"You and me, kid, we're going to take the world—!"

Katherine flies up, covered in a blanket of cold sweat. Her hair feels clammy near the roots, her body is too hot. Her heart feels as though it could beat straight through her sternum. A brief flicker of repulsive yellow flashes by the back window of the Impala with the speed of the car. She lets out a cross between a gasp and a heavy breath, flattening her spine against the opposite door. Trembling fingers freeze. A few more loud, shaky breaths escape her dry lips. Dean glances back at her through the rearview mirror.

She hasn't said much to him since they left the pier in Galveston. She's also woken up in the middle of the night for the past several nights, but she hasn't shared the reason why.

The Winchesters have a vague idea.

Katherine angles her knees, resting her elbows on them, and runs her hands through her hair. She focuses on her breathing. On the sickness in her stomach that rises into her throat. On Charlie. On the yellow eyes—

"Welcome back," Sam jests. "You were snoring."

"Shut up," she rasps, leaning forward, and slaps the flat of her hand against his chest. Sam laughs. "I don't snore."

"No, no, you do when you're really out," Dean disagrees. "But nothin' like Chainsaw over here—"

"I don't snore!" Sam protests.

"Yeah, and Dean's a virgin," Katherine scoffs, resting the tops of her arms on the front seat.

"Hey!"

She shrugs.

"Have a good nap?" Sam asks.

"As good as ever," she mutters. He can see the weariness beneath her eyes in the light purple circles, hollowing her dead eyes even more.

"So Bobby says he's got crop failure and cicada swarms outside Lincoln," Sam says.

"Man, I hate cicadas," Katherine says, grimacing, and inspects her fingernails. "Them bastards is ugly. And you know what? It could just be a bad crop year and an overdue pesticide service call."

"Yeah, well, it's our only lead," Sam tells her. Katherine shakes her head.

"And no freaky deaths?"

"None that Bobby could find."

"Well I'm slightly freaked out," Katherine says. "It's been five days and we've got bupkis. I mean, I was kind of expecting 'Fire sale, impending apocalypse, everything must go'." She frowns a bit, fingertip catching on a hangnail. "I need a manicure," she mutters, leaning back in her seat.

Of all things to worry about, you choose your paint job.

"And ya know, we've gotta do somethin' about this possession situation," Katherine barrels on, crossing her arms. "Meg possessed Sam, Yellow Eyes possessed me. Who's gonna possess Dean?"

"Nobody," Dean scoffs. "Unlike some people, I have my protection amulet."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Katherine drawls. "I figured Charlie would need it more than I would since he's, ya know, not trained to defend himself against these things! My mistake."

"Damn right."

She grits her teeth. "Well anyway, there are at least ten times more demons flying 'round here. And we've got no more of those things—Bobby gave us the last of 'em, I already asked."

"Looks like we need something more permanent," Sam says. "How do we ward ourselves against demons?"

The genius in the back seat's ears perk up. Her eyebrows furrow a little. "What'd you say?" She asks.

Sam frowns, turning to face her a little. "I asked how we ward—"

"No, no." She sits forward. "Needing it to be more permanent." She rubs her fingertips together. Panic shoots down Dean's spine.

"You got a devious and pensive look. What are you thinkin'?" 

Katherine smirks, sitting up, and glances between the two. "You got an aversion to needles?"

The Winchesters frown. "I hated the flu shots," Sam chirps.

"How do you feel about getting stabbed a hundred thousand times with one?" Katherine asks. "Not with a flu shot, but with a needle. It won't hurt...much."

He gawks and turns around. "I am not getting a tattoo—!"

"Oh, come on!" She cries. "Don't be such a puss!"

"I have my protection amulet, thanks!"

"Okay, well, what if you're fighting one of these things and it rips that necklace off your pretty neck?" Katherine asks, leaning forward with raised brows. "They can't rip a tattoo off, Sam!"

"Well, they could—"

"Shut up, Dean," Katherine snaps, and looks back to Sam. "Come on!" She cries, balling her fists up. "It'd be totally bad ass!"

"It's a pentagram on my skin."

"It's not like you're out here flashing your goods for cash, Sammy!" Katherine whines, and Dean laughs. "And you know, I doubt we'll be seeking alternative employment. We're already in alternative employment."

Sam is firm on this. "I am not getting a tattoo."

"Laaaame!" Katherine leans back in her seat, crossing her arms.

"You pout like a four year old," Sam chides.

"You bitch like a fourteen year old girl," Katherine retorts. He faces forward with a flat expression and Katherine smirks, knowing she's won.

The rest of the way to Lincoln, Katherine borrows Dean's anti-possession amulet and sketches it out. Different styles and variations, sizes. Then she thinks about placement. Not on her arm...

They stop at a motel in Wichita.

Katherine slowly paces in her room, braiding off the end of the long length of blonde hair. She walks heel-toe, staring down at the carpet as she pivots on the balls of her socked feet, and walks right into a pair of boots. She follows the long, slightly curved legs up to a slender pair of hips, then an exposed torso. Sculpted, not overly defined. A smooth chest, broad shoulders, a few necklaces. Then Dean. He smiles stupidly at her. "I was hoping you could help me in the shower. There's a spot between my shoulder blades—" Katherine scoffs, turning away from him, and starts her pacing again. Then she sits on the edge of her bed, tying off her braid with a small elastic.

"You know," she hums. "I've been having this dream where I get to punch you in the face 'cause of what you did."

Dean and his ever-present smirk sway over to her. "And mess up the money maker? You're hysterical."

She smiles a bit. "Yeah. Maybe wishful thinking."

Dean shrugs. "If you really wanna hit me, go for it."

"I want to throttle you," she quietly pronounces, picking up the toy Dean won at ski ball. It's a little stuffed brown bear with lighter masking. It's got a big head and two big feet, the pads of the paws outlined in dark brown. "I want to...scream, yell...I want to kill whatever demon you made that deal with...you know, how could you make that deal, Dean?" Katherine asks. "You sold your soul—"

"Don't get mad at me," Dean pleads, slowly shaking his head. "Don't you do that."

She looks up at him with big teary blue eyes and sniffs after a moment, crossing her legs, and rubs her thumb along the light brown fuzz of the bear's ear.

"I couldn't live with Sam dead," Dean tells her. "With you...gone. I couldn't do that."

"So what?" Katherine quietly asks. "Now...we live and you die?"

Dean shrugs. "Yeah."

She lets out a quiet scoff, shaking her head. "That's selfish."

"I'm okay with that."

Katherine grits her teeth. "Could you quit the tough guy act for, like, three seconds? Sam's breaking his back trying to make you happy and I'm—"

"Giving me shit for my decisions."

"Yeah, because it seems like nobody else is willing to," Katherine retorts. "Nobody else is gonna call you out on your shit, so I may as well do it." 

"I've got a year left to live, Kat. I'd like to make the most of it. So what do you say we kill some evil sons 'a bitches and raise a little hell? I do recall a certain feisty blonde saying those words just a little over a year ago. Where'd she go?"

"You're unbelievable," Katherine scoffs, shaking her head. "And that girl grew up. So...missed the train on that one." She stares down at the bear, releases a drawn-out sigh, and looks up to Dean with pursed lips. "So I guess it's my turn to save your ass, huh? We ever start an official tally with that?"

"Running score is I'm kicking your ass by a mile," Dean says, smiling. Katherine chuckles, shaking her head again. "You still mad at me?"

"I'd very much like to throw your head through a wall, but that comes with the territory of knowing you."

"Comforting."

Katherine shrugs unsympathetically. "Guess it's just my luck it'd be the one person who got me," she murmurs after a moment, then presses her lips into a thin smile. Something like resolve settles over her pretty face. "Once I got over my initial hatred for you, after I learned about your deal, I remembered a voodoo priestess in Louisiana. Saved her ass once. She owes me a favor. I'm sure she wouldn't mind helping us find something—"

"No."

Katherine looks up with a frown. "No?"

"No."

She shrugs a little. "What's that mean?"

"Don't look for any ways out, Katherine."

She stares at him for a moment. "You are unbelievable. Do you have a death wish?"

"Katherine," Dean sighs, moving to sit on the bed beside her. "If I try to welch out of this deal, do any backdoor things, Sam dies, and you—I don't know. Your head explodes, or...something."

"I'm not settling for anything less than two Winchester brothers on this earth, you hear me?"

"Listen to me," he says. "Those were the demon's terms. If you try anything—I mean anything—to get me out of it, I swear to God, I'll stop you myself."

Katherine looks away from him, gritting her teeth. "You're such a dummy. A dumb, dumb...dummy head."

Silence sits between the two for a moment. That couldn't be what's causing her to wake up so suddenly, right?

"Anything else you been dreaming about, or...is the exertion of you punching me into the face enough to make you sweat?"

Katherine stares down at her stuffed bear. "It's that demon," she tells him. She unfurls her fist, rubs her clammy palm along her thigh. "Yellow Eyes. He's...possessing my body still...like there's a piece of him somewhere in my brain, just...taunting me. I don't know." Katherine shakes her head.

"Every night?"

"Every night," she says, nodding slowly. Then she crawls up to the bed and throws the comforter over her, crushing the bear to her chest.

"What are you doing?"

"Sleeping off my annoyance at you."

Dean smirks. "Maybe I'll get you a Happy Meal tomorrow."

"Funny," she snarls.

Dean stares at her for a few moments. The darkening freckles across her nose. The depth and juxtaposing hollowness of her lapis eyes, the angle of her cupid's bow. "Hey—how'd you ever meet Bobby anyway?" Katherine glowers at him for a moment. "Be nice to me. I'm dyin' here."

She lets out a heavy sigh. "Don't you have a shower to take?"

"Oh, I took one before we left Galveston."

Katherine manages to scoff, a smirk tugging at her lips. "You're ridiculous." Dean shrugs. "My earliest memory of Bobby is...well, I musta been six. Dad and I were passing through Sioux Falls and we stopped at his house. Dad picked up on a demon, left me with Bobby for a few days. We went to the lake nearby, fed some geese or whatever...watched a lot of baseball. After the fire, I'd see him more often. Sometimes it was more than I saw my own Dad. Bobby was more of a dad than my real one, in certain ways. He...showed up to my graduation last year. Him and the Harvelles, and Ash."

Ash.

The name sinks into Dean's gut once he realizes Katherine doesn't know about the Roadhouse yet. That Ash is dead. They got along really well at the Roadhouse, played lots of pool, laughed. They were comfortable.

And of course, she notices.

"What is it?" Katherine asks.

Dean's brow furrows. "How do you know there's anything?"

Katherine shrugs a bit. "You have a tell."

"A tell?"

"That's how I know when you're keeping stuff from me," she murmurs. Dean's brow furrows. "You...kind of look away. Like you're remembering something. Your lip curls a little. You're not a very good liar, Dean Winchester."

"I'm a fantastic liar," he protests. "Just maybe not with you. And you probably have a built-in polygraph sensor or something." Katherine chuckles. "It's about the Roadhouse," Dean tells her after a moment. "Before we found you or Sam...Ash called from there. He said he'd found something big, but he didn't want to talk about it over the phone. And by the time Bobby and I showed up..." Say it. "Katherine, the Roadhouse is gone. And so is Ash. We...think demons had something to do with it."

When he looks up, Katherine's face is pressed into a pillow with that bear clutched between her arms. Her fingertips, hooked around her tanned limb, are white with pressure. Dean reaches up the bed, pulling Katherine to him, and she lets out a congested breath, turning her head into his chest. That one unsteady breath turns into sobs.

She hadn't really had a good cry since that first night after coming back from her three minutes of death. She'd had spurts of angry tears, like earlier at the pier, but never a full-on breakdown. In that moment, it's overwhelming.

Dean's got an expiration date. Her brain is scarred from the Demon Occupation of May 2007. She's losing Dean. Her family is dust in the wind. The Roadhouse is gone. Ash is dead. How many of her friends had she lost with him? And Charlie...

The morning would prove to be a bleak one for Katherine Louise. The sun is shining, sure, and it's warm, but she's never felt so cold.

"Man, those cicadas are loud," Sam says, stepping out of the Impala.

"A few years early, too, aren't they?" Katherine hums, shutting the door behind her.

They're parked on the gravel drive of an older-looking home, with peeling white paint near the ground and a nice neutral color on the base of the house. The shrubs are green and blossoming, the grass is still growing. Bobby Singer leans against his car, a rusted old '72 Chevelle. When Katherine was younger and would stay at Bobby's house, she would find photo albums buried underneath layers of inch-thick dust and books pertaining to lore. Katherine saw a picture of the car in her prime; a beautiful baby blue with white stripes down the back end.

She never liked riding in that car. It always smelled, even with the little trees hanging from the rearview mirror.

"So we're eating bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast, now, Dean?" Bobby asks, pushing himself off of the trunk of his car.

"Well, sold my soul," Dean says around a mouth of burger. "Got a year left to live. Ain't sweatin' the cholesterol."

Katherine would have laughed.

"What do you think, Bobby?" She asks instead, glancing over the older house through narrowed eyes—mostly because the sun is beating down on her. "Should we mark the doors of the Impala with lamb's blood?"

"Absolutely not," Dean says.

Bobby lets out a sigh. "Let's go find out." He starts past Katherine, and she follows right after him.

Dean notices the way the sun hits her hair now, falling in loose waves down her back. Some of the blonde strands are warmer than others. Perhaps her hair color could be described as "beige," but it's such a strange word for hair. Some strands are gold, others are nearly white. Then the roots are a dark, grown out now from lack of upkeep. Perhaps she's growing it out.

"Looks like the swarm's ground zero," Bobby continues. Katherine's boots pass his as they tread up the stairs, and without hesitation, she raps her knuckles against the dark red wooden door.

"Candygram!" Dean hollers. Katherine shakes her head, rolling her eyes as well, and shifts her weight, waiting for a response. After a moment, she holds her hand out, and Sam drops his lock pick into her palm. She goes to work, and after another brief few moments, Katherine twists the doorknob and nudges it inside. Almost immediately after taking a step inside, she backpedals, eyebrows raised, eyes closed, lips pursed like she's smelled something awful. Then it hits everyone else.

Roadkill, baking on an Arizona freeway in the dead of summer. That's what this smell is. Not quite the rotting meat stench of demons, but this is rotting flesh. Minutely different, but discernible.

"That's awful," Sam mutters, turning his head towards the fresh air. Katherine nods in agreement, pulling the M1911 from the holster at her hip, and starts forward. Bobby veers to the left, Sam to the right, and Dean follows behind Katherine.

She's a bit uncomfortable with him behind her today. He's a big person, both in the shoulders and height-wise. Sometimes, his presence can be quite overbearing. This is one of those times. 

She stops at the end of the hallway. Dean draws his gun, waiting for her signal. Katherine waits for another moment, nods, and the two rush the bedrooms. They clear the kitchen before Sam calls their attention to the living room.

"Holy shit," Katherine says, pulling her shirt collar over her nose.

Three people—corpses—rest on the sofa, the television set still running. It's a dated thing, looking like it's straight from the eighties.

The skin on the corpses is beginning to pull tight in some areas with bloating, and sag in other places. It's pale, blue in some areas, or completely gone in others. It looks as though all of the muscles have already decomposed, and the eyes, still open on the two older ones, are going next.

"What the hell happened here?" Katherine asks, her voice muffled through her shirt, as Bobby storms into the room.

"I don't know," he answers, narrowed eyes glancing over the upright corpses.

"Check for sulfur," Katherine says, moving towards the window as she tucks her gun into its holster. A shadow outside moves past the window and she halts, immediately drawing that gray killer from her hip, and then another shadow. Dean heard the floorboards creak. She barely glances to him, her shirt slipping from her nose, and she nods her head to the side. Dean nods, moving to cover her, and Sam and Bobby watch. Katherine holds up two fingers, motioning to the porch outside.

Dean moves to the door and carefully pulls it open, one eye peering through the crack before he opens it wider. His face, then his shoulder, then half of his body follow outside. Katherine quickly sprints upstairs for a vantage point. A crowd of demons? She's silent and fast and lithe, like a well-balanced cat. She slips into one of the bedrooms and peers around the dated curtains to the field outside. No people are there, only some grazing cattle. Katherine pries the window open and slips out onto the roof with care. On the deck below, she hears Dean engaging in a struggle, and she slides down the shingles and dangles over the edge of the roof, pistol ready to fire a heavy dose of lethal. But then she sees who rushed Dean—put Dean on his ass—and she laughs.

"No way!"

"Katherine Donovan!"

Dean glances between Katherine and the two newcomers—one of whom has a rifle pointed at his face. "You know them?"

"Isaac and Tamara!" Beaming, the young huntress turns herself from the gutters and drops to her feet before pulling the two hunters into an embrace, laughing all the while.

"What the hell are you doing here?" The woman asks her. She's English.

"I could ask you the same," Katherine says, stepping away, and puts her hands on her hips.

"Hellooooo," Dean says, holding up his hand, and wiggles his fingers. "Bleeding here."

Katherine looses a chuckle, shaking her head, and hauls Dean to his feet. "Don't mind him," she says to the two.

They both have dark skin and eyes, wide and friendly smiles. The woman, Tamara, has short hair, high cheekbones, and dresses in layers, where the man, Isaac, has no hair at all, and wears a t-shirt, jacket and jeans. Everyone turns at the sound of new company rushing out of the house—Bobby and Sam.

"Tamara?" Bobby asks. "Isaac?"

"Bobby!" Isaac calls, grinning, and reaches forward to shake his hand.

"Isaac, Tamara," Katherine hums, smiling as she jams her hands into her jeans pockets. "This is Sam and Dean Winchester."

"Winchester, eh?" Tamara says, reaching forward to greet Bleeding Dean. It's obvious neither of the newcomers are very comfortable with that name. At least, it's obvious to Katherine.

Sensing the same thing, Dean doesn't return the gesture, and Katherine runs her elbow into Dean's ribs. He winces, glaring at Katherine.

The young huntress lets out a sigh, reaches into her jacket, and pulls a flask from the inside, holding it up as she unscrews the cap. She first drops a bit onto her hand, then flicks it towards the newcomers.

"Now that that's settled," Tamara hums. "How did you hear about this?"

"Bobby," Katherine says. "You?"

"We're settled nearby," the woman answers. "And I see you're low on holy water." Katherine smiles sheepishly. "What'd you find here?"

"Honestly?" Katherine hums. "Not sure."

"We didn't find any sulfur," Sam says. Katherine shakes her head.

"Neither did I," she hums, glancing to Dean's wound. "And we should get that cleaned before it gets infected."

"You know how many cuts I've had that didn't get infected?" Dean asks. Katherine rolls her eyes.

"Well follow us back to our place," Isaac suggests. "We've got everything you need and more."

"You two were always life savers," Katherine hums, smiling, and moves for the rail. She throws her legs over the side and starts for the Impala.

"Well what do we do about them?" Dean calls, glancing to the house.

"I'm on it," Katherine tells him, pulling her phone out.

✕

"You still have palo santo?" The blonde huntress asks, rifling through the couples' stores at their vine-twisted home a few miles away.

"We can't find it," Tamara sighs, moving a glass jar.

Sam frowns, glancing between the three. "Palo santo?" He questions. Katherine beams.

"Holy wood from Peru," she says.

"It's toxic to demons," Tamara explains. "Like holy water."

"Keeps the bastards down while you're exorcising them," Katherine hums, turning back to the shelves of herbs and amulets.

"How did you meet?" Sam asks, glancing to a baby doll in the corner.

Katherine smiles. "I was sixteen, on my first hunt by myself in southern Illinois. I'd heard about a girl who could've been possessed—it was published in the papers. And you know, possessions and the like move through Catholics like water. When I came to investigate, I met Isaac. He was posing as a Father from a church from out of town, came packed to the hilt with exorcisms in fifteen different languages." Tamara hands Katherine a stake, and the blonde gasps. "Thank you."

"How long have you two been married?" Sam asks.

"Eight years, this past June," Tamara answers.

"A family that slays together," Isaac hums.

"Right," Sam chuckles. "I'm with you there. What got you started?" Katherine fumbles with the glass in her hands. Katherine never has stuttered movements. Sam's smile disappears, and Isaac and Tamara seem to sober. "Oh. I'm—I'm sorry...that's none of my business."

"It's all right," Tamara tells him.

"Well, Jenny," Dean says from the other room. "If you look as pretty as you sound, then I'd love to have an appletini."

With a tight mouth, Katherine looks to Sam. "Who is your brother talking to?" Sam shrugs.

Tamara chuckles. "How long have you two been together?" She asks.

Katherine's brow furrows. "Do you want the long answer, or Cliffnotes?" Tamara's brows raise and Katherine shrugs. "We...had a thing last winter, then I left...came back...still not...entirely on." Tamara laughs, and Dean snaps his phone shut.

"That was the coroner's tech," Dean says. Katherine's brow quirks and she crosses her arms.

"Is she looking to be a cadaver?"

"That family's cause of death was dehydration and starvation—the whole lot of them," Dean tells the rest of the hunters. "No signs of restraint, struggle, nada."

"So they just sat down and never got up," Sam says.

"There was a fully stocked kitchen just yards away," Bobby protests.

"Was this a demon attack?"

"I've never seen anything like it," Katherine scoffs, shaking her head.

"Me either," Bobby adds. 

"Well what should we do?" Dean asks.

"We're not gonna do anything," Isaac states.

Katherine frowns, turning to Isaac, and Sam stands up straighter. "What do you mean?" The younger Winchester asks.

"You guys seem nice enough, but this ain't Scooby Doo. And we don't play well with others."

"You did before," Katherine says with an edge to her voice. "And we'd get more ground covered—"

"No offense to you, sweetheart," Isaac says. "But we're not teaming with the fools who opened the Devil's gate."

After a moment of simmering silence, Katherine lunges, and Bobby scrambles to grip the nearest limb of the girl before she gets too far to hurt someone. "Like you've never made a mistake before!" She spits. Sam grips one of her wrists, Dean the other, and Bobby has her shirt tail. Sam grabs the stake from Katherine's hand. "They didn't even open it—!"

"Settle down!" Bobby snarls.

It's frightening, really, how quickly Katherine popped off. And how strong she is. It's taking the three of them to hold her back. Finally, she settles. She leans back agains the cupboard and runs the flats of her fingers over her hair, inhaling with the slow motion.

None of them have seen Katherine act that way before.

"It's not like you've never made a mistake," Tamara softly says to Isaac.

"Locked my keys in the car, turned my laundry pink." Isaac shrugs. "Never brought of the end of the world, though."

"That's enough," Katherine seethes, but she hasn't moved from her position against the desk. Her fingers are tightly wound around her biceps, like she's forcing herself to stay put. "You don't know what happened up there, all right?"

"Kid," Isaac begins. "There are a couple hundred more demons out there right now. We don't know where they are, or when they'll strike. There ain't enough hunters in the world to handle something like this—"

"Isaac."

"You brought war down on all of us—"

"I said that's enough!" Katherine snaps. Maybe it's a coincidence...but Dean feels the slightest tremor underneath his boots. "I'm not just some kid, Isaac. You'd do best to remember that."

"That's quite enough testosterone for now," Tamara says, leading Isaac from the room.

"We'd best be going," Katherine states, pushing herself off of the shelf. "Thanks for the palo santo." She wiggles the stake, starting for the door.

Nobody speaks in the car on the way to the nearest motel with at least one star. Showers are skipped—there's mold in the tub, and Katherine isn't even sure this species isn't toxic.

She flops back onto the pull-out mattress and drapes her jacket over her after lining the door, windows and air vent with salt. Across the room, Dean props himself up on his elbows to look at her.

"Kat?" He asks. "Come take the bed."

"M'fine."

"This probably has less dust."

"More questionable stains," Katherine hums. Dean chuckles, nodding a bit, and swings his legs over the side of the mattress to flop onto the pull-out. "Ugh. When will you stop that?"

"Scoot over."

Katherine complies, moving to the other side of the mattress, and turns to face him. Dean's hand moves from her ribs, down the valley of her waist, to her hip, and he drags her closer to his body, the warmth of her skin almost compensating for lack of cover. She puts her hand between them and scoots back a forearm's length.

Maybe he deserved that.

"What happened earlier?" He asks. "At Tamara and Isaac's?"

"I don't know," Katherine answers, shaking her head. "I just was really annoyed at first, then it just...exploded." She shrugs. "I think it has something to do with Yellow Eyes. Survivors of possessions don't usually wind up being the same person they were before it, if they make it out alive."

"Like post-traumatic stress?"

Kathrine nods a bit. "Sure," she murmurs. "It's just...I've always had a quick temper...but nothing like that."

"And what did you mean by what you said to Isaac? About the...remembering..."

"I saved his ass in that possession case. I was walking down the street when he was sneaking up into the boy's window to perform an exorcism in the middle of the night. When I heard the commotion, the parents waking up, I came in and saved the day. Naturally."

"Naturally," Dean hums, smiling some. His eyes might've glazed over.

"I have a question for you," Katherine murmurs, flexing her fingers. "Do you remember last spring, when you...made me leave?"

He looks almost pained. The moonlight shines on his face in a thin slant, glinting off of one of his hazel eyes. "I try not to."

"I asked about something you'd said a while before. It was about my dad. Something you promised him." Dean nods.

"Yeah."

"What were you hunting, in Oxford?"

Dean is surprised she remembers. "A fouke," he answers. "Like a, uh...Sasquatch of the south." After a moment, she nods, staring up at the ceiling. "You know...your old man has a few pictures of you in his wallet—his real one. He keeps it in his left inner jacket pocket. There's a picture of you and your mom in a field of yellow flowers with them in your hair, in little crowns or somethin'." Dean lets out a soft sigh, tucking Katherine's hair back from her jaw. "She had this...beautiful blond hair, with a little bit of brown in it. You look like her. Here, and here." He touches his thumb to her cheekbone and her nose. "And you've got her smile, too. And the other picture...you look like a teenager. I don't know how old you were, but...your hair wasn't this blonde. Light brown, with...honey ends." He shakes his head. 

"And I remember thinking you were the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. Guess it's even better in real time, huh?" She chuckles quietly and turns onto her front. "Then after we'd killed the thing, Dad went west, to Jericho, I went to New Orleans, and your dad...I dunno where he went. But he called me on the road, after I'd heard my dad's voicemail. My dad had spoken to him...but it's like they knew somethin' we didn't. Or at least, Clay did. He always seemed like he knew more than he let on." Katherine nods. "Guess my dad told him I was on my way to track you down, because he made me swear to take care of you if it was the last thing I did." Dean purses his lips into a thin smile. "I still think I'm the wrong guy for the job, but...hey, I got a smokin' hot chick out of it, right?"

Katherine offers him the smallest of smiles. "Thanks for looking out for me."