"What the hell, Katherine?"
"Oh, this is my fault?" Katherine asks, wildly waving her arms about the taped-off crime scene. "I went across the street to get some food and when I turn around, I see some chick throwing another chick against this car, now the windshield's bloody and this girl's dead and Dean's in there chatting some other chick up, and I'm—!"
"Okay, okay," Sam murmurs, putting his hands on Katherine's shoulders. The young woman releases a heavy breath, pressing her fingers together, and pulls through air in a calming motion. Sam shakes his head. "Where did you say Dean was?"
"Inside," Katherine sighs, and follows after Sam into the store.
Now they're going to be really late getting to Sophia's.
Dean turns from a young blonde to the both of them. Katherine's brow quirks and she stares as the other blonde passes her by. "Easy, tiger," Dean says, patting her on the shoulder.
"What are you doing?" Katherine flatly asks.
"Comforting the bereaved," Dean answers. "What are you doing?"
"Working," she answers, rocking onto her toes, and shoves her hands into her pockets. "Ya know, possible demon attack twenty feet thataway," she stabs her thumb over her shoulder. "And you're, uh, talking to some blonde bimbo—"
Dean's brows knit together, a small smirk tugs at his lips. "Since when are you so...territorial?"
Katherine's glare is lethal.
"Whoa—Bobby?" Sam says, and the older man passes the three younger hunters. "Lookin' spiffy."
"The last I saw you in a suit was 1999," Dean snorts.
Bobby sighs. "Shaddup," he says, straightening his tie out.
"What were you?" She asks. Glancing over the mirror, she notices a black bulb attached to one of the wooden rafters of the little boutique.
Finally, a break. It's a surveillance camera.
"Attorney for the D.A.'s office," Bobby answers. "I just spoke to the suspect."
Katherine's brows shoot up. "Yeah?"
"I don't think she was possessed—there were none of the usual signs, she just...really wanted those shoes."
"Yeah, and I've wanted the last pair of white chucks pretty damn badly before, but driven to the point of murder?"
Bobby shrugs. "I spilled a glass of holy water on her just to be sure."
The youngest hunter lets out a sigh and drops her head back. "Well maybe she's just a whackjob," Dean suggests.
"Yeah, if it had just been an isolated incident," Katherine says, putting her hands on her hips, and glances around. "First the family, now this?"
"Kat's right," Bobby agrees.
"I can't remember a time I was wrong," Katherine chirps.
"I can," Dean hums. "A few times, actually, beginning with when you thought I was a perv."
Katherine's brow furrows. "You are."
"What did you guys find?" Bobby asks, leaning towards the arguing couple to effectively redirect the conversation.
"Sammy and I did a little investigating outside," Katherine volunteers. "I don't know what Dean found, but I found kaput. No sulfur or anything. I did, however, notice that camera above our heads." The boys all look up and she smiles in a tight-lipped manner, her eyes squinting like they normally do, but this smile is very sarcastic in nature. She turns on her toes and heads for the front desk, reaching into the back pocket of her very tight jeans. Dean wonders how she fits anything in those pockets.
"Hey," he murmurs, stepping closer to her. "You got, say, five minutes?" He quietly asks in her ear. Katherine smirks, leaning away from him, glances him up and down, and starts back for the desk. "What's that mean?"
She leans her palms against the edge of the counter, and the female behind the desk turns away from the computer monitor. "Hiya." Katherine drops her badge out. "Officer Russell—we're gonna need access to your surveillance tapes."
The meek brunette quickly nods, fumbling at the lanyard of keys around her neck, and rushes off to the back. The Brains—Sam and Katherine—sit at the monitors and replay the footage as they wish, scrolling back until Bobby identifies the suspect, and Dean goes...to the bathroom.
"Anything yet?" Dean asks.
"Dunno," Katherine hums with a smirk, leaning back in the chair with crossed arms. She nods to the monitor Sam currently is playing the footage on. "Could just be a guy, or it could be our guy."
Dean watches a man, perhaps in his thirties, with brown hair and a beard, walk up to the blonde woman in question. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and they both look at the victim, standing by a tier of shoes.
Katherine tilts her head back and raises a brow at Dean. He tilts his head down to look at her. "Sammy?" Katherine hums.
"Yeah."
"Could you make a printout of that mug up there?" She asks. "Four copies. We're going to a stakeout."
Sam and Bobby take one end of town, Katherine and Dean start on the other. They all ask around about the guy from the store. What his name is, where he hangs out, who his friends are.
But there's no action for Dean and Katherine. Not the literal kind, or the kind that would get Dean laid. She hasn't so much as grazed his hand.
Sam feels like he's being followed. Bobby says he's just paranoid. Fear for Dean translating into his own head.
Katherine sits in the passenger seat of the Impala, arms crossed tightly over her chest as she glares at the side entrance of some skeezy bar.
"That bar never did nothin' to ya," Dean says to her, turning his chin back to the green awning.
"That awning is hideous."
Dean laughs, throwing his head back. When he laughs like that, it's contagious, at least to Katherine. She'd always look at him and smile genuinely, eyes all squinted and bright, wrinkled at the corners. Her lips seemed to pull wider, her dimples dig deeper and longer. Everything with Dean is genuine. The happiness, the sad times, when she's raving mad. Since their first car ride together, everything had been genuine.
Dean stares ahead, drumming his fingertips against the steering wheel, and purses his lips. A thought has been eating away at him for a little while now. At first it was a thought. Now it's a bit of a panic. Staring into the opaque red eyes of that crossroads demon is when he really thought about it. A brief flicker. But it rooted deep into his memory, and he thought of it every time he saw Katherine smile.
He wouldn't be able to see any fine lines appear on her skin. He wouldn't watch her hair turn silver, or thin out. Hell, he may not even see the day she cuts it all off. He wouldn't see her carrying a laundry basket full of clothes, or roll toys into a closet when company came over.
"Can I ask you something?" Dean asks as he turns his head towards her.
"You just did." Katherine smirks, her dark blue eyes flitting to the side. "'Course you can."
"Do you want a family?"
Her smile fades a bit. It's still there, but her voice is flatter. She's a bit puzzled. "What?"
"A family. You know?"
Katherine's lips anxiously twitch. "Dean, I've got a family. You and Sam and Bobby and Soph and—"
"No, I meant a family of your own," he says.
Katherine's smile fully fades this time, and she adjusts her whole body to face forward. "What you said in Galveston," she begins, and her brow quirks. "You, uh...you were serious."
"Yeah," Dean murmurs.
"Dean, I told you, after this demon nonsense—"
"Can I..." He takes a deep breath. "Can I tell you something?"
After a moment, Katherine responds. "Always."
"It scared me," he says, staring down at the old leather steering wheel. "When I was bargaining with that demon at the crossroads, the first thing I thought of was...I'd never get the chance to watch you grow up. Into a real adult, y'know? Out of your twenties. I kind of...felt panic, I guess. I would't see Sam grow up, either. And what would I be leaving behind? A car?"
"More than that," Katherine says to him. "You've changed so many people's lives, Dean—"
"But why does mine have to go this way?" He asks. "Why can't I be the guy to have a family?"
"You don't want that," she almost chuckles. "You've never wanted that. You just—you think you want it, like some flash sale or somethin'."
"I've always wanted to be normal, Katherine," Dean protests. "I want to leave something that—that matters, y'know?"
"Dean, your impact on those people's lives—"
"Is nothing when it comes to you." Katherine steadily gazes upon him. The tightness of his jaw, the glass look of his green eyes. "What's gonna happen to you when I'm gone?"
"If we get you out of the deal, then you won't have to worry—"
"I'm not getting out of it, though!" Dean cries. Katherine almost jumps. He'd raised his voice at her. "It's not going away," he softly says.
"If you weren't so stubborn, Sam and I could figure something out," Katherine insists.
"That's not the point."
"So your point," Katherine hums, not without an edge to her voice. "Is...you want to have a child...only to maybe watch it be born—maybe. And then you're going to leave it to the mother to take care of it for the rest of her life? To make her watch that child grow up and see you in his face? That's the worst torture, Dean, is not being able to share those things with you. The memories she would make."
"That you would make. That's my last wish, Katherine. I want you and Sam to be happy! So anything I can do, I want to do it."
"I told you my terms," she murmurs, wiping at her nose as she faces forward. "I told you, I'm not having kids out of wedlock. Dad probably thinks everyone who has premarital sex is going to Hell anyway, so maybe I'll see you in the pit."
"Don't say that. Don't you say that." They sit in silence for a while.
"You think now is the time to bring a kid into the world?" Katherine asks. "I mean, what, I'm about to go break Charlie's heart and then come back in a year, maybe with your kid, and just expect him to—"
"I'm running out of time, Katherine."
Her voice is growing hysterical. "It doesn't have to be that way—"
"I can't argue this with you any more," he says. "If I find some way out of the deal, bad things happen to you and Sam! I can't take that, Katherine! Then I'm the person who's left to deal with both of you being gone."
"So how is that not the same thing Sam and I talk about with coping with you being gone?" Katherine retorts, and turns her head to look at him with teary eyes. Her voice is steady, though. "And why—" She anxiously licks her lips. "How can you expect me to deal with you being gone if there's a kid that's half you when I barely survived the past year without you?" Katherine wipes the heel of her palm underneath her eye. "Come talk to me when we get all of these demons back in Hell, yeah?"
"Marry me," Dean says.
"Dean, you never wanted—"
"Marry me."
"No." Katherine shakes her head. "No. I'm not marrying you on a-a-a whim! An impulse!" Katherine crosses her arms. "Because when you're gone, I'll be a widow—at twenty-two, and maybe with a newborn. I'm not doing that to myself. I'm not." She shakes her head again, pushing herself into the furthest corner of the Impala. "I'm not gonna go break up with Charlie to be with you for a year and then run back to him! And even if we did get married, it couldn't be legal. You're on the freaking FBI's most wanted list. You think I want Big Brother on my ass for the rest of my life?"
It's definitely not how Dean thought the conversation would go. But, of course, he had to open his stupid mouth and push her away even more.
In truth, the idea of marriage is terrifying to her. That level of commitment is far different than dating someone. That's legal. It's a piece of paper and witnesses. And she knows the marriage her parents had was so dysfunctional, just as her family was, but what if that had been hers, too? Besides, hunters just don't do that. Get married. That's such a vulnerability, a weak spot.
Dean shifts in his seat, twiddling his thumbs, and he purses his lips. "Chapstick or Vaseline?" When Katherine doesn't answer, he turns his head to her. She sniffs, tilting her head away from him further.
"Vaseline," she says. "Chapstick sucks." Dean smiles a bit, short-lived. "Break half the bones in your body or get hunted by a demon?"
"Oh, God, give me the demon." There's a brief pause. "You ever broken a bone?"
Katherine shakes her head. "Well...when I was younger, I played softball. I'm convinced the ball broke my pinky once, when I went to catch it, but my dad thought it was just a good jam. I couldn't move that sucker and it was purple the whole way through." She glances down to her right hand and holds it up. "There's a bit more extra effort there to straighten my pinky out. See, when it's just held up like this, there's a bit of a curve in it?" Dean nods, and she holds her left hand up for comparison. He reaches over to her right hand and slips Julia Donovan's diamond ring from Katherine's finger, and he turns the band over in his palm. Katherine watches him for a moment, a bit of remorse clouding her heart, and she faces forward.
Sam slaps his palm up against the window and Katherine jumps, instantly drawing her gun.
"Easy!" Sam almost laughs, holding his hands up, and he moves into the backseat with Bobby.
"What the hell, Sam?" Katherine says through her teeth, slipping that diamond ring back over her finger. The velvet band around Katherine's neck strains as her tendon flexes, and Dean sees the smallest peek of the silver floral chain underneath that strip of fabric. Her saint medals. "That's not funny!"
"Yeah, yeah."
"What'd you find?"
"You first."
"Nothing," Katherine says.
"Well," Dean begins, holding up the screen grab from the surveillance footage. "We spent all day canvassing this stupid town with this guy's stupid mug, and supposedly, he drinks at this stupid bar. Unless that's counted as nothing."
"It is."
Dean nods. "Then we've got nada. You?"
Sam smiles proudly. "His name is Walter Rosen. He's from a town west of Chicago called Oak Park, and went missing about a week ago."
"Around the time that gate opened?" Katherine asks, and Sam nods in confirmation.
"That night exactly."
She nods. "Uncanny."
"You think he's possessed?" Dean asks.
"It's a good bet," Sam answers.
Katherine is frowning, a bit skeptical of the whole thing. "So what," she begins. He just touches someone and they go mental?"
"Those demons that got out of that gate," Bobby says ,"are going to be able to do all sorts of things we ain't never seen before."
"Hey, hey, hey," Dean hums, squinting at a car across the lot. "That him?"
Katherine faces forward, eyes narrowing a bit as she watches a man climb from the rain-covered vehicle. The facial hair is the same as the man in this photograph, and he wears the same clothes. "Looks like it."
"Showtime."
"Hang on, hang on," she says, reaching across to put her hand on his chest. He doesn't look down at it, but he feels his heart leap at her touch.
"What?"
"What did Bobby just say?" Katherine asks, turning to face Dean with an incredulous expression, then she shrugs. "We don't know what this guy can do. We should tail him until we know for sure."
"Katherine's right," Bobby agrees.
Dean gawks between the two. "What, so we just sit here with our junk in our hands?"
"We're no good dead," Katherine says, watching the man—Walter—enter the bar. "And we're not gonna—" she stops, leaning forward with narrowed eyes.
"What?" Bobby asks.
"Aw, Hell," Katherine snarls. "Tamara and Isaac just showed up."
"So we're going in?" Dean asks.
"No," the younger woman scoffs. "No way am I getting in the middle of those two and that demon. That's like the space between a rock and a hard place. No." She shakes her head. "We'll help 'em if they need it." She sits for a moment, rubbing her fingertips together, and gnaws on her lower lip. "Okay—we're going in, but we need a plan."
"We need to get that demon out of Walter," Sam says.
"Is that even an option, at this point?"
"We need to try."
Katherine runs her hands over her hair. "There's a devil's trap in the trunk," Bobby says.
"What, you want us to hogtie 'em in the middle of that bar and carry him outside?" Katherine asks. "I don't think that would be taken too lightly."
Bobby shrugs. "Then I'll back the car into there."
"And risk hitting someone?"
"Kid, we can't have it both ways!"
"I know, I know!" Katherine cries. She lets out a heavy breath. "I'll go in and get Walter alone. If I'm not back in two minutes, run the bastard down." She throws her door open.
"Wait, Katherine—"
She shuts the door behind her, holding her hand up to motion for everyone to stay put, and quickly starts up the wet blacktop. Katherine pulls on the door, but it doesn't budge. So she pushes—still, it doesn't budge. She steps away from the door and gazes about, looking for another entrance. She rounds to the back of the building and finds a small window that perhaps leads into a bathroom in the bar. She scales up onto the dumpsters, kicks the glass in, nudges the rest out of the frame, and slips inside. With her heart racing in her chest, she bursts from the bathroom and into the main area of the bar.
At least five individuals turn to her, malicious smiles on their faces, and their eyes turn black.
"Look at what the Kat dragged in," a blonde hums, then she purrs.
Isaac is on the floor in a pool of red and yellow, beside a white jug of something—Katherine's initial guess isn't a good one, but when she looks away, it registers.
Cleaning agent.
Katherine reaches for the holy water in her jacket, squirt gun forgotten, and quickly spins the cap off. That's when Bobby's poor Chevelle rams into the bar, just feet away from her, sending shrapnel everywhere.
Bobby and Sam scramble from the Chevelle. Katherine runs towards the herd of demons, throwing holy water this way and that to get their eyes off of her. "Tamara, come on!" She shouts, reaching for the older woman, and pulls her to the car.
"No, Isaac—!"
"He's dead! Get in the car, let's go! We've gotta go!" Sam puts his body between Katherine and Tamara and pushes the other woman towards Bobby's car. "Katherine, get in!"
Bobby has just climbed back into the driver's seat, and Katherine is out of holy water, face-to-face with Walter Black Eyes. He laughs, watching her turn the flask upside down, and lunges. Katherine swings her left leg around to kick Walter, and she's pulling up on the trunk the whole while. She throws her right hand into Walter's jaw, hooks him into a chokehold, and wrangles him into Bobby's trunk before slamming the lid shut. Then she bounds for the passenger door. She barely has time to sit down before Bobby presses the pedal to the metal.
"A lot more demons than I expected!" Katherine shouts. Tamara is wailing in the backseat. "Where's Dean?!"
"In the Impala," Sam tells her. Katherine twists around, and sure enough, Dean is following closely behind.
It's a mad dash back to Tamara's home, the only place readily equipped to handle a demon. Katherine is quick about the transport. Sam helps her lead him into the house, and Dean helps her tie Walter to a chair underneath the devil's trap. Sam and Bobby are calming Tamara down in one of the other rooms, but her voice is easily heard. She isn't crying any more—she's angry.
"I left my husband bloody on the floor!" She shouts.
"I understand that," Sam is saying to her. "But we can't go back!"
"Fine," Tamara says. "You stay, but I'm heading back to that bar!"
"I'll go with her," Katherine volunteers.
"That's suicide!" Sam cries, hazel eyes popping wide open.
"I'll go," Dean asserts. "I'm dead already."
"Absolutely not!" Katherine says. "That's the attitude that's gonna get you killed before your time!"
"How is it any better than you going, huh?"
"You guys can't kill em!" Sam shouts over the other two. Katherine runs her hands over her hair. "And they're not gonna wait in line to be exorcised!"
"I don't care!" Tamara cries.
"We don't even know how many of them are there!" Sam says to her.
"Seven," Katherine says. She's quite calm, actually, and her tone is almost a bit realizing. The men watch, puzzled, as she sways a bit, and it all clicks into place in Bobby's head, too. "I counted seven."
"Do you have any idea who we're up against here?" Bobby snarls.
"No," Dean says with a bit of attitude in his tone. "Who?"
"The seven deadly sins!"
There's a heavy silence over the hunters for a moment. Katherine actually sits down on some end table in the dining room. And, Dean being the comedic one of the two—at the moment—smirks. "What's in the boooooxxx?" He sings. Katherine looks up at him with a furrowed brow and squinted eyes. Dean glances to Sam and Bobby, both wearing mirror puzzled expressions of Katherine's. "Brad Pitt, Se7en? No?"
She exhales slowly through her nose. "Dean—"
"Sorry." Bobby throws a book at Dean. "What's this?"
"Binsfield's classification of demons," Bobby answers.
"No shit," Katherine chirps, leaping off of the end table, and moves to stand beside Dean as he thumbs through the pages.
"What's this?" Dean asks again.
"In 1589, Binsfield I.D.'d the seven sins," Katherine explains, eyes scanning over the illustrations on one page, small script on another. "Not just as human vices, but actual devils. This book was like my bed time story," she laughs.
"That family," Sam realizes. "They were touched by Sloth. And the shopper—"
"Envy," Katherine hums, then nods her head to the side. "Our friend Walter?"
"I don't give a rat's ass if they're the Three Stooges or the Four Tops!" Tamara cries. "I'm going to slaughter every last one of them!"
Katherine and Dean glance to each other. "Four Tops?" She murmurs with a slight shrug.
"I think they were a quartet," Dean quietly answers.
"Ah," she hums. "All right, Tamara, we already tried it your way. You walked in there half-cocked, and look where it got us, huh?" Katherine puts her hands on her hips. "These demons haven't been topside in five hundred years. Dark Age stuff, all right, stuff nobody here has seen, or come up against anything close to this. A bunch of these new-age demons are watered-down and they still deliver an ass-kicking. So let's put the brakes on this puppy and figure out what we're gonna do next." Tamara starts for the door and Katherine lunges after her. Tamara whirls around, gripping Katherine's wrist, and twists her arm behind her back, slamming her up against the wall, cheek flush against the beam. Katherine grunts, swinging her leg behind Tamara's knees, and takes advantage of the weakness there, pushing back with all of her weight, and pins Tamara underneath her. After a brief tussle, Tamara is on her stomach with her hands behind her back.
All of this happened in less than three seconds, and none of the men reacted.
"I am sorry about Isaac," Katherine snarls through her teeth. Her voice is low. She shifts her weight from sitting on Tamara to her knees. Tamara throws Katherine off of her, onto the ground, and the older woman storms into the other room. Katherine huffs, running her hands over her ponytail, and Dean pulls her to her feet.