It's four AM, and Dean is the only one awake. 

Sam was the first of them to give up, and fell asleep somewhere around nine, sprawled out on his bed, leaving no room for anyone else. Katherine hung out for a little longer, then passed out on the sofa around one. Her arms are tightly crossed over her chest, eyebrows furrowed.

Dean grips his coffee cup and takes a few swigs. 

Then his cellphone rings on the table right in front of him. SHA33. Dean snatches his phone up  and flips it open.

"Dad?" Dean moves for the bathroom as quietly as he can before closing the door behind him. The window high up on the wall provides all the light he needs.

"Dean." That's his father's voice. He'd heard it countless times before...usually angrier than this. Not to say there's no coldness about his father's voice.

That's all there was.

"Is that really you?"

"How can I be sure?"

"You can't."

Dean's heart hammers in his chest as he holds onto the doorknob. 

"Dean...how could you do it?"

He frowns. "Do what?"

"Sell your soul."

Dean's eyes snap up, and he catches a view of his reflection in the mirror. He looks like himself. "I had to," he whispers. "I was looking after Sammy, like you told me to, and Kat—"

"I never wanted this." Static swallows his father's voice. "Never." Dean rubs his forehead, closing his eyes. Something he doesn't have a word for floods his stomach. He's disappointed again. "You're my boy. I love you. I can't watch you go to Hell, Dean."

The white noise sits between the two for a few moments. "I don't know how to stop it," Dean whispers. 

"Because if you break the deal, they both die, right?" 

The rug gets taken out from beneath Dean's feet. "What?"

"I know a way out," John says. "For all of you."

"How?

"The demon who holds your contract." The static in Dean's ear intensifies. "He's here. Now."

What did Katherine know? Enough to look at weather patterns. In the damn newspaper, though? 

✕

Finding sleep was hard. He felt sick to his stomach, amped on caffeine. 

At eight, two hours after Dean laid down to try to rest, Katherine woke up to a phone call. She got dressed, left a note on the stationery pad, and took the car keys. 

She came back around eleven, well after Sam woke up to Dean poring over Katherine's notes.

"Hey," Sam chirps, smearing peanut butter over a piece of toast. "Everything okay with Lainie?"

"Oh, yeah." Katherine nods, shrugging out of her jacket. "Her mom's ghost freaked her out pretty bad last night, she just wanted to talk about it." She gestures to Dean after tossing the car keys on the table. "What's he doing?"

"Uh...weather patterns," Sam says.

Katherine frowns. "I just looked at the weather," she calls to him, moving for her bag of clothes.

"And neglected to mention there's actually a pattern," Dean says back. "Electrical storms, Katherine, following us for the past two weeks, including Monument, and you didn't say a peep."

Her frown deepens. How does she explain she was looking at the weather, but...wasn't looking at the weather?

"Because it could be nothing," she says, exchanging her cotton t-shirt for something lighter, and paws around for her gray hoodie. 

"These are demonic omens, KD!" Dean cries, standing up with fistfuls of paper. 

"I don't remember any lightning storms," Sam interjects.

Dean stares at his brother. "Well I don't remember you studying meterology as a kid, either."

Katherine rests her palms on the top of the chair and rolls her shoulders. "What are you getting at, Dean?" She sighs. 

"The demon who holds my contact," he says, stalking over to the two. "My dad called, he said the demon's here. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

Katherine barks out a laugh, standing up straight. "You think it's the demon who holds your contract?" She asks. "Why, because your father said so last night? If he's in Hell, how the hell would he know that?" Dean doesn't say anything. "Your demon following you around in February doesn't make any sense, Dean."

He shrugs. "I guess I'm big game now. My ass is too sweet to let out of sight." Katherine rolls her eyes, and Dean glowers. "Don't get too excited, you two—you might pull somethin'."

Sam sighs. "I would like to believe it, Dean—"

"So believe it!" Dean erupts. "We get this thing, it's Miller time!" Not only does it mean he doesn't die. It means...

Well. Would it mean anything?

"Yeah, that's another thing," Sam begins. "Dad just rattles off an exorcism that can kill a demon—not just exorcise it, but kill it—"

"Wait, what?" Katherine's face is unusually blank. It's her look of surprise as her eyes dart to Sam.

"I checked it out," Dean says, sidestepping her to go back to his coffee table of notes. "It's some heavy 15th century shit—"

"What are you talking about? Your dad called you last night?" Dean nods, and she snatches the  paper from his hand. "And he gave you this?" Dean's all-caps scrawl is easy enough to translate.

"Yeah, Dean, I checked into it, and so did Bobby," Sam says.

"And?" Dean asks. 

Katherine slowly shakes her head as she reads through the Latin. "No, this...I've used this before." She turns the paper around to Dean. "I've used this before, Dean, with the same intention, and it almost got me killed."

He stares at her. Her blue eyes are wide, insistent, and her face is flushed, her nostrils flared. Believe me. 

"Wait, you know what this is and you never—"

"Because it was nothing," she hisses. "Nothing good." Katherine balls the paper up and throws it onto the kitchen table before sitting down. Uneasy silence settles between the three hunters, and the two brothers are watching Katherine calm herself. Her eyes are closed, her hands are shaking, her breathing is heavy. She wanted to forget about Naugatuck. For a while, she did. She didn't see that priest bloody on the floor...the poor girl on the bed, broken bones held together by nothing by her own flesh.

She feels like vomiting.

"I don't know what's going on around here," she finally croaks. "I mean, some guy blows his brains out, then a high school sophomore is scared out of her mind—"

"Wow," Dean scoffs. "A couple of civvies are freaked out by a ghost!" Katherine glares at him, eyes like daggers. "Newsflash, Katherine, people are supposed to be freaked out by ghosts!" She pushes herself up from her chair and grabs her jacket. "Where are you going?"

"Stop talking to me."

"Katherine—"

She holds up a finger and moves for the door, slamming it shut behind her. Sam looks down at his shoes. Dean throws his phone onto the sofa, swearing under his breath. 

"We are this close," Dean growls, running his hands over his head. "This close!"

"How are you still running on blind faith?" Sam asks. "After all this time?"

Dean shakes his head and looks to the ceiling. "It's all I got left, Sam."

The entire five mile run to Lainie's house, all Katherine could think about was Naugatuk. 

Even as she was staring Lainie in the face, listening to the words, all she could see was that demon rip its way from the thirteen year old girl's body, slice through the priest like he was nothing. 

My mom said she wanted to see me...so I went to the cemetery, and nothing happened. Then she started asking me to do other things...bad things. She told me to take all of my dad's sleeping pills. She kept saying "come to me," like a million times. 

That snapped Katherine out of her daze.

"What?"

Lainie wipes her tear-streaked cheeks. "What?"

"No, say that again?"

"She told me to take my dad's—"

"No." Katherine shakes her head. "She said 'come to me'?" Lainie sniffs and nods. "Lainie, that isn't your mom." She reaches into her pocket for her phone and starts down the hallway as she dials Sam's number. "All right, new rules. You aren't allowed to answer the phone, and don't leave your house until I come back, all right? Keep an eye on your little brother—"

"Where is he?" Lainie pauses in front of Simon's doorway. "Simon?!"

"Shit." Katherine hangs up and starts down the stairs. The front door is wide open. "Simon?" She peers down the hallway before jogging out to the patio.

Simon, in his little zip-up hoodie, is trekking across the street. 

"Simon!" Katherine jogs after him, but upon seeing a bright yellow box truck barrelling down the neighborhood one-way, breaks into a sprint. "Simon!" One of her arms winds around his chest, the other his knees, and she yanks him out of the way of the horn-blaring truck. 

"Simon!" Lainie screams.

"Are you all right?" Katherine pants.

"Why'd you do that?" Simon asks, anger coloring his little voice. 

"Didn't anyone teach you to look both ways before crossing the street?" Katherine demands, pulling Simon to his feet. He's just as tall as her when she's on her knees. 

"My mommy told me to come see her," Simon says. "She said if I walk in front of a car, I'll get to see her! I want to see my mommy!"

Katherine stands up and away from Simon as Lainie collects him. With a dread-filled gut, she pulls her phone out, presses the number 2, and holds her phone to her ear.

"Hey," Dean answers. His voice is low, clear. Nice.

"Hey," she replies, moving away from Lainie and Simon. "Um...Dean, it's not your dad calling you."

Brief silence. "Then what is it?" There's a hint of combativeness in his voice.

"It's something called a crocotta."

He snorts. "What is that, a sandwich?"

"No, it's a scavenger that mimics loved ones. Come get me from Lainie's."

"Uno problemo," Dean says. "I don't know where Lainie's is."

Katherine heaves out a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. "2538 Cherry Park. If you're on Main and turn right onto Springfield, it's the first offshoot on the left."

"Hey, don't those things live in, like, squalor?" Dean asks.

Lightbulb. "Oh my god," Katherine murmurs. "I know where he is. The guy with the phone company—his place was disgusting." No reply. Static. "Hello? Dean?" Katherine glances to her phone and frowns. "The hell...Lainie, you and your brother get inside." Katherine tries Dean's number again, but no answer. So she calls Sam.

"Hey," he answers, all chipper.

"Hey, are you near Dean?"

"...He's in the bathroom."

Katherine makes a face. "He...hung up on me to go to the bathroom?" Sam chuckles. "All right, tell him to pinch it off. I know what's going on in this town."

"What's that?" Sam asks.

"It's a crocotta," she replies. "It mimics the voices of your loved ones, a scavenger, lives in like disgusting conditions."

"A crocotta," Sam hums. "Damn. Of course."

"Mhm. Um...I told Dean to come get me from Lainie's but I think it would be faster if you guys met me there."

"How are you going to get there?" Sam asks.

"Uh..." Katherine looks out at the neighborhood and rubs her head. "I can hotwire a car, bring it right back. Actually, I think Lainie's dad has another...Either way just meet me there, all right?"

It's just after sunset when she rolls up to the phone company's building. She parks out by the back, near where she recalls looking up and seeing barred, glassless windows up at the top of the walkway down below. She slips over the railing, quietly dropping to the balls of her feet, and carefully walks down the cement ramp. 

The basement is open-concept, blocked off only by a chain-link fence bound to cement. She can see right into Stewie's place of work, the slimy porn-peeping computer guy with the phone company. He's clacking away at the computer...but she can't see any porn from here. When she met him yesterday, he was in the process of downloading explicit videos from the internet and had a hard time getting rid of all the popups, much to his manager's dismay.

At least he's not watching porn right now, Katherine tells herself with a cocked brow. Somewhere above her, metal clangs against metal, maybe like a heavy door slamming shut, and she automatically crouches, slowly turning her eyes up to the ramp leading to the floors overhead. When she looks back into the control room, Stewie has left his work station and is exiting the room.

She grits her teeth, glowering in the direction of the noise, and decides Stewie might be leaving for the night. Katherine dials Sam. Busy tone. Quickly, Katherine sprints up the ramp and pulls herself up onto street level before rounding to the front of the dreary building and dialing Dean's number...one of them, anyway. Maybe she hit 5 this time.

"This is Herman Munster—" Katherine rolls her eyes. "—leave a message."

"Dean," she whispers, watching Stewie exit the building, jingling his keys in his palm. He looks a little anxious, glancing around the street lit only with small, orange streetlights. "I'm in the parking lot and he's here—hurry." Katherine watches Stewie move for his car, and she walks after him, carrying a silver knife—because it's all she had with her, and the Winchesters were supposed to fucking be here—and hastens her pace. 

As she's stalking Stewie, the girl from Naugatuk, Josie, comes to mind. Her sweet smile and small voice, twinkling green eyes. Then not even three hours later, all of the bones in her body were broken, her spinal cord was severed, and Katherine was lucky to live through those three hours in that bedroom.

The world is unfair.

She sees red. Slams Stewie up against the side of his car, bracing her weight across his shoulders, and holds the tip of the knife to his spine. He screams. "Shut up," she snarls. 

"Don't kill me, please!" He wails.

"I know how to kill you so slowly—"

"If we're overcharging you for the call-waiting or something, I can fix that!"

Katherine frowns, glowering at the side of his face. "What are you talking—" Someone she didn't hear come up behind her hits her on the back of her head.

The light bothers her eyes, so she tries to keep them closed. It's pretty easy to...they're so heavy. Like the one time she took melatonin and NyQuil. Forgot I took the melatonin...

There's a heavy taste at the back of her throat...a little sweet...a little like the smell of gas. The pain in her skull is unlike anything she's felt before, though. It's like a throbbing hangover magnified to the nth degree, like a bleed in her brain and the pressure is just slowly—

A brain bleed?

Someone's screaming—or so it seems. Like a screw drilling through her skull over and over again. 

Chloroform.

Dad did this once. 

Fight through it, you idiot.

Katherine's eyes open to slits, and her head pounds, her heard races. Someone hit me. Not screaming...crying. "I'm sorry, Clark!" Stewie wails. Katherine's wrists twitch against whatever constraint she's in. Feels like rubber. She gingerly moves her fingers...it's cool. Electric cables? 

"I'm sorry!" Stewie cries. "I'm sorry for whatever I did to you!"

Lifting her head is a painful, slow task. Her neck is tight and stiff, her head feels heavier, and the movement makes her sick to her stomach.

Her vision is a little blurry, fixed slightly with a particularly hard blink. Stewie is bound in the chair in front of her, and there's another man circling the both of them with a baseball bat over his shoulder. It's Clark, the fit, bald manager from yesterday who took her downstairs to talk to Stewie about tracing the phone number.

Katherine idly wonders if pressing down on her head would make the pressure disperse. When she tries to lift her hands, something stops her—again and again.

She's tied up. 

Oh yeah. The cables. Can someone say concussion?

Clark smiles, approaching Stewie with the knife, and rests it at his jugular. Confusion is a dense bitch, and Katherine's thought process is shot, like two trains slowly colliding with a thick-ass sponge. How did I get here—what's Clark doing—Stewie's crying—why am I here—where's Sam and Dean—what happened?

"Wait," she croaks, but finding the word is difficult. It's like there's a fog in her brain, or...like she's standing on a cliff and looking across a canyon. The words are on the other side, and she's here, separated by nothing, and unable to reach across. "Wait, don't do it." She starts wiggling her hands to get a better angle for the cord at her wrists.

"You're awake," Clark hums, smirking at her as he drags the tip of the knife across Stewie's shoulders. "Good."

"You're a good man, Clark!" Stewie cries. "There's a good man inside of you! Please don't do it!"

"What do you think, Katherine?" Clark asks, lifting piercing blue eyes to Katherine. "Am I a good man?"

Katherine's dry tongue rubs against the roof of her mouth. "Let him go," she slurs, sitting up straighter.

"Oh, I would," Clark hums. "I really would. If only I'd had more than a salad for lunch."

So not just a pissed off boss. A creature, a monster. Think, Katherine. Shifter? Can't be, he's holding her knife, touching the blade.

My knife is silver...

"See...I'm starving." Clark's right hand, wielding the knife, rears back.

Katherine closes her eyes just before the wet sound of the knife piercing Stewie's chest. One less innocent she has to see die, one less face she has to think about before she goes to bed at night.

But she can still hear his sputtering, his gurgling, his wailing. Katherine forces her heavy eyelids open and tries to swallow the dryness in her mouth away. 

Clarks' face begins to shift. Long, narrow, sharp teeth protrude from his growing, unhinged jaw. He doesn't devour the body. He squares up to it, lifts Stewie's head. 

She knows what Clark is. It's confirmed as she watches—horrified, but not able to do much—  Clark literally suck the soul out of Stewie. She watches the blood rush to Clark's face from that invisible force and wonders if Stewie is just gone now. 

Where does a devoured soul go?

Then Clark smiles at her. "I had you fooled for a while. All that...Thomas Edison phone crap." She doesn't let on that she has no actual idea what he's talking about. The last thing she remembers...it's like a white-hot flash in her brain, bright and painful. A phone call with Dean. It's a crocotta. 

He hung up on her.

Katherine frowns. The simple action of her brows furrowing stresses the injury at the back of her head. "It was you," she whispers, and like a movie, she remembers when she got the phone call. She was in a neighborhood...what's the girl's name? Lainie. "The phone call—Dean?" She watches him place his hands on a switchboard, and a strange frequency twists her eardrum. "What are you doing?" She asks.

"I'm killing your friends," he responds. "Or maybe another guy. Who knows? We'll just...have to see how it goes."

Katherine twists her wrists, wondering what's keeping them bound. It's tight, burning against her skin. Like rubber. Her fingers work at the knot, and she ignores that uncomfortable friction against her bony wrists, because her life depends on it.

Oh, yeah. Cables.

"Hi, Daddy." At the sound of a small girl's voice, Katherine jumps, drowsy eyes snapping up to look at Clark. His hands are still on the switch board, his head is still bowed, eyes are still closed.

"Hey, baby. I thought you weren't going to call anymore?" The man's voice is soft, like he's trying to keep quiet, with static fritzing around it. It threads through Katherine's eardrum, her brain likening it to nails on a chalkboard.

Can someone say concussed? 

"I know, Daddy." Katherine's heart skips a beat. Only Clark's mouth moved. Freaky.

"You know how sad this makes your old man...how upset I was at your funeral."

"I had to call. I know who killed me, Daddy." 

"What?"

"The man who killed me—he's at the house right now."

"What—what are you saying to me?"

"He's at the house, daddy. He wants to kill you, too."

"You hunters aren't very subtle," Clark sighs, leaning away from the switchboard. Katherine jumps again. "From HQ—" he scoffs "Pah! I could smell the arrogance, the prejudice on you from the moment you stepped foot into the building. That's all your problems. You're arrogant."

"And you're not?" Katherine stares at him. What trickery is he pulling? What house? The one she was in earlier? And who's there?

"And for trying so hard to slip underneath the radar, it's very easy to find you," Clark hums, starting towards Stewie, and rolls the chair he's sat in back against the far wall. "Found your number...Dean's number, Sam's...their father's...Then the emails—" Katherine feels the rubber-coated wires slacken a bit. "Voicemails, too...everything. Not very good at keeping your head in the sand, are you?" Clark chuckles and squats before her, pointing her own bloodied silver knife at her. It pisses her off. It's like nothing else in the world. You're going to threaten me with my own knife? "You see, people think that stuff just gets erased. You'd be surprised at how much of you is floating out there, just waiting to be plucked."

Katherine slowly shakes her head. "They're not gonna fall for this," she whispers.

"You did," Clark murmurs.

She swallows. "They're not going to kill that guy." Katherine can barely hear his voice in her head now. Oof. Quick, what's the Glasgow coma scale? Uh...

"Then that guy is going to kill them," Clark hums.

"How'd you even get them there?" She quietly asks through a tired jaw, twisting her fingers around the wire. Her forearms are tiring, burning. "That house?"

Clark shrugs, rising to his full height as he keeps staring at her. "You were out for a long time...and I was bored. But you called Dean...said you needed backup..." He shrugs once more. "He ran to your rescue." Katherine watches those ugly thorn-like teeth descend from his gums, and his jaw begins to crack, displacing as it unhinges. It's probably the concussion, but she doesn't feel panic. 

Katherine undoes the final loop and throws the wire to the side before throwing her body into Clark's abdomen, barely avoiding the bloodied silver blade, and pushes hard through her feet to drive him back.

Katherine reaches for the dropped knife, but the crocotta pulls her back by the jacket, whirls her around, and slams her into the chainlink divider. Dizzydizzydizzy—

When she turns around, he's got the knife again, and Clark rushes her. She waits until he's close enough before ducking out of the way, relying heavily on her impaired reaction time. She grabs his wrist on her way around, and twists his arm behind his back hard enough to dislocate his shoulder as she pushes him into the wall, jamming her knee up into the bend in his. His screaming pierces her ear, blurs her vision. Tears. Then she compresses his wrist, firing those fatigued extensor muscles, and she pries the knife from his limp fingers before thrusting the silver into his spine. Sever the spine, kill the crocotta. It has to be precise.

Katherine lets out one heavy breath before pulling her knife from the crocotta's back, and slowly sinks to the ground. The pressure in her head is overwhelming, and black is spotting her vision. Shaky hands move to her pockets to locate a cell phone, and she stares at her contacts book for a few moments before dialing Charlie.

"Hey, baby doll," he answers, all chipper and entirely too loud.

"Hey," she winces, pulling her phone from her ear a little. She's lying on her back, the cement cooling her too-hot flesh. She still feels like she's on a turntable. 

"Whatcha doing?"

"I, uh..." Katherine inhales deeply. "What's that one sandwich your mom made...the ham and the three cheese, and it's hot."

"...Croque Monsieur?"

Katherine snaps her fingers. "That's it. 'Kay. 'Kay, thanks. Love you." She hangs up and breathes heavily. It's all she can think about for a little while, the sound of her breathing. There's a lot of empty space in her brain, a lot of fuzzy buzzy. Croque Monsieur.

Katherine gasps and fumbles for her phone. She hits one and puts it on speaker phone.

"Hey," Dean answers, raspy and out of breath. "Where the hell are you? I've been calling you for hours—"

"Phone company," she groans. "Stop yelling." Then she hangs up and lies there. 

A while later, pulling her from the depths of the fuzzy buzzy inside her brain, she hears her name being called.

She frowns and turns her head towards the noise. Sam is crouched by the chain link fence, talking to someone else. 

"Dean's coming down," Sam says to her.

"Dean." Katherine inhales on a dry throat and frowns. 

She's on a spinny wheel.

"Fuck." 

"You okay?" Sam calls. It echoes. She holds a hand up.

"Stop. Yelling."

"I'm not yelling, Katherine, I'm—"

"Shh!" She waves her hand at him. "Shh." Then she rolls onto her side. Veryyy slowly.

Heavy footsteps down the hall. "KD?"

"Hmm."

Dean slides around the corner and groans in relief. "Jesus. What the hell happened here?"

"Sandwich," she grunts, slowly pushing herself up. "The sandwich monster."

Dean frowns at her, all sweaty and concerned and beautiful and close. His fingers probe her jaw, her temple. She winces, gingerly pulling away from him. "What the hell are you talking about?" He pants. 

"It was a crocotta," she impatiently reminds him. "But you asked if it was a sandwich." She closes her eyes again, and Dean grabs her shoulder to keep her up.

"Are you drunk?" She grunts, and Dean rolls his eyes as he looks to Sam. "Pull the car around here, Sammy, would ya? All right, ol' girl. I'm gonna pick you up."

"Croque monsieur," she impatiently says. 

Dean goes with it. "Uh-huh." He picks her up, and her fingers grip the collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck. Her breath washes over his chest as he carries her back up the corridor, fingertips brush against the skin on the back of his neck. It almost sends a shiver down his spine. He loved every second of her stupid grumbling and heavy breathing, her feather-light touch.

"She okay?" Sam asks, getting out of the driver's seat. He opens the back up for Dean.

And then he has to put her down. 

"I smell ether on her," Dean says. 

"Were you drugged?" Sam asks, frowning at Katherine. Her eyes are still closed, and she's still in Dean's arms.

"Chloroform," she grunts, then moans. 

"Headache," he guesses. Dean nods and gingerly sets her down in the back seat. 

She was able to walk, assisted, into their motel room. Katherine sat down in the shower, and Sam and Dean ran a quick patch-job-onceover over each other before Sam headed out to return Lainie's dad's car, and get a drink.

Whatever Dean had in his flask wasn't good enough, apparently.

Katherine sits on a bed with her head in her hands. Bad memories are on loop in her pounding skull. She can't bring herself to move. She just feels so heavy.

Dean steps out of the bathroom in a fresh set of clothes—a t-shirt and sweats. His eyes flit over Katherine, her slumped posture. Her water bottle and Tylenol still sit on the nightstand beside her.

"Hey," he murmurs, sure to keep his voice soft as he pads towards her. She quietly grunts back at him. "You didn't take your medicine."

"What medicine?" She whispers.

Dean sits down beside her. "I set Tylenol out for you, remember?" He picks up the pill and her water bottle. "Here." Katherine inhales deeply before sitting up. Her eyes are glassy, a little red, as they try to focus on her surroundings. Her pupils are a little large, but the room is poorly lit. She asked for no light, but how was anyone meant to see in the dark? 

Dean drops the pill into her palm and hands her water to her. She swallows both and sighs, shoulders rolling forward. "What's this, concussion number two?"

"I don't know," Katherine mumbles, unwilling to play. She doesn't look at him. To be fair, she doesn't look at anything. Her eyes are closed. "It all feels like...I'm in Jell-O. Words, too."

"Words in Jell-O." She grunts once, high tone, and Dean hums. 

"Would like some Jell-O."

"Well, darlin', we don't have any of that. We do have bagels, and peanut butter, and bananas, and honey. Would you like one?" She grunts. Deeper tone. No. He smiles a little. "Okay," he chuckles. "All right. You just want to go to sleep?" Hmm. "You're talking like a Neanderthal."

Katherine leans into him. They sit like that for a few minutes, until Dean is sure she's fallen asleep. 

He barely moves before he notices a change in her breathing. It's heavier, more erratic. Sniffly. Dean cranes his neck, frowning as he looks at her.

"Kit?" He murmurs. She lifts her head from his shoulder and wipes at her eye. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Katherine made a whole series of highlighted cheatsheets of injuries. The concussion one was pretty short and sweet.

Symptoms: Unusual changes in mood, pupils (that's all she wrote), crying (underlined twice), LOC (loss of consciousness), dizziness, nausea/vomiting, issues w/ memory

Treatment: SLEEP (underlined twice), TYLENOL ONLY (underlined three times), ER if necessary

So Dean knew his way around a concussion. These tears, the Neanderthal jargon...clearly concussion.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Dean smiles a little, leaning towards her. "Aw, don't apologize. Crying is normal with concussions, ya know. You would know. You're a doctor."

"I'm sorry it wasn't your dad," Katherine says, chest spasming with her shallow crying breaths.

Dean's heart would've broken...he wasn't upset that it wasn't his dad calling him. Moreso that whatever whoever said on the phone wasn't true. His demon wasn't in town, wasn't in that house he and Sam got sent to.

All a set-up. And she got hurt because of it. His superficial wounds would heal, he's fine. She would be fine, too. He still hates seeing her hurt. Even if he can't see it.

"Aw." Dean's hand rests between her shoulder blades, and he gently rubs for a moment. "S'all right, Kat. Hey, what...what was that thing you said earlier?"

"What thing?" She asks, all congested and tired. 

"You said something about a sandwich," he prompts. Glassy blue eyes find his, and she sniffs before shrugging and shaking her head. "Oh, come on. Yeah you do. Cro..."

Katherine's eyes don't leave his face.

"Croque monsieur?" 

All she can see, through the thick gray fuzzy wuzzy, even with that beautiful face home to those beautiul eyes looking at her, are those two innocents from Naugatuk a few years ago. Josie, Father Moran. Dead.

Tears well in her eyes, even as Dean grins at her.

"Yeah, croque monsieur," he says, voice soft and high and encouraging. Memory's all right.

He watches the color in her face shift. It's a little pink, then a little red, but her eyes are still glassy and distant, her expression is a little off. Tired. So he just keeps talking to her quietly in the hopes she'll just get so bored she falls asleep. But she doesn't.She just laid down and watched him, listened to his low voice and felt it in her chest as he relayed what happened in the house, but she isn't absorbing any of it. She's thinking about how if it was the crocotta who called Dean, and not his father, then the whole thing was a lie. His demon isn't in town, they can't kill it, the exorcism that was given to Dean is weak as water and it wouldn't even work on a demon like that anyway, so now he's really going to die in May.

And then he looks at her, tired in the eyes but smiling. Leant back on his elbows, content to be there with her, to keep talking to her even though she isn't listening. Then her lower lip quivers. 

Dean clicks his tongue. "Aw, Kit. Don't go cryin' on me." He leans over to the nightstand to grab a tissue before turning back over to dry her tears. "It's all gonna be fine," he murmurs. "It's just a cut on my eyebrow, and Sam's just got that one bruise..."  Katherine leans up towards him, slow enough that he was able to anticipate her kiss, but dumb enough to let it happen.