Katherine is staring down at the napkin that came with her drink. The letters are a little drunk-fuzzy, but she can make out each letter like it's in bold.

W-i-n-c-h-e-s-t-e-r.

Some little bar in some little town...she would've been fine never knowing what remote part of Wyoming she was in. But this stupid little bar had to go and let her know, ruin her mood, and now she wants to burn it to the ground.

Winchester, Wyoming.

Katherine drains her drink and pays her tab. As she lifts her slow gaze to the window, Russell orbits in her thoughts. Again.

She hadn't seen him in three days. There was nothing special about him...except how he insisted on caring for a stranger. Dragged her from the creek in March. Carried her into his house over the weekend. Fed her after she had an episode.

Russell haunts every waking thought. Every dream. The last three days, all she's dreamt about is his incredibly average face and the big puppy brown eyes. Why? Granted, the reprieve from screaming, tearing flesh, and blood is welcome. But disturbing on its own.

Why?

She finds himself standing at his front door. The little porch light is on, there's minimal noise inside, but she can hear it. It sounds like a baseball game.

A heavy, muted noise nears the door, like footsteps. Before Katherine can react, the deadbolt switches and the door opens.

A mountain of a man stands on the other side of the threshold. Heavy eyebrows wrinkle over bright blue eyes. Blond buzzcut, thick beard, muscled.

"Evening," he greets. His voice is low, cautious, yet somehow still friendly. Everyone was like that here. It's annoying. "Something I can help you with, ma'am?" He twists his knee to keep the dog from getting outside. Jake.

Katherine blinks at Jake before looking up at the man. "I'm looking for Russell." She doesn't know why.

The man looks over his shoulder. "Russ," he says, voice low with a hint of questioning. "Someone's here for you." The man grabs a coat from one of the pegs behind the door, nods his head at Katherine. She turns to the side to let him and Jake pass. "All right, you. Go on." Katherine watches them over her shoulder. When she turns around again, Russell is in the doorway wearing a smile he shouldn't, brown eyes glittering with surprise. A ball cap pulls his golden brown hair from his face.

"Hey, you."

You. Like they're old friends.

She frowns at him. "Why'd you save me?" She asks. His happy smile twists into confusion. It fades all together when he sees the glassiness of her blue eyes. What demons is she getting rid of tonight?

"Me and Pat are just watching the Rockies. You should come in." He opens the door for her and steps away, mouth pressed into a thin smile.

Katherine's jaw clenches as she looks down at her boots. "Pat and I," she mutters, and brushes past him. Russell closes the door behind her, studying the way her blonde hair looks in the warm light. Dark in some places, light in others. Like he's studying her, she's studying what's in front of her.

"Want me to take your jacket?"

She shrugs out of the canvas and passes it to him, watching their fingertips come within millimeters of each other. He hangs it up on one of the pegs behind the door. This is the jacket he's had since March. Russell adjusts his hat as he turns to look at her.

"Can I get you a beer?" He asks. She shakes her head. "Then come sit down."

"Not really here to hang out."

He smiles sideways at her, baiting her, as he walks to the sofa. "It's eight forty-five on a Wednesday, Katherine. What are you here for?" He sits down with a sigh, drapes his arm over the top of the sofa. He gestures to the TV as he kicks his feet up on the coffee table. "Home run Rockies."

Katherine's nose twitches, and she moves to sit down beside him. "More of a Braves gal."

Russell clicks his tongue. "Knew it." He takes a drink of his beer. Coors, because everything else is downright mud water to these damn Wyomingites. "What did you mean?" Katherine blinks slowly at him. Russell watches her pupils stay the same size as they were outside. "When I came to the door."

She blinks at him again. What did I say? "Gonna have to be a little more specific, darlin'."

Russell grins sideways at her again. There's something warm about him. Something in the pit of her stomach is quelled sitting beside him. Her skin doesn't itch so bad.

"You know, this winter was exceptional, in terms of snowfall," he says. "We got over six hundred inches. We expect around four." Katherine slowly nods. "Last year, we only got around three hundred inches. Kind of a drought. Anyway." Russell shakes his head and takes a swig of his beer. His dark eyes are on the television, but he's aware of how intently she's staring at him. "On March 17th, the high for the day was 28, and the low was 1. Pretty windy...I think we got five inches of snow that day." His brow is furrowed. "Jake had to go out again, Pat had some traps he hadn't checked for a day or so, so I just thought I'd do it all at once. I put my coat on, my boots, my hat...I brought the rifle, in case there was a wolf or a coyote. And then I heard this...shriek.

"The first thing I thought was this Native creature...a two-face. The actual name is too complicated for me to pronounce right now, but...that's what I thought. The thing about this creature when it screams, though, is it usually means it's got someone in their reach." Russell takes another drink. Then he waits for a moment. "I started running. I had a damn rifle, my brother's dog, and a stupid little silver knife. I'd only seen one once before, just a couple years ago..." Katherine watches the fingers of his left hand twitch. "It paralyzed the left side of my body first. I still have some stiffness in my hand sometimes." He flexes his fingers.

"I worried I wouldn't make it in time. The snow was...really deep, and I kept sinking, and Jake just kept..." Russell scoffs, shaking his head. "Then I heard a woman...scream, I guess." He shrugs. "I couldn't breathe. Bad memories have a really good way of setting you back." Brown eyes slide to Katherine. Her chest is heaving, blue eyes glittering with tears. Russell's mouth is numb. He hadn't talked about the incident since it happened. When he blinks, he can see all the blood on the walls still.

Russell rubs his eyes and stares at the TV again. "I wasn't gonna be late this time," he says. "I was going to make it. Then Jake stopped on a snowbank and was barking over it...when I got there, I was half expecting this eight foot humanoid to be there, but it was just a woman who'd lost her flashlight and fallen through some snow, and into the creek.

"Blood smeared across the ice and into the water, down this woman's face...she was unconscious. She wasn't wearing any kind of protective clothing." Russell scoffs. "So I jumped down to get her. I knew what to do, how to help someone who was going hypothermic from my brother. He fell into a river in the winter when we were kids, and I remembered how my dad saved him, got him warm again. Except that was more towards the snow melt...March is our heaviest snowfall.

"I thought I lost her," Russell quietly admits. "Running back to my truck, I thought...I thought I was going to drop her and not be able to get her back up...Jake kept jumping on me and I bobbled her once...I got her in my truck, I got the dog inside...I checked her pulse when I was taking most of her clothes off. Somehow I made it to the hospital without going off the road, without her dying...but she flatlined when they got her into a room. worked on her for a little while...the next time I saw her, there was a breathing tube down her throat, her head was stitched up, she was covered in blankets...but she was alive.

"No one knew how well she was going to respond. Paula tried to prepare me for the worst, but..." Russell shakes his head. "She wasn't gonna die on me. I had to save her, you know? Paula knew I wasn't family, but she let me stay in the room with that woman. Somewhere between me falling asleep and waking up, they got the woman stable...started weaning her off of the drugs they put her on to keep her under, took the tube out...it looked like she was gonna be okay. I went through some of her stuff in the cabinets to see if I could find out who she was, even though no one on her team could find anything. I thought I'd be able to.

"When they took her off the vent, I could finally see her face. It had some color now...she looked pissed off." Russell smiles a little. "My wife was an angry sleeper, too, so I guess that small connection was another reason for me to stay. See how the story ends. Then Pat called, told me to come home...I went to go get her clothes from my truck, and when I came back, Paula said the woman woke up and discharged herself. She said she couldn't tell me anything because that would be a violation of all kinds of laws and she could lose her job. But she did tell me the woman seemed a little crazy, and...she hoped everything would be okay for her."

Russell's brown eyes are wet with tears as he looks at Katherine. He can't see very well through his blurry vision, but her eyes are clouded with tears, too. Not for the same reasons.

"I thought about that woman every day for three months," he murmurs. "Wondered what her name was, where she was, how she was doing...then I found her just after three months to the day...beating up on my friend's face." He chuckles, shaking his head, and drains his beer. "That's ball game," he murmurs, reaching to change the channel. He wipes his eyes on the back of his hand and turns to look at Katherine again. Before he can say anything else, as if he hasn't already said enough, Katherine beats him to the punch.

"You should've left her in that creek."

Russell, stunned, watches as she pushes herself up and start for her jacket on the wall. She only has time to grab it off of the peg before the door opens, and Jake comes running in before Patrick shoulders his way inside. Katherine looks him up and down before brushing between him and the door.

Patrick turns away from the door with raised eyebrows. "Couldn't find the right spot, little brother?"