He kept his distance while she dressed. Sam brought tea from the gas station just down the road and hit the shower.

"You know," Katherine begins in a murmur, gripping the hot mug with both hands, leeching whatever heat she may from it. "They say as you're dying...your memories flash before your eyes. Some scientists think it's because of the...electrical impulses to the hippocampus, the part of the brain that's associated with memories. I don't think it's a subconscious effort, I think it's people genuinely thinking of the best times of their life. Because I was right there...I felt everything. I wasn't...remembering the best times of my life, I was thinking of everything I didn't have the chance to do." Her eyes wander to Dean's hands wringing themselves. "I wouldn't get to tell you all the things I was too stubborn to say. I wouldn't...see my family again. Wouldn't be able to hunt with you any more." Shy blue eyes lift up to his. He forces himself to smile, to swallow the lump in his throat.

"Of all the things to think about, you choose to cry over the chance you'll miss out on bruises and broken bones and concussions," he replies equally as soft.

Lovers trying not to get caught.

"As long as I'm with you," she hums. Her eyes flit from his. Retreating. Wondering if she should— "I meant what I said, you know."

"Yeah," Dean murmurs, brows furrowing. His heart feels so full it might burst. "Yeah, I do. Katherine, I—"

"Shh."

"No. No, I won't." Dean shakes his head. "I'm in love with you." Katheirne's blue eyes fill with tears, and she looks away from him. "I'm so sick of running from it. I just...I just wanna be, you know? I wanna be with you. And I know I fucked up before, bad. Maybe I'm a dumb son of a bitch for not knowing how to make it up to you, still."

"You shouldn't talk about your mother that way," Katherine says into her mug.

Dean stares at her. "I love you, Katherine Louise," he proclaims. Her breath hitches in her chest, and she can't help but look at him. At the truth blazing in her eyes. "You're the only one with something holding you back."

She scoffs. "What, because I say I love you and you say you love me, I have to immediately call Charlie and break up with him?"

Dean's eyes bug. "Why not?"

Her eyes pop right back. "Because I just died and he has no idea! Because I don't break up with people over the phone!"

The shower cuts off. Katherine turns her knees away from Dean, and he stalks into the kitchen.

Trouble in paradise.

"Maybe we're not good for each other anyway," she hisses to him. Dean throws her a look. Seriously?! She shrugs wildly at him. "We always fight—"Dean violently gestures to the shower, and Sam emerges with a billow of steam behind him.

So that's the end of the discussion.

A few days pass. It's a lot of hovering, a lot of spying. Sam picks up on the fact that they're both mad at each other, but he doesn't know why. Well, he can figure. He did, anyway, when Katherine chirpily answered a phone call from Charlie and promised she'd be coming to see him again soon.

Katherine displayed her talent of knife-throwing a few times, barely shearing the smallest fraction of an inch off of Dean's hair. Sam knew it was a way to channel whatever frustration she harbored for his older brother. Maybe some kind of revenge for shooting her in the chest. She joked about it a few times.

One night, Sam pulled Dean from bed and confronted him about his suspicions that Dean had made a deal. Much to the older brother's surprise, Sam wasn't pissed off. He said he would help.

Dean's only stipiulation is to keep it from Katherine. She had to know about it on his terms.

Sam didn't like the idea of lying to her—because it is a lie, one of omission—and he never had before. Well, maybe that's a stretch...but it obviously wasn't anything significant. So he kept his nose in his research to help Dean before he even had to tell Katherine.

Because that's what brothers do.

"Sam," Bobby sighs, holding the phone up to his ear. "You want to break Dean free of that demon deal, no book is gonna help you."

"Then where, Bobby?" Sam asks, leaning against the wall.

"Kid, I wish I knew," Bobby sighs. "So, where is your brother?"

"Uh...he and Kat are out at some festival on the pier," Sam grumbles. "Dunno."

"Well, you might wanna pack up," Bobby says. "I think I found somethin'."

"Dean Winchester, you drop me in this ocean, so help you God—!"

"It's actually the Gulf of Mexico—"

"That spills into the AtlanticDeanDon'tYouDoIt!"

"All right, all right," he chuckles, setting Katherine on her feet.

"Go-lly," she mutters, pushing at his shoulder. "Just trying to do some honest seashell collecting and you're over here trying to ruin my day."

"I wouldn't say that, necessarily," Dean hums, putting his hands on her hips as she starts forward, dragging her toes through the sand to unearth "something awesome." Dean's found a few of orange-spotted cowry shells, a few with purple bellies. Katherine's focusing on the sea glass, pushing his hands from her.

"Hey," Dean chirps, bending down to the sand. Katherine stares down at him, watching his fingers brush some wet sand off of a flat, white thing half-buried in the sand bar.

Her eyes bug and her jaw drops, a smile tugging at her lips. "Is that a sand dollar?"

"I do believe so," he says, flipping it over with a smile. Then he holds it up to Katherine.

It's not the largest one she's ever seen, but it's still intact. It's the size of a dime, a tiny thing, right next to a piece of sparkling sea glass. She scoops it up without a moment's hesitation.

"This kind of matches your eyes," she hums, turning it between her fingers, and drops it into the little canvas coin purse around her wrist. Dean follows suit with the tiny sand dollar. "That's so little, I'm surprised you saw it."

He levels a speculative gaze at her. "Are you calling me old?"

Katherine smirks, turning on her toes, and scours the sand bar some more. "Read into it what you will, you paranoid old man. When should we get you a walker?" She throws a grin over her shoulder.

"Now I'm really gonna throw you to the sharks."

"Please," she scoffs. A few minutes of silence pass, Katherine leading them down the sand bar with a healthy distance between the two. "You know, I never really thought about the fact that Texas has beaches." Dean nods.

"Funny," he says.

"I always got sunburned when we hunted in Texas," Katherine sourly continues. "But there was once this time my mom and I went to the beach...I must've been five or six...Dad had Mitchy, so it was just the two of us on the coast. She found a fully intact Coke bottle—it'd turned into sea glass. We picked it up, had some people look at it...she told me it must've been from the thirties." Katherine smiles. "I still got that thing, somewhere in one of my dad's storage cubicles around the States."

Dean is looking at her in reluctant awe, healthy skepticism. "A whole Coke bottle?"

"Yeah. They used to be made out of glass. Oh, holy—!"

"What, what?!"

Katherine laughs, watching Dean jump from the water. "It's a starfish, you idiot," she says, kneeling to the wet sand, and stares into the crystal waters. "C'mere. He won't hurt you."

Dean grimaces. "They could be poisonous."

"You're such a wuss," she hums, gently prodding the arm with her thumb. Dean frowns, and his phone starts ringing. He digs it out of his pocket.

"Yeah," he answers.

"Are you two, uh...done at the pier?"

"We're on the beach. And you're totally lame for not coming to the fair. It was a blast. Come down, Sammy, it's real nice out. Oh, Katherine, don't touch that."

"Quit telling me what to do," she grunts.

"Bobby's got somethin' for us," Sam says. "Said we should get up there soon."

"Yeah, yeah. We're comin." Katherine frowns a bit at that, and Dean snaps his phone shut.

"Where are we going?" She asks. He can already her the defiance in her voice. The hell we are!

"To Bobby's," he says, nodding towards the pier. "Sam said he's got somethin'."

"Bobby and Ellen and Jo can't handle it?" Katherine asks after a moment.

Dean's brow furrows. "Aren't you the one who was elated to be huntin' demons?"

"Well sure, but..." She releases a wry chuckle. "I mean...Dean, we never get days off. A little celebration is due, right? I'm like some sort of zombie, that bastard Yellow Eyes is dead..." Katherine shrugs. "We never have days like this. And we just came from a lead in Austin."

"Maybe this one's...important."

"They're all important," Katherine grumbles, crossing her arms.

She's tanned easily in the Texas sun, her skin appearing all the more bronzed with the white eyelet top she wears.

"You're right," Katherine sighs after a moment. "Let's go, I guess." She zips the gray coin purse up and starts back the way they came. Dean jogs to catch up with her, his hand catching hers.

"What if we got out?" Dean asks. Katherine snorts. "I'm serious. We could do it. We could make it."

"I doubt civilian life would suit you much," she says with a smirk. "You're too riled up."

"I can be tamed," he objects. "C'mon. You and me go domestic. Settle down in Florida?"

"Oh, really?" She chuckles. "And who would be kicking demon ass while we ignore it?"

"Weren't you just the one who said we let someone else handle this?"

Katherine sighs. "That's different," she objects.

"Well I'm being serious," Dean states, jamming his hands into the pockets of his shorts—shorts. Wearing anything but jeans and his boots felt strange. Now Katherine's got him running around in a t-shirt and shorts and sneakers. She smiles, pushing her sunglasses up the freckled bridge of her nose.

"Maybe when we're fifty," she says. "If we make it that long."

"Don't be so cynical," he chastises. Katherine shrugs in defense.

"Oh, come on. I'm being realistic. I've kicked the bucket already. Someone else is gonna get hurt. I can feel it in my bones." She chews on her lip, expression turning dark and pensive.

"Which, I think, is all the reason to take as many preventative measures as possible," Dean says with a shrug. "Why waste your time if you know what you want to do with it? Y'know? We could find a place. You could practice."

"Oh, and you'd do what?" She asks. There's a bite to her voice now.

"Raise the kids."

Katherine stops and turns on the balls of her feet, eyebrows furrowed over the brow of her Ray-Ban sunglasses. "What?"

"Yeah. We could have kids."

After a moment, she cracks a grin. "You realize I'm Catholic, right?" Dean shrugs. "No kids out of wedlock."

"They also say no premarital sex. You've broken that rule a couple times."

Her cheeks are instantly pink. "Shut up."

"Just sayin'," he defends, raising his hands.

"Well I'm not having kids unless I'm married," she says, raising a brow, paired with her cheeky, dimpled grin. It's a challenge. Dean shrugs.

"Then I'll propose with a sand dollar and get you a ring when I can afford it."

Katherine lets out a laugh, shaking her head. "You're not serious."

"I am," Dean tells her. Her smile fades, realizing he is, indeed, telling the truth. "I'd leave the whole world to those demons if it meant a life with you."

"But...Dean, that's our job."

"Why do we gotta get the short end of the stick?" Dean asks. "Why can't someone else pick up the torch?"

"If you want the job done right, you might as well do it yourself." Then she smiles. "Try again once this demon nonsense is over."

That could take all year. That could take ten years. It's time Dean doesn't have. It weighs on his chest like an iron anvil, wakes him up in the middle of the night. Hearing barking dogs puts him on edge. What if it's a hellhound?

"I still have to see Charlie, you know," she murmurs. Dean's soul feels all the heavier. She isn't his. She seems to take note of that. "How did you find me anyway?" Katherine asks, smiling a bit. "I thought for sure I wouldn't see you again until...well, the apocalypse, I guess." She watched his smile fade before her eyes, his expression falling just a bit. But she noticed. "Dean?"

Dean swallows. "I haven't been totally honest with you," he tells her, glancing off to the pier. Katherine shifts her weight, anxiety leeching into her muscles. "About Sam..."

"What about Sam?" Her interruption came quick, hard.

The last she mentioned anything about the younger Winchester was in Wyoming. She told Dean she was so certain Sam had died. That she watched it.

After a moment of silence, just a moment between responses—not enough time for her to figure anything out at all—Katherine stiffens.

Dean would never understand how her brain can process information, like bits of a puzzle coming together with a snap of her fingers. Demon Talk + Sam + finding Katherine's whereabouts and a sudden urgency to settle down (when he'd never mentioned anything of the sort before) = something awful.

"You made a deal," she whispers. Dean can't see behind the lenses of her sunglasses, but judging by her voice, there are tears in her eyes. She pulls her sunglasses up into her wavy blonde hair and presses her fingertips into her eyelids. Her movements are slow and deliberate, but her heart is racing, her breathing is ragged. "You made a deal to bring me back?!"

"No! No!" Dean puts his hands on her shoulders to keep her still. Her blue-gray eyes are filled with tears, lips pressed together to keep from trembling. Her breathing is unsteady. She's more sad than she is mad, in this moment, anyway. And that's a shock. Katherine's temper is no force to trifle with, and it's always quick and hot. Dean can't help the desperation in his voice. "Sam was dead, Katherine. He was. When Jake stuck him in the back, he—" Dean shakes his head. "What was I supposed to do? I didn't have either of you! So yeah, I made a deal. It was worth it, because here you both are—!"

He saw the anger flip like a switch. Soft eyes turned hard as steel, and through gritted teeth, she said, "Oh, Dean Winchester, I could kill you!"

"I didn't make a deal to bring you back," he says. "I made a deal to bring Sam back, to find you! I don't know what brought you back. I don't. Come on, now, darlin'," he murmurs, putting her head on his shoulder. "You don't wanna be cryin' on a beach, do you?"

Katherine pushes away from him and crossed her arms, fingers holding the brown straps of her sandals. She's still trying not to cry. The heaviness, the anxiety, of thinking of Dean striking this deal...it hurts her head. And if Dean's deal wasn't what brought her back from her brief few minutes on the other side of the veil, what did?

What even happened on the other side?

"How much time do you have?" Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, staring down at the sand. "Dean," she strains.

"Uh...eleven months and twenty-eight days. Roughly. But we can go with a year."

Her voice is close to a whisper. "A year?!"

"The demon turned everything else down!" Dean cries. "Look, Katherine—" He shakes his head. "However much time I have on my clock, it doesn't matter, as long as you and Sam are safe. As long as you're here."

"Oh, you cannot think that!" She strains, then presses the back of her hand to her mouth. She's crying now. "Your life isn't less than anyone else's. That was a bad deal, Dean! You should've—!"

"Should've what?" Dean challenges. "Bobby was ready to give Sam a hunter's funeral! You weren't there to help me find some other way! I had no choice!"

Katherine turns on the balls of her feet, still holding her hand to her mouth. Her shoulders tremble with silent sobs, and for a moment, Dean is remorseful.

And like everything else, this falls at Katherine's feet.

After a moment, she starts towards the pier, and Dean silently follows after her.