Hi baby. Just checking on you. We love you.

Mom

Grace Taylor would always been too good for Katherine Louise. Too good a woman, too good a mother.

She's staring at that orange pill bottle, the worn letters on the white label. There's something she can't get out of her head.

It was the foggiest thing, and maybe it's all messed up because of how truly out of it she was when she was draining this specific bottle of oxy, but for some reason that text pulled it through the clouds a little bit.

She thinks she was on the floor. It was in Wyoming, that's for certain, but she doesn't know who called who or what was discussed, other than Charlie and his horrific death.

Those monsters aren't worth it...Getting yourself killed isn't going to help anybody.

She fucking knew. She had to have known. She...

Katherine rubs her forehead and rests her head back on the sofa, eyes closed, long-drawn exhale through her nose. The world is spinning a little.

Grace...knows. That's the only explanation. Why she let Katherine run off, why...she seemingly never asked any questions about where she was all that time. Why she was always with the Winchesters.

How did she know?

The front door opens, and Jackson trips over the ledge. His sunglasses fall to the floor, and he turns to stare at the open doorway, at the small lip in the floor, before he turns to look at Katherine. She's rolled her head his direction. Just staring. Not even a 'hey.'

Russell had to go help out at the farm today. One of their hands is on their ass with a rough case of the flu. When he called Jack, he sounded a little concerned, and asked if he would come over to keep her company.

Now Jackson understands why. With two handfuls of grocery bags, he nudges the door closed with his shoe.

"There's a lip there," he says.

Katherine stares back at the ceiling.

Jackson sighs. "Yeah, I think Russ just had it put in yesterday," he says mockingly, because it's something she'd say. Katherine still says nothing. He sets the bags on the counter and stares at the top of her head on the sofa for a few long moments before he moves to sit beside her. He's already spotting an orange prescription bottle on the table before them. "You okay, kiddo?"

Why's everyone call me kid? Dean did it a lot. I didn't used to mind it.

"Just...thinking a lot." Katherine is still staring at the ceiling, blue eyes kind of glazed over.

Jackson wonders if she's having an episode. Maybe that's what the pills are for—PTSD.

He nudges her knee with his. "Hey." He waits. She doesn't respond. "What do you call it when Batman skips church?" She doesn't look at him. "Christian Bale."

Is she...oh, God, she's crying—

"What's wrong?"

"Jackson, I really need to be alone today," she whispers.

Jackson's mouth opens to say something, but what? How could he protest? 'Uh, actually Russell told me how clinically depressed you are—were—and it's probably not a good idea to leave you alone, because if I do and something happens to you, he's gonna fuckin kill me.'

His eyes slowly pan to the groceries on the counter. "Can I put all that away for you at least?" He quietly asks.

"No, just leave it."

Christian Bale. Dean told her that joke once. She really did think it was funny.

Her fingers are curling on her thigh. She's fighting every instinct to reach for that bottle right now. The pills that are in there right now wouldn't kill her...but maybe they'd come close. Ugh, and then with her luck, when Russell got home he'd drive her ass to the hospital and be given to a great nurse like Fucking Paula and be saved, and then there are more questions that she really just doesn't want to deal with.

"Thank you," Katherine whispers. Jackson presses a kiss to her hair, which smells lightly of honey, before he leaves.

Really, he just drove down the road a bit and turned his truck around in a thin cover of trees to watch the front door. As his stare at the door grew vacant, all he could see was Russell's face after he showed up to his old house. The rock fragments all over him, like tiny daggers, how...how his hand was stuck, the fear in his eyes.

If it was up to Jackson—which it seemed to be right now—he was determined to never see that look cross his best friend's face again.

Fifteen minutes pass before Katherine emerges from the house. 

"Ah, fuck. Where you goin?"

She's wearing a light jacket, her same leggings, and a pair of tennis shoes. A faded orange ball cap is tucked over her braided, grown-out blonde hair—one of Russell's, the one with the curved bill. It makes Jackson smile a little. 

Ugh. I'd love to be cupid.

Someone would have to be blind to not see the way Russell gazed at Katherine. His puppy brown eyes got all the softer, and the smallest of smiles curled at his mouth. It didn't matter if she was shouting obscenities at the baseball game on TV, if they were moving around each other in the kitchen. He was like the moon...gravity. 

The moon is to the Earth as Russell is to Katherine. 

It made Jackson happy to see that look on Russell's face again...but it also brought a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Katherine seemed like a nice girl, way deep down, but it took Jackson years to convince Russell to get off the hunting wagon. She didn't need to bring him back into that bullshit. 

Jackson watches her move through a quick series of stretches before he groans and realizes she's going for a run.

What a great fucking idea, Kit.

One mile into her easy run, she's huffing and puffing like she was at the end of a marathon. Walking with Russell yesterday made her realize how seriously unfit she was. Her body doesn't have the tone it used to, the tone that came with wrestling creatures ten times stronger than you, pulling yourself into small spaces to hide. Her arms are gaunt and her legs are small, her core is weak, and her lungs suck.

She doesn't know what she used to think of when she went for her runs. She used to love it. She doesn't know why anymore. This fucking sucks. She did this for fun?

She slows to a halt and rests her hands on her bent knees. Wheezing. Holy fuck.

Looking at her watch, her pace is just three seconds slower than what she'd normally run. But shit is this hard. 

Katherine sinks onto her butt and slouches, lets her diaphragm do its job. A mile has her this winded. She almost feels bad about it. But then, she realizes, it's a mile back to the house. So she can still get some miles in. 

Katherine rolls to her knees and pushes herself up with an obnoxious groan. Then she unzips her jacket and ties it around her waist. 

All right, you little bitch. Let's go.

What did she do when she got back? Threw her clothes on the floor, found her swimsuit, made a mule, and went out back. 

Jackson was an anxious wreck in his tuck for the entire fifteen minutes she was gone.

Katherine went for a run, he texts Russell. 

Thanks, Jack.

Russell tucks his phone into his vest pocket with a smile.

"What're you smilin' at?" Pip asks, meandering past him with a broad grin on her face. 

"Things are lookin' up is all."