Katherine Louise, sat on the sofa in their motel room, is quietly thumbing through a book she picked up from the store in the last town they passed through. Dean is staring at her with flared nostrils, hard green eyes flitting over her face, which is covered in her favorite fruity-pebbles-scented blue goo. She picks up her milkshake and keeps staring at that stupid book.

His fingers tighten on the corner of the newspaper he's thumbing through.

"What about Reno?"

While Katherine senses the rising frustration in his voice, she doesn't answer. Dean grits his teeth.

"Oh, that's right," he tightly mutters. "You and Sam are still pissy, huh?" Katherine's only answer is a huge sucking sound at the end of her straw and two big blue eyes staring up at him with disinterest. "It's my decision, you know."

Katherine looks up at him fully now. "There have been a lot of stupid things you've said before, Dean, but none of them have been as stupid as you're being. If me or Sam were in the pickle you're in, you wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. You'd drag us to whatever hoodoo or voodoo priest was closest and have 'em lay some mojo on us. So yeah. We're still pissy." She flips the page over.

Dean rests his cheek on his chin and decides to try a new approach. "You're kinda cute when you're mad...like a pissed off little Smurf." Katherine gazes flatly at him.

"You're such a freaking hypocrite," she mutters, shaking her head, and goes back to her book.

Sam enters the motel room with his laptop tucked under his arm. He told Katherine he was going right down the street to talk to Bobby about some demon-expelling ritual he uncovered a few days ago. Katherine raises her brows, asking silently if Bobby found any stock in it, and Sam shakes his head. She's immediately disgruntled.

"I think I found something," Sam announces. "While I was waiting for Bobby, anyway." Katherine sets her styrofoam cup to the side and turns her attention to Sam. So easy. Dean rolls his eyes. "A guy in Cicero fell on his own power saw. It's, like, forty-five minutes north. Wouldn't hurt to check it out."

"Cicero?" Dean asks, mostly to himself. He scours his brain for a reason as to why that town sounds so familiar. Then— "Nope. Doesn't sound like anything."

Katherine almost scoffs. "We've gone on a lot less. A lot."

Dean shakes his head. "I just don't think there's any there there." Katherine's brow quirks.

"Wait, Cicero?" Sam hums, brows furrowed. Katherine glances to him.

"Are you two sharing the same brain cell?" She demands.

Sam grins. "Isn't that where—"

"No," Dean growls.

With narrowed eyes, Katherine looks between the brothers. "What's in Cicero besides a wack power saw?" She asks. Sam continues to grin, rather smug for him, and Dean looks uncharacteristically uncomfortable. "What's in Cicero?" She repeats, genuinely curious now, and sits up straight.

"Lisa Braeden," Sam answers. Katherine glances to Dean, but Sam keeps talking. "Eight years ago, Dean took a road trip. He left me with our dad in Orlando—we were hunting a banshee."

"Oh, get the Hell out," Katherine scoffs. Sam nods. "You hunted a banshee?!"

"Not the important part of the story," Sam says, holding a finger up.

"So what is the important part?"

Sam leans towards his brother, grinning. "What did you call her, again?"

With frosty green eyes, Dean leans forward to meet his brother's gaze, and through bared teeth hisses, "I am going to kill you—"

"No, no—"

"Dude," Katherine scoffs, glancing between the brothers. "Forget I asked."

"I promise, it was hysterical," Sam swears, watching Katherine get up and start for the bathroom.

"It wasn't," Dean promises.

"Gumby Girl!" Sam hollers, clapping his hands together. "It was Gumby Girl!"

Katherine snorts, reaching to flip on the bathroom light. "Creative," she hums, staring at Dean.

"You don't have to go," she says, turning to the sink. "Matter of fact, you boys can stay hidden and I'll do the grunt work."

"You kiddin' me?" Dean grumbles, crossing his arms. "You're not working a case alone." He stares into the doorway as Katherine bends over the sink to wash her face off. Sam smirks and nudges Dean's shoulder. Dean smacks at his hand.

Katherine laughs quietly. "I've done it before." No answer. "Fine," she says, and reaches for her towel to dry her face off. Then she starts back into the room. "We won't go to Cicero. God, I hate fielding cases."

"It was one power saw," Dean tells her.

"Could be a haunted power saw," Katherine says with bugged eyes as she mocks Dean, reaching for her phone to see if anyone nearby would take the case. "You come up with somethin', then. It's been a friggin' week and we've got zilch. Makes me itch."

"Shouldn't you be headed to Florida right about now?" Dean asks, looking at her with as meaningful eyes as possible. She swallows and crosses her arms.

"No reason for me to."

Sam furrows his brow. "Well maybe I want to see Charlie."

Katherine flips her phone open. "Then maybe you should date Charlie, Sam."

The young man settles into his chair with crossed arms and a grin. "I just might."

A nest of vampires in Duluth. It's the perfect place, in this little town—usually overcast, so there isn't the sun to contend with, usually. What gave them away was the pattern of people going missing from the same bar every few days—vampires, if they're being quick about it, need new humans every few days. These ones must be new. They're careless with their hunting.

The body of a young girl was recovered from a dumpster two blocks away, last seen at Gilligan's. She had puncture marks on her left wrist and on the back right side of her neck.

A friend of Katherine's had also asked for some help. Mindy Levitt is a hunter Katherine met years ago in Maine—they were hunting the same water spirit.

Ten vampires against four hunters were no wonderful odds. They planned and plotted in a musty motel room for a few hours. What if the party split up? What if only half of the vampires left at a time, leaving the other five in that old home off the bend in the state road? It was a hard choice, deciding between which party to pick off first. If they went after the departing five, it would attract the attention from inside the house. If they went into the house first, they would risk another civilian losing his life at the hands of these creatures, but the hunters would be safe.

But part of the hunt is the fun. And hunting four on five is no fun at all. It's no contest, usually, and with a bunch this well-trained, it was like taking candy from a baby.

Katherine and Mindy went in on the right side. Mindy's a little woman, around 5'2", but she's sturdy. Her red hair is short, hanging curly at her shoulders with some of it pinned back. Her eyes are wide and brown, like a child's. Dean argued it should be one man and one woman each, that way they all have an advantage. Men are generally stronger than women, and the Winchesters are definitely taller than these two. Stronger? Arguable. Katherine can pull her own weight. And she's got a pretty spot-on hunch. If something were to go amiss, she'd know in an instant.

But, as it seemed to be lately, Katherine got her way, and she was sprinting across the field with Mindy in tow.

Sam and Dean took the left side of the house, and the hunters slipped in through their own window. Katherine came in through the screened-in porch, boots quiet against the wooden planks. Dean caught sight of her from the kitchen as she raised her machete to strike the bloodsucker sleeping on the sofa.

Katherine is almost a different entity entirely when she hunts. She's scary, even. As quiet and lethal as the plague crawling through a village. She's fast and cold. She gets the job done with no fuss.

As soon as that blade cut through soft tissue, muscle and spinal cord, it was game on. The vampire on the other end of the sofa woke up and lurched at the young woman. It was a brief tussle with a clear victory. Though younger vampires are stronger, they aren't as clever as the older ones, not used to fighting, especially not hunters like Katherine Donovan.

Ten vampires lay dead, headless, within forty-five minutes. They were bloody, and there was no room for being tired. The amount of adrenaline surging through each hunter's veins turned their bodies into live wires. Once they got going, keeping that steam was essential to prevent a crash. When Katherine was younger and it was harder to get those legs to relax, she would go kickboxing with her father. As she's gotten older, settled the nerves in her stomach a bit, it's been easier to let the trembling fingers fade as she struck a match and watched the monsters burn. In the event that wasn't therapeutic enough, she'd put on her best running shoes and hit the pavement.

Of course, there were other ways to blow off steam that would not necessarily be publicly approved—but then again, what kind of public would condone the murder of people? This public doesn't know a lick about the real world...

Sam and Mindy left the hunt together. Dean and Katherine went to their room. And now, Dean watches Katherine walk out of the motel room in shorts and her sports bra. When he figures she isn't coming back, that she wouldn't, in fact, jump his bones, he grabs his jacket and heads to the nearest bar.

He came back in the wee hours of the morning, when the sky was shifting from blackish-purple to lavender. Katherine was journaling at the kitchen table, Sam still nowhere to be found.

Katherine looks up as Dean leans against the door to close it. Without a word, she looks back down at her journal and keeps writing. He notices the way her shoulders don't hitch as he approaches, the way her chest doesn't seize when he's near. It's like he has no effect on her at all.

"You smell like cigarettes," she mutters.

"People smoked inside the bar." Katherine doesn't reply. He drops his jacket over the top of one of the chairs and leans against it, watching her fingers control the pen to produce that half-cursive penmanship. "You still journal?"

"Yeah. Don't you?"

Dean shrugs and shakes his head. She can see the drunken gleam in his oak eyes. "Nah. Never did." He looks at his hands, lips pursed. How do I say... "Katherine—"

"Before you say whatever you're about to say," she interrupts. "Can you please just think it over before you do? You're drunk." Her request isn't rude. It's actually a little wise. But Dean takes it as an acidic, calloused blow, and his knuckles tighten on the chair.

"I'm going out of my mind here," he whispers. "And you won't even look at me?"

Slowly, she sets her pen down, pushes her journal away from herself, and looks up at him with crossed arms. "So we're fighting," she murmurs. 

"Why does everything have to be a fight?" Dean whispers.

"Because you always want one."

His eyes search her face for a long few moments. Katherine can't see much behind the drunken glassiness of them. "Do I..." His eyebrows knit together, and he swallows. "What you said a few weeks ago...the night you died." She flinches. The most she's been affected in his presence since before. "You said you love me. Did you mean it?"

Her eyebrows furrow, and for a moment, Dean thinks she's angry. "Dean—"

"Did you mean it?"

She's quiet for a few moments. "Yes."

"Then why doesn't it feel like it?"

Katherine stares at him, lips slowly parting, probably in disbelief. "Why doesn't it feel like it?" She scoffs.

"Any time I'm around you...I can't think straight," he hisses. "You walk into the room and I'm...I'm all fucked up!" Katherine's chest is heaving. "I smell you, I see you...I can't..." This isn't coming out right. "I can't breathe. I can't think. And you just sit there...and you stare at me...and you keep thinking. And you keep breathing." 

They stare at each other for several long moments. 

"I'm with Charlie, Dean. You can call me a lot of things, but unfaithful is never going to be one of them." His eyes begin to burn. Then she shakes her head. "But I guess that's a lie, when that's all I've been the past few weeks." His ears are ringing. He doesn't even hear what she said. "I think about you all the time, Dean. I think about you when you're sitting right next to me. I think about you when you're gone...I have to breathe when you're around, because one day you won't be...and then what?" She crosses her arms tightly, tears brimming in her burning blue eyes. "We're going to be trying to figure out how to adjust without you here. I'm not...I'm not letting myself got comfortable with the idea of you being here because you won't be. I'm not gonna do that to myself, and I'm not gonna do that to Charlie. Can't you understand that?"

"I just want to know my life meant something..."

"It does," Katherine softly chuckles. "It means the world to me...to Sam. Dean, you are my life," she murmurs. Dean feels his chest tighten again, his throat close on itself, as tears squeeze into his eyes. "So can you put yourself in my shoes, just for a minute?" Her tear-filled gray eyes stay locked on his. "What if it was me in your situation? You'd...go behind my back and do everything in your power to fix this, just like you did to bring Sam back. So...if you let me and Sam help you..." Katherine inhales deeply and stares at Dean for a moment.

It was quite possibly the longest moment of his life. The suspense, having a general idea of what she'd say, but how she'd say it...what she would agree too. What her terms were.

This is a negotiation. A negotiation that doesn't have time to begin, because both hunters recognize Sam's voice right outside the door.

"Shiiiiit." Fumbling with the key. Katherine pulls her journal back. Dean stands up straight.

Negotiation over.

Sam finally gets the door open. "Watch the salt," is the first thing katherine says.

"Shit." Sam sways, rubs his eyes, and stares down at the salt line right before his boots.  "Mhm." He takes a wider-than-necessary step over the line. He shuts the door and primly turns the lock, draws the chain, before he turns around again with that stupid drunken smile and glassy eyes.

Katherine finds it in herself to smile a little. 

"You and Mindy have a few too many?"

"I am fine," Sam enthusiastically says. "She's a great story-teller."

Katherine leans back into her chair, crossing her arms with a slight smile. "So you like her, huh?" 

"Minny's great."

"Mindy."

"Yeah." Sam nods, brows furrowed. "That's what I said."

"Yeah, yeah. Get some sleep, princess. We hit the road in a few hours."

Katherine's head rolls back onto the wall with a quiet thump, and she lets out a heavy sigh. "You know what?"

"What?"

"I am twenty-one years old and I have never been to Canada."

Dean shrugs, still tasting acid on his tongue. "I'm twenty-eight. Haven't been to Canada."

Katherine raises a challenging eyebrow. "We're three hours from the border. I want to see a moose."

"America has moose. There are moose in northern Minnesota—they're not very impressive."

"Dude, can we just go to Canada for, like, five minutes? I demand maple syrup."

"Since when are you so stereotypical?"

"Why are you so against going to Canada?"

"Canada's the attic child of North America," Dean deadpans. Katherine gapes.

"Why're you always so grumpy?" Sam sighs, shrugging out of his jacket. He hits the bathroom before anyone can answer. The shower turns on. Sam's booming, nonsensical voice echoes off the tile. 

"Do you know how your parents met?" Dean finds himself asking. He's staring at nothing, at the wall, running his thumb over his lower lip.

Katherine stares at her journal for a moment. "It's not the most romantic of things," she gently warns. "She was out on P.T., and my dad was on a hunt. A werewolf. It came right at my mom, but he stopped it. She wasn't very freaked out, and when he asked why, she said it was because she'd seen a lot more scary things in the past few months than a guy tripping on acid." They both chuckle. "So he took care of business, she cleaned up, and they went and had a few drinks. A few drinks turned into long-distance phone calls...then he asked her to marry her." Katherine shrugs. "That was in '84. A few years before me." She stares at her handwriting, contemplative...thinking about her father, when she hadn't for quite some time now. "What about your parents?"

"I, uh..." Dean frowns. "I don't know. My dad never really...talked about her. If he did, it was to talk about the fire. To...remind us, I guess, why we live the way we do."

It's a bit demoralizing, if he's honest, thinking back on he and Katherine. They don't have a damsel-in-distress story, or even a damoiseau, nor will they even. Only a B&E and some wine. Sure, a couple of ass-savings and an iron bat... Dean's brows furrow. "Where did you get that iron bat you love so much?"

Katherine lazily smiles. "I know a welder. Asked if I could do a special order."

Dean nods once, expression pensive. "And, uh...did you actually ever play softball?"

She frowns. "I was the only girl in Little League."