Somewhere behind them, swallowed by the storm, the Impala sat dead in a snowbank. Engine quit halfway up the mountain road, tires spinning uselessly until the whole frame sank into the drift. Dean had stared at the steering wheel for a solid five seconds, jaw tight, then killed the ignition and grabbed his duffel.

They'd been walking since before the sun went down. The cabin was supposed to be a halfway point, a hunter's stopover Bobby had mentioned once, and the snow. It was coming down thick enough to bury a house. The path was gone, if there ever was one.

The wind forces them to lean into it, boots punching through the snowpack, and for a while there's nothing but the muffled white and the sound of their own breathing. Then.

A soft thump behind. The particular sound of someone going down hard, a weight hitting snow with no fight to break the fall. Dean stops, turns around, and looks back through the gust to see the heap of a shape, already half-fading into the drift. The storm has blown itself still for half a second when he doubles back.

There is a lot that could be said about Dean Winchester, and most of it by now is worn thin. But when his brother isn't around, when it's just you and him and a mountain trying to kill you both, he talks less. The armor slips a little, just enough to catch a glimpse of the wear underneath.

The cabin comes into view through the dark and the storm. It is squat and timbered, with a light on inside that shouldn't be there, smoke curling from a chimney.