pieces slot together. He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut, his hand reaching up to rub at his temples. Water drips down his face, and his eyes wrench open again, looking desperately at his surroundings.
He doesn’t know how he got here.
A hand curls into the front of his shirt, and it brings his attention back to the situation at hand. It’s a Rusalka. She grins at him maliciously, all sharp teeth and pale gray eyes. Just as quickly as he had gained awareness of his surroundings, he loses it again. He thinks he hears someone call his name, but it all gets lost in the roar of the water.
Whoever said drowning was a peaceful way to go was full of shit.
The Rusalka pulls him deeper into the lake, and Sam immediately starts to struggle, though he has no weapons to defend himself with. Or, if he did, they’re all useless now. Not that he can see much of anything anyway. For as bright as the moon was tonight, it’s of no help now that they’re under the surface of the lake. Sam lashes out blindly, kicking at her with his feet and flailing his arms into the darkness in front of him. He latches onto the arm that is dragging him down and jerks against it. He gets lucky when his foot connects, allowing him to stun the creature long enough to swim to the surface.
"Sam!" It’s his brother, but Sam is too waterlogged to be able to focus his vision enough to see where he is.
"Rusalka!" He shouts back, hoping to warn his brother, but the creature grabs him again and pulls him back underwater once more.
She’s latched onto his ankle this time, sharp claw-like fingers curling into his soft flesh. The water stings as it rubs against the open wounds, blood drifting up from the claw marks on his skin. He didn’t have nearly enough time to recover from his first adventure into the depths of the lake, and his lungs are already burning. He struggles against her once again, but her grip is tight this time, determined not to make the same mistake.
He’s also at a disadvantage because she is so far below him that he doesn’t have a chance of hitting her again, no matter how hard he thrashes. For a moment, he wonders why she’s pissed off in the first place and what he did to deserve being victim number 6. The thought quickly passes from his mind, and he instead takes some solace in the fact that if she’s focused on him, his brother will likely get out of here alive.
A second wind of panic fills him as he can’t hold his breath any longer and involuntarily takes in a lungful of water. He barely even notices as the Rusalka shifts her hold on him, climbing up his body to find a place to start her meal, as if mentally parsing out the best area to drink his blood from.
He passes out before she makes her decision.
— — —
Walking around the lake is boring, Dean finds.
The distance to the clifftop is shorter this way—Sam was right—but Dean wasn’t lying when he said that he doesn’t like heights. Sure, he’ll give the area a cursory look over, but he’s not super interested in getting close to the edge. No matter what Sam seems to believe, he doesn’t actually have a death wish, and Dean isn’t completely sure that he’d survive the fall.
The full moon puts him on edge, but it also provides him with a substantial amount of light. Dean tracks his brother’s progress by watching the glow from the flashlight make its way around the other side of the lake. He loses track of him for a while because actually climbing up to the cliff top blocks his view for most of the trip, but he is rewarded for his efforts when he reaches the top.
It’s beautiful up there, he has to admit. He can see why it is a popular make-out spot. Still, Dean doesn’t get much closer to the edge than he has to, just far enough that he can survey the ground below. He glances over the lake, his eyes searching for the little dot of light that signals his brother. He finds it quickly, and Sam appears to be almost there. Content, he backs away, searching the ground nearby.
He doesn’t find much of anything, to his disappointment, unless you count the family of deer that he startled with his flashlight. He makes his way back to the edge of the cliff and looks for his brother. He finds the dot of light in what looks like the same spot. Dean frowns, something like unease rushing through him and prompting him to move a little closer to the edge of the cliff as if that would allow him a better look at the world below.
What’s he doing? Take a break? They don’t have time to waste like that. And that seems out of character for Sam. His older brother instincts kick in, and Dean immediately surveys the rest of the area for any signs of trouble. He spots Sam eventually, far away from where the glow of the flashlight remains.
"Sam!" Dean yells, panic filling his lungs as he watches his brother wade into the water. Sam doesn’t react. He must be too far away. He follows his brother’s line of sight, and his gaze settles on another figure in the middle of the lake. It must be the monster that they’re hunting, and apparently, it has his brother in its grasp.
Dean pulls away from the edge and glances back down the way he came, but it was quite a hike up here, and it’s too likely that Dean wouldn’t make it down to the lake in time. He paces restlessly for a moment before he walks closer to the edge. He stops a few feet away and looks for Sam again, watching his brother make his way closer to the creature. He takes a deep breath and inches closer. "You owe me so much for this." He says, even though he knows no one can hear him, and leaps off the edge.
The water is just as frigid as he thought it would be, but it’s still a shock to his system. The lake is dark and murky, and Dean pulls himself to the surface before he can lose his sense of direction. He takes a deep breath, shaking his head to rid himself of the water that clings to his face and runs down from his hair. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision, and searches around for his brother.
His gaze settles on Sam and the creature just in time for him to watch it twist its fingers in his shirt and drag him under.
"Sam!" He calls again, swimming closer. He tries not to panic as he loses sight of the pair altogether and just tries to propel himself through the water as fast as possible. What feels like hours pass, but it is likely just a few seconds, and Sam pops up, gasping for breath.
He calls his brother’s name again and is getting tired of saying it with no response. He’s still too far away to do anything, but Sam appears to have broken free from the creature’s hold.
"Rusalka!" Sam shouts back before he gets pulled back under the water just a few seconds later. It sets Dean on edge, and he curses himself for not being able to swim faster, but at least the name of the creature gives him something to work with. All of his weapons are practically useless now, but he has a knife that should work well enough.
A few more seconds pass as Dean gets closer and Sam doesn’t resurface. Panic springs from Dean’s chest, radiating throughout his body. He dives under the water, shining his flashlight in an attempt to find where the creature has taken his brother too. It’s still hard to see, even with the light, as the dirty water burns his eyes, but he is determined. It takes him longer than he would have liked to spot them, even though it was probably less than 30 seconds. Dean doesn’t know how fast it takes people to drown or how long his brother can hold his breath, and he isn’t interested in finding out.
Sam is limp by the time he gets to them, and that sends a shard of fear straight through him, but he remains focused. The Rusalka hisses at him from where she hovers over his brother, sharp teeth on full display. Dean swipes at her, hitting her hard with the butt of his light. It doesn’t do much, but it’s enough to pry Sam away from her. His lungs are burning at his point, and his return to the surface is slowed by the extra weight of his brother, but he refuses to give up on him.
He breaks the surface of the lake and gasps for air, hoisting his brother up beside him. Sam doesn’t move at all, dead weight in his arms.
"C’mon Sam." Dean pleads, hitting his brother on the back clumsily. He starts to drag them to the shore when Sam jerks in his arms, clinging onto him and throwing off Dean’s balance. They go under the water for just a moment, the sudden movement making them unstable. They rise back up, and Sam is coughing up water, choking on it, and spitting it out across Dean’s back.
"Gross," Dean says halfheartedly, but he remains focused on watching for the creature to see if she is coming back. They get a little farther, to the point where Dean trusts that Sam can touch the bottom and keep his head above the waves when she attacks again. Dean abandons his flashlight in order to slash at her with his knife. The blow connects, and she screeches at him, a horrible ringing sound filling the air. "Let’s go!" Dean yells at his brother, grabbing his arm and half-dragging him further toward the shore. He gives Sam a little push, encouraging him to keep going as the Rusalka attacks again.
He swipes at her a few more times, and she lands a few blows on him, her sharp claws leaving trails against his side. He hisses in pain but bides his time, playing defensively to give him and Sam the opportunity to get back to the shore. He risks a glance backward to see Sam wade into the shallow area, and Dean takes the opportunity to switch his tactic. He lunges for the creature, pulling her back with him and wrestling her away from the water.
She screeches at him again, and it’s deafening up close, but he doesn’t loosen his grip, shifting instead to knock her in the head again. This gives him the advantage he needs to wrangle her completely onto dry ground, throwing her into the grass. She loses her strength as she is distanced from the water, and Dean slams his knife into the ground next to her face, the blade capturing a bit of her dress in its teeth and severing some of her hair. She struggles, but it’s weak, and she collapses quickly.
"It doesn’t take so long for your hair to dry out if you have less of it, huh?" He nods, satisfied. He turns to find his brother, who has collapsed with the lower half of his body dangling in the edge of the lake. "Hey, Sammy." Dean runs over, pulling him the rest of the way out of the water. "Sam, are you alright?"
Sam coughs weakly and shifts, giving him a tired smile. "Peachy. Thanks." His voice is small and rough, but his brother is alive, so Dean finds it hard to care.
"You scared the absolute shit out of me, do you hear that?" He says angrily, letting his fear finally manifest.
"Sorry," Sam says, but he just sounds tired.
Dean pulls him closer, lying his younger brother in his lap. "You owe me, you know." He says eventually
"What? Are we doing life debts now?" Sam asks, somewhat skeptically. He starts coughing again, and Dean helps him sit up to properly expel the water from his lungs.
"I had to jump off the top of that cliff because you were too busy drowning to let me get down the normal way."
Sam laughs between fits of gagging. "I told you that you shouldn’t go up there alone." He teases.
"Shut up. I'm not the one who got lured in by a lake monster."
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up." Sam sags against his brother as he runs out of energy. "You deal with her?"
Dean glances over to where the Rusalka hasn't moved. "Of course I did. You sure as hell weren't doing anything."
"I was doing plenty." Sam counters.
Dean lets Sam rest against him as they wait for the creature to fully dry out. He glances over a little while later and watches as she fades into nothing. He raises a fist half-heartedly into the air in an aborted attempt at celebrating. "We did it."
Sam shifts minutely. "Woo-hoo." He says tiredly.
"C’mon, kid." Dean nudges him with his shoulder. "Let’s get you out of here."
Sam groans as Dean hauls him to his feet. "Not a kid," he protests, even as Dean slings his arm around his shoulder, helping him walk.
"Sure thing, buddy."
The walk back to the Impala is long and treacherous, even though they didn't park that far away. Sam practically collapses in the seat, and Dean feels a similar way, but he holds off a little longer, just until they can make it back to their motel room. He knows they need to get out of their wet clothes before much longer because they've already spent more than enough time in the cold, outside air resting next to the lake.
"Don't suppose I can convince you to shower?" Dean says even though he knows the answer before he asks.
Sam laughs hollowly. "No thanks. I've had enough water for the next four centuries."
"I give it three days," Dean says. "But you do have to at least towel off and change your clothes."
Sam looks at the offered towel with distaste.
"If you make me dry your hair, you're not going to be able to deny that little kid comment," Dean says, half teasingly. In reality, he's still worried about the state of his brother.
"Alright, alright. Jerk." Sam scowls and snatches the towel out of his hands before digging around in his duffle bag for something dry to wear.
"Bitch." Dean says as he turns to do the same.
He steps into their motel's tiny bathroom to rinse himself off real quick, wanting to get the feel of the dirty lake water off his skin. He comes out in fresh clothes to find his brother collapsed face down on one of the motel's shitty twin beds. The only light is the warm, yellowy glow that filters out from the bathroom's dingy light behind Dean, and he shuts the door so it doesn't disturb Sam. He tries not to let the stillness of his brother's form evoke a strong response in him, but it sets him on edge regardless, and Dean finds himself shifting closer to check if he is breathing. He is, of course, and Dean berates himself as he backs away again. He settles himself on the other bed and tries to calm his racing heart. His brother may be safe now, but the image of Sam being pulled under the surface of the lake will remain forever in his mind.
He doesn't look forward to the nightmares it will bring.