REVIVE ▸ d. winchester [2] ✔

Chapter 27

Dean's POV

My heart drops as if the floor had been ripped out from underneath me, leaving me to tumble back into reality.

Her knee brings a new rush of pain into my body. My reflex response leaves my grip around her waist weak, allowing her a gap for escape. She shoves me backwards, and my back bumps helplessly into the trunk of a tree. Snow falls from a branch above us, coating us in a fresh layer of white that does nothing to disrupt Jackie's actions. Before I can stop her, my head is being sent back at an unsuspecting speed, and it lands with a thump against rough bark.

Dizziness automatically overcomes me. In my daze, I can only feel the abrupt smack of my skull against the tree again, and yet again. It's only after the third nauseating hit that I lose my breath, and my knees give out from underneath me.

I can just barely make out Jackie in front of me. As I lean back against the tree, I see her outline kneeling in front of me. Her face comes closer to mine as she leans in, yet I can't even make out the color of her eyes. I feel my lips moving, my mouth slowly shaping words, but only mumbled syllables come out.

A slight ring in my ears disorients me. My vision darkens into a black tunnel, moving in and out at an unsettlingly slow pace. But I can still feel my jacket unzipping, and a hand sliding gently into it. A weight is lifted from inside of it without any hesitation, and even in my state, I know exactly what she's taking from me. Suddenly, her somewhat abrupt and great interest in the angel blade makes sense.

Jackie stands up, her dark figure overshadowing me. After a moment, she turns and walks away without a word, the blade glistening in her hand. I can only watch in my feeble state as she takes away our only chance at taking out Azrael, leaving myself stripped of everything I had thought I had gained in the past hour.

She played me, I realize.

I was just played by a girl who knew exactly how to play me. I thought I had her back, I thought I knew how to help her, but she helped herself.

She knew exactly what to do, and she carried it out perfectly.

These sickening thoughts are what I focus on as darkness surrounds me, my head throbbing like never before.

*      *      *

The overwhelming urge to throw up is what brings me back to consciousness. 

And my first thoughts: She played me.

My head throbs incessantly with each word of realization. It all slowly comes back to me, just as my ears continue to ebb back into function. My hearing goes in and out, and my vision is hazy, spotted with blurriness and dark dots. But somehow, I still remember.

It takes a great amount of effort to move. At first I shift my legs, the stiffness sending a sharp pain up my spine. My back is rigid, making me take notice of my uncomfortable positioning on the ground. I'm covered in snow, the whiteness blinding me and seeming to make me aware of my other senses.

An overwhelming amount of discomfort washes over me then. My head still pounds, not helping with my groggy state of dizziness. My shoulders are sore, my stomach aches, and a disorienting tingling is running through my hands and feet. It's an odd feeling, almost numbing to my skin, and it leaves me confused until I try and move my extremities. 

A dull pain runs through my fingers, my hands, and my toes. Looking down, still disoriented but trying to focus on my skin, I find the coldness leaving me in a frozen state. My skin is pale, the only color coming about from around my knuckles and fingertips. The veins in my palms are strikingly purple, standing out in a sickly darkness. From the immobility of my fingers and the numbness in my knuckles, I find only one logical explanation for my tingling limbs: frostbite. Even in my boots, my feet sit frozen, having long since lost their warmth.