"Stoner Boy wasn't in his room," Sam says in a sigh as he enters Bobby's hospital room.

Bobby's just fine. Sitting up, talking, breathing, eating. He looks up at Sam as he keeps talking.

"My guess is he's long gone by now."

"Well he's not much of a stoner," Bobby says. "Got an IQ of 160, which is saying something."

Katherine rolls her eyes. "Whatever," she grumbles.

"Considering his dad took his baseball bat to his head," Bobby finishes, throwing a poignant gaze her way. Katherine rolls her lips into her mouth and nods once before snapping her fingers and finger-gunning Bobby. "He died before Jeremy was 10. The injury gave him Charcot-Wilbrand. He hasn't dreamt since." The Winchesters glance to Katherine briefly. Her gaze seems far away as she runs her thumbnail over her lower lip.

"Well, until he started taking the dream root," she absently hums. Blue eyes come to life as they snap to Bobby. "How did he know how to dig up your worst nightmare and throw it at you?"

"He was rootin' around in my skull," Bobby grunts. "God knows what he dug up in there."

"Well how'd he get in there in the first place?" She crosses her arms. "He's supposed to have some of your DNA, whatever it may be."

"Yeah," Bobby hums. "Before I knew it was him, he offered me a beer...and I drank it."

Dean looks at the ground. Katherine's eyes slowly track to him. He doesn't look at her. "Fuck."

"Dean, you didn't," Bobby admonishes.

Dean offers him a wince. "I was thirsty," he pathetically defends.

"Great!" Sam erupts. "Now he can come after either one of you!"

"Well, no," Dean says. "We just have to find him first."

Katherine sighs, rubbing the inner corners of her eyes. "Yeah, well, we're gonna need to caffeinate and work fast. Neither one of you can fall asleep now."

✕

Katherine has read several sleep deprivation studies, mostly out of curiosity. There's nothing better than a med student reading a study on sleep deprivation at three in the morning when she should be studying for exams.

After twenty-four hours, the patient suffers cognitive impairment similar to that of a person with a .10 BAC. Judgement is affected, memory is impaired, declination in hand-eye coordination. Daytime sleepiness, decreased attention...

At thirty-six hours, inflammatory markers begin to appear in large quantities in the bloodstream. Hormone levels take hits and spikes. The patient experiences some sort of headache.

At forty-eight hours, the body begins to shut down for micro-sleep, similar to blacking out for half a second or half a minute at a time, followed by a period of disorientation. The patient falls asleep regardless of the activity they're in the middle of. And the horrible thing is, the patient isn't even aware they're blacking out.

Dean fell asleep at the wheel. Neither Sam nor Katherine knew for a few moments, but when Dean started to veer into oncoming traffic, Katherine screamed him awake and pushed him into the passenger seat.

At seventy-two hours, the hallucinations set in. Having a simple conversation is difficult. Concentration and perception deficits are starting to show, other higher mental processes begin to shutdown.

Keeping Dean awake meant Sam and Katherine taking shifts of watching him. Sam is asleep in the back seat, Dean is hopped up on two Monsters in the passenger seat, practically vibrating. He starts swatting at her when her phone starts ringing.

"Dean, gah-dammit, I'm driving!"

"Your phone is killing me!"

"Stop yelling!" Katherine shouts. Sam jerks awake in the back, and Katherine pulls her phone from her back pocket. "Tell me you got somethin'," she pleads, knowing it's Bobby.

Bobby sighs. "Strip club was a bust, huh?"

"Yes," she growls. "I'm getting worried, Bobby. You guys can't go without sleeping for much longer." She grits her teeth together. "Does Bela have anything?"

"Whadda ya got, Bela?" He asks away from the receiver. Then, after a few moments, "She's got nothin."

"So she's useless, as I previously stated." Katherine rolls her tongue over her teeth and forces a light tone, ignoring Dean's wide dilated green eyes on her, just a foot away because he's leaning over to hear her conversation. "Seriously, Bobby, no one would miss her if you just...dunked her in the river. With stones tied to her...heavy ones."

"You weren't always so mean, Katherine Louise."

"Not to your face." Katherine snaps her phone shut with a sigh, and out of the corner of her eye, she watches Dean cross his arms and sink down into the seat. "What are you doing?"

"Taking myself a long-overdue nap."

"Jeremy could come after you!" Sam cries.

"That's the idea."

"Excuse me?!" Katherine pulls off of the shoulder of the road. "You're not serious."

"Come on, Kat. We can't find him, so let him come to me."

"On his own turf. Where he's basically a god. We don't know shit about dream walking!"

"It's my head. I am the god of my own head. I can handle it."

Katherine grits her teeth. "When are you gonna learn that you can't just do everything on your own?" She asks, lunging forward, and tugs a short hair from his head.

"Ow!" One more. He shields his head. "Hey! What are you doing?!"

"What are you doing?" Sam asks.

Katherine's jaw tightens. "Sam and I are coming with you."

"No you're not!"

"Why not?" She challenges. "At least then it'll be three of us and one of him."

"You freaked out when you saw him."

"He took a baseball bat to my stomach, Dean!" She cries. "Shit hurts!"

Dean glances to his brother, and then Katherine. "Well I don't want you diggin' around my head."

"Too bad," Sam mutters.

She glowers and drops a hair into Sam's palm, then faces forward to pull off somewhere less conspicuous. A quarter mile up the road, there's an offshoot that turns into a clearing.

Perfect.

Sam downs his some of the tea from the thermos. "Jesus Christ, this tea is awful."

They're all asleep in no time. Katherine lifts her head from the seat of the Impala and sighs, pushing Dean's arm. He thrashes, sitting up, and glances around. The jostle of the car woke Sam. "What are we still doing here?"

"It's Dean's head," Katherine mutters, turning to look out the window. "Ask him."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Dean scoffs. "I didn't exactly have time to think of palm trees and beaches."

"Someone's outside," Sam whispers, and a few branches crack. It's muffled, but all of the hunters heard it. Dean opens his door first, then Katherine, and Sam.

A toddler's giggle sounds from behind the hunters. What's there shocked all of them.

There's a house there, at the end of the paver drive. It's warm, brown and tan and wood and stone. Two floors, a garage, a flowerbed, an American flag. A little girl is running down the driveway the best her little legs can carry. She's wearing a little yellow cardigan and a white t-shirt, a ruffled floral skirt and pink polka dot leggings. And she's running straight for Dean. "Daddy!"

And smooth as ever, he leans down to pick her up and set her on his hip. Round green eyes, long eyelashes, curly light brown hair. She has her mom's dimples and big smile. Her chin.

And Katherine is leaning against one of those stone pillars in jeans and a long white shirt with 3/4 sleeves, another little baby with her. And she's smiling.

She's happy. And safe.

"I've...never had this dream before."

Big ass lie.

Sam turns at the sound of a snapping twig, and just as he turns around, a shadow takes off into the woods. "Guys!" Katherine sprints after him. Dean turns to the little girl, watching as she disappears in his arms, and so does the house, Dream-Katherine, and the baby.

Dean takes off after his brother.

They didn't intend to split up. Katherine ran too fast for Sam to tell where she went, but Dean was lagging behind several paces already. Branches pull back and snap the hunters in their faces as they sprint through the thick brush.

She skids to a stop, sliding along gravel, as she busts out of the dark woods and into bright territory. Plush, dark green lawn, bright blue sky and a warm sun, barbed wire fence that comes up to her chest. There's laughter on the other side of that fence. "Daddy, watch me!"

"What..." Tears sting at her eyes as she recognizes the side of the house. It's her childhood home. The pool is the same, the backyard is the same. She's standing in the pasture just beside her home, where they kept the two horses.

How is this happening?

"Just jump, Kitten," a familiar voice says. It cripples her.

There's her father, standing in the pool with his sunglasses on and arms raised, prepared to catch a young Katherine Louise.

"It's all right," he says. "I've got you." His voice is low and deep, but comforting and smooth, like honey. When she was a little girl, he would always sing her to sleep.

But she remembers this day immediately, which is surprising, considering she hasn't thought about it in years. Buried underneath all of the shit of her teenage and early adult years are the few memories she has of actually being able to live like a child.

Her hair is long and wet, tied into two dutch braids. She has pale yellow floaties on her arms and wears a pink two-piece with blue flowers on it. Her little hands reach up to wipe the water from her eyes.

"You promise you'll catch me?"

"Of course, doll. Always. Come on, it's not that deep! Look, you've got your floaties on, and you've got Daddy right here." Katherine circles around the pool to look at him.

It's definitely him. The sandy hair, the jaw, the nose...she can practically see the squinted hazel eyes behind the lenses of his sunglasses.

"Clay!" It's her mother's frantic voice, coming from inside the house. "Clay, we need to get to the hospital!"

This is the day Mitchy had his accident. One of the horses kicked him off and stepped on his leg, shattered the femur.

He was five years old.

"Kat?" She turns around.

It's a different scene, and she's sucked right into it. Somehow, she knows this is her bedroom, the one she shares with Dean. He's standing in the closet doorway, brows raised as he gazes over at her. He's dressed rather well; tailored shirt and pants, a belt. He holds two strips of fabric in his hands.

"Polka dots or stripes?"

Another Katherine brushes past her with a smile and crosses her arms. "I always did like you in a bow tie."

"Stripes it is." He pulls the fabric around the back of his neck and turns to the mirror, glancing at her reflection. "They're still letting you come in to talk to the kids, right?"

"Yeah," she nods. "That is why we're going to work together."

There's a clatter downstairs.

The two freeze, sharing a knowing glance. "Juliaaaa?" He calls.

Julia. After her mother. "It's okay!" Their little girl calls. "I fixed it!"

Dean pushes through the brush until he hits his forehead on a wall. A wall. And then he turns around. It's wallpaper, plastered all over a hallway lined with wooden doors. It's dark, only a few small windows allowing dim light to come in. The knob of the door straight ahead twists, and the door opens by itself, squeaky hinges and all.

Against his better judgement and screaming instinct, Dean moves into the dark room. He moves to turn on the light, but there's someone sitting at the desk, back turned to him, and he keeps flicking the lamp on and off. It's a dim glow with a small radius, doesn't reveal much.

"Jeremy?" The light switches back on. Off. On again. And then his face turns. Dean knows it's his own. He slowly rises from the desk and turns to face Dean.

"Hey, Dean."

It's strange, looking at yourself without a reflection. Everything seems wrong. The way the eyes are angled, the nose, the curve of the mouth. It throws Dean's head for a loop. This is how he looks. That's his voice.

And Dean does what he does best—plays it off. He plays off his surprise, the discomfort, with a smirk and "Well aren't you a handsome son of a gun."

The carbon copy of him doesn't seem amused. He doesn't seem upset, either. He's cold and stoic. It's terrifying. "We need to talk."

"I get it," Dean says, nodding a bit. "I'm my own worst nightmare. That it? Huh? Like the Superman III junkyard scene—a little mano y mano with myself?"

"Joke all you want, smartass," he says, circling in time with Dean. Perhaps he's in step with him. His eyes are low, head bent a bit. "You can lie to Sam, you can lie to Katherine, but you can't lie to me. I know the truth. I know how dead you are inside. How worthless you feel. How you look in a mirror...and hate what you see."

Dean clicks his tongue. "Sorry, pal. It's not gonna work."

"But if there's something you're afraid of more than what you're going to become—" the eyes turn black and hollow. It sends a chill down Dean's spine and makes a home in his gut. Collecting, growing, freezing. "It's this." He turns, and Dean watches him. The glimpse of blonde hair over his shoulder.

There's a young woman in the corner. Jeans and a gray t-shirt, curly blonde hair. Katherine clutches a toddler to her chest. The little girl with the brown curls. They're both crying. The little girl is wailing, little fists gripping her mother's shirt, staining the fabric black with terrified tears. Katherine is quiet and consoling, running her hair over the little girl's head and hushing her. Her face isn't red or tear-streaked, but it's there. There's terror in her eyes as she presses her back into the corner, turning her shoulder in to shield the little girl.

Dean feels his temper flare in time with his panic. "Leave them alone, you son of a bitch!"

"You won't be there for Katherine or her family. You won't ever hold that little girl...you'll never be even a family friend. She'll never hear you talk...you won't take her to school—"

"Shut up."

"And Katherine's gonna raise her with Charlie. Someone better. Someone able to protect her. Someone to take care of her."

Dean grits his teeth and clenches his jaw. "Shut up."

"Someone to provide for her. Someone to hold her at night."

"I said shut up!"

"Sam is going to be with her, though. That little girl is gonna grow up, and when she's old enough, Sam will tell her what really happened to his brother Dean." Dean's jaw clenches at the mirror image of himself grins. "And she's going to hate you...for a lot of things, but mostly because of what you will became. And then you'll come back, a demon...and her daughter will kill you. You're going to Hell, and you're not lifting a finger to stop it." He scoffs. "Then again, I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, now, is it?"

"Come on, Dean—wake up." He doesn't look at the little family in the corner. Maybe it's true. If Katherine doesn't live to kill him, her children will.

"I mean, outside of Katherine and Sammy, you've got nothin'. You are nothing. You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog."

"Oh, that's not true," Dean counters, almost in a singsong voice.

"No? What are the things that you want? What are the things that you dream? Your car—that's Dad's. Favorite leather jacket? Dad's. Your music—Dad's. I mean, do you even have an original thought? No." He chuckles. "No, all there is is, "Watch out for Sammy. Look after your little brother, boy!" You can still hear your Dad's voice in your head, can't you?"

The little girl in the corner has quietened some. Katherine is whispering quietly to her, running her fingers through her hair. But the girl is taller now, almost the same height as Katherine. They look just alike, in the face. The same long, structured eyebrows, the nose and the mouth and the chin. Bronze hair, hazel eyes that grow harder than stones by every passing moment. She's glaring at Dean, rage tugging at her jaw and squeezing at her lungs.

"All he ever did was train you. Boss you around. But Sam...Sam, he doted on. Sam, he loved."

"I mean it," Dean snarls. "I'm getting angry."

"Dad knew who you really were. A good little soldier and nothing else. Let's hope that, if you make it out of this in one piece, you won't wind up just like him."

"You son of a bitch!" Dean shoves his doppelgänger into the wall. "My father was an obsessed bastard!" He picks up the shotgun and rams it against his cheek. "All that shit he dumped on me —that was his shit!" Another blow. "He's the one who couldn't protect his family! He's the one who let Mom die!" He throws the gun off to the side and settles for fists. "He wasn't there for Sam, I always was! It wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me, and I don't deserve to go to Hell! And I will never be like him!" He raises his fist once more. As his arm passes over his line of vision, it's himself he sees, clear as day, with blood leaking from the corner of his mouth and the busted lip. But before he comes down again, it's Katherine's little girl.

Can't be older than eighteen. Her face is still young, but it's bruised and bloodied from his hands. That nose is Katherine's. The pouting, swollen lower lip is hers. And so is that trace of defiance in her expression, the set of her jaw. Even her voice is hers.

"Uncle Dean, you hurt me."

Katherine stumbles out of the house, nearly losing her footing. She's in the forest again, right in front of the Impala. Sam is on the ground, arms and legs spread and tied down, and Jeremy Frost is hovering above him with that stupid baseball bat. She figured it out.

It was her dream in there. She wasn't having nightmares, she was reliving some of the best moments of her short childhood and imagining the best times of a life she'll never have. Getting ready for a normal job in a bedroom that she'll never step foot in.

What confused her is the how. She's in Dean's head. And Dean doesn't know anything about her childhood. She never told him about Mitch falling off of that horse. Obviously, it wasn't his dream, so how was it hers? She didn't fall for that stupid beer ploy. 

She did take that bottle out of Dean's hand and put it on the table. DNA—a fingerprint.

Jeremy's prattling on about his control over Dean. How he gets stronger every time he dream walks, because of the dream root.

Leaning against the post of the home, glistening in the moonlight, is that iron-dipped bat. It's supposed to be stuffed into the trunk, but here it is, the white grip tape wrapped around the lower part of the bat like shoelaces. Spiraled one way from the knob up, then she went against that spiral in another strip. Picking that thing up again is like an endorphin release. 

And yet again, she's saving a Winchester's ass with it.

"Hey, douchebag!" Jeremy turns and she chokes up on the bat before swinging as hard as she can, hitting him right in the middle of the chest. "We took dream root, too."

"Jeremy!" It's a booming masculine voice.

"No," Jeremy whispers, pale with horror, stumbling back as his father emerges from the woods. "Dad?"

"You answer me when I'm talking to you, boy!"

Katherine grows impatient and swings, cracking the bat right over the back of his neck, and Jeremy disappears, along with his father.

They're all in the Impala again, sweating and shaking, residual traces of anger and fear coursing through their veins.

Katherine looks to her trembling hand and rubs her thumb into her joints, trying to steady her breathing.

"You okay?" Dean asks.

Shakily, she nods. "Fine—you? Sam?"

"Good," he says from the backseat, and shuffles around for his phone. "We need to get back to Bobby."

Bela is gone, and—shocker—she's a liar. Bobby never saved her life in Flagstaff. "It was an amulet," he said. "I gave her a good deal."

She absconded with the Colt. How she even figured out the combination is over everyone's heads.

"You know," Katherine mutters, rolling the grip of her bat between her fingers. "I think I've changed my mind again. Screw karma, y'know? Take matters into your own hands."

Dean warily glances up and down the length of the bat. "I forgot about that thing."

Katherine looks at him in disgust. "This thing saved your life. And she can hear you." Katherine frowns, glancing to the piece of iron.

Dean smiles a little, still trying to shake off what he saw in his dream. His nightmare. "How doesn't that kill your arm every time you pick it up?"

"It's sheet iron," Katherine hums. "I knew a welder in New Haven, owed me one."

"So you had him wrap a bat in iron."

"Yeah," she chirps. "Hey—how do you feel about barbed wire?" She looks to him in curiosity, and Dean frowns.

"You're getting a little demented." She shrugs, and Dean takes the bat from her hands and rolls it up into the trunk, shoving their bags in front of it. "Hey...when you were in my head, what did you see?"

Katherine frowns a little. "You know, I was thinking about that," she hums, shutting the trunk, and turns around to lean against it with crossed arms. "I think maybe Jeremy might've lifted my prints from your stupid bottle."

Dean leans against the trunk beside her. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I saw something there's no way in Hell I should've seen in your head." She purses her lips. "It was summertime. I was at my old house...six or seven years old. I was swimming with my dad, and then...my mom came running into the backyard screaming about Mitchy. He was riding one of the horses, and...I dunno, I guess something spooked it. Mitch fell off and the thing trampled him, broke his femur in two places...he was five." Katherine shrugs and shakes her head. "Needed a year of therapy to walk right."

"Horses?" Dean asks.

"Yeah. Yeah, we had a couple. Our house was on a huge property...used to be a farm, got foreclosed and the folks bought it cheap. Next time we run through Florida, we'll have to swing by." She purses her lips. "What did you see?"

Dean shakes his head. "I wasn't in your head."

"You know what I mean."

Dean swallows. "Kat?" She turns to look at him, brows furrowed a bit. "I don't want to die." He's twisting the knife in his palm. "I'm not...ready. I know I've said it before, but this time I mean it. I just can't—"

"Hey—"

"—I mean, she's gonna be all alone—"

"Dean." She places her hands on either side of his face. It's easy for him to see the concern in her eyes, but she tries to hide it with a smile. "It's okay."

"I'm gonna help you guys. You and Sam—anything we have to do, we'll do it." He nods, reach up to wrap his fingers around her palm. Her thumb catches a tear as it falls from his eye.

"She?" Katherine hums.

"What?"

"Earlier, you said 'she'."

"Oh." Dean exhales and twists his head out of Katherine's grasp. "Um...It's stupid, really, but I keep thinking about it. You're gonna have some kids and I won't be around to tell them all the crazy shit we all got up to together. I think your first is gonna be a girl."

"A girl?" Katherine laughs. 

"Yeah." Dean nods. "And I keep thinking about how when she's all grown up, she'll have a bunch of memories with Sam and none with me, and...and one day she's gonna ask about the guy in the pictures that no one talks about but she knows everything about, because she's stupid smart like her mom, and Sam's gonna tell her what happened to me and it all comes full circle when she ganks my ass with Ruby's knife."

Katherine slowly nods, sitting up on the trunk. "You really thought that one through."

"Yeah, well, you having kids with someone else is kind of a top-three personal nightmare of mine." Dean rubs his nose. "Guess it took me a long time to figure it out, huh? Or admit it, at least. Charlie knew what the hell he was doing though."

"Got me cheap," Katherine tuts. "Fresh off a heartbreak."

Dean sighs heavily, looking straight ahead at the darkness.

"How are you so sure it's a girl?" Katherine asks.

"Just a hunch."

A few moments of silence pause between the two. "I don't want my kids growing up like I did. Like we did." Katherine looks at him. "And we're going to talk about you. All the time. Even if you're still around."

Dean smiles a little. "So, uh...your dad, was he always a dick?"

She laughs. "No. Not always."

"What changed him?"

After a moment, Katherine shrugs and shakes her head. "I don't know. I don't care. He's probably dead now...somewhere...I don't have any peace to make with him, and...anything he wanted to say to me, well...he can tell me in Hell."

Dean scoffs, shaking his head. "You're not going to Hell."

"Oh, come on. We're so going to Hell." She sighs. "Not for a long time, anyway."

Dean quirks an eyebrow at her. "What're we in for?"

She shrugs. "General terrorization of the public."

"Sounds more like you, Wonderland."

Katherine frowns a little, turning to look at him with a grimace. "What?"

"You've never heard of the Wonderland murders?" She shrugs and shakes her head. Dean lets out a heavy sigh. "In '81, a couple of guys broke into the Wonderland gang's drug house in L.A. Like, three people died from blunt-force trauma. And then, in '04, there was a massacre in Deltona inspired by the movie about the Wonderland massacre."

"They made a movie about that?"

"They make a movie about everything," Dean points out.

Katherine runs her tongue over her teeth, glowering at the motel room as she waits for Sam to emerge. "Okay, I don't know how I've established this rapport of beating people with bats, but if I recall correctly—and I do—it was one guy and he was gonna shoot you."