𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄

Failed.

The word clanged around her brain as she sat at the bar. Peanut butter whiskey burned her throat, but she prefers that burn to the burn of the word "failure." She doesn't know why she's thinking about it so much. Well, she does.

She knows in her heart that the demon she struck a deal with, that black-eyed bitch, negotiated in bad faith. Her deal with the demon didn't go through. There's no way it did.

The word reminds her of her teenage years, not that they were so far off. She remembers a hunt that went sideways when she was fifteen. The monster of Bear Lake in Utah. Her dad almost lost an arm because Katherine assembled a reel herself. He didn't check her work, but it was her fault. Failure. Getting kicked out of Yale her first spring semester. Failure.

The word failure burns like something worse than whiskey.

It burns like a brand. A big scarlet F on her chest.

"You feel like you have a scarlet letter?" Katherine asks, resting her head on Sam's shoulder.

"A big fat 'F'" Sam says into his glass. She gasps, sitting up straight.

"Me too!"

"What the hell, you two?"

Katherine swivels around in her chair at the sound of Dean's voice behind them. Hard green eyes flit between her and Sam. "What?"

"What are you doing?"

Katherine lifts her glass. "Havin' a drink."

"Havin' a drink," Sam parrots, taps his glass against Katherine's, and the two down the last quarter ounce of their whiskey. He taps his glass on the bar twice, and the bartender grabs the handle of peanut butter whiskey.

"Having a drink?" Dean echoes. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon!"

"So?" Katherine chirps.

"And you're drinking whiskey?"

"I drink whiskey all the time," she and Sam say in unison.

Dean frimaces. "No, you don't." He jabs Sam's shoulder with his index finger. Then he gestures to Katherine. "You I don't know about anymore."

Anymore.

It made Katherine sad.

"What's the big deal, Dean?" She sighs, all humor in her voice drained. "You get sloppy in bars all the time. Sam and I aren't even sloppy."

"No," Dean scoffs. "You're sloshy."

She frowns at him. "I am not."

"How much have you two had to drink?"

Katherine stares at her glass before looking to Sam. He just shrugs, refusing to let his brother berrate him for something else. Dean lets out a long, frustrated sigh. When Sam looks at Katherine again, her blue eyes are shiny, cast down to the sticky bartop. He moves his hand from the top of the bar and rests it on her knee. Katherine sniffs.

"Oh boy." Dean clears his throat and shoves between the two's chairs. "Hey, can I get whatever they're drinking, double?" He casts a glance to a drunky-crying Katherine Louise. "And a really big water. Hey, why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying," she says through her teeth. Willing it.

"We're working through our emotions," Sam says, positively empty.

Dean frowns. "The hell does that mean?"

"Dean, neither of us can save you," he says. "We've tried." Dean's spine is on fire, and he spins to look at Katherine.

"You tried again, didn't you?" She doesn't say anything. She doesn't even look at him. Those reddened eyes are staring at the back of the bar, bits of fringe cluding her peripheral. "Didn't you?" Wildly, Dean looks to Sam. "What did you do?" Sam doesn't answer. "If either of you two...made a fucking deal...I'm going to kill you."

"Told you," Sam chirps. Katherine scoffs and shakes her head, turning away from Dean ever so slightly. She pushes herself away from the bar and angrily heads for the bathroom, leaving her phone on the bartop.

"What?" Dean asks.

"No one can save you, Dean."

"Yeah, I've been trying to tell you idiots—"

"No." Sam looks at his brother with hard blue eyes. "No one can save you because you don't want to be saved." Dean's water and whiskey gets set in front of him. Sam waits until the bartender is gone to start speaking again. "How can you care so little about yourself? What's wrong with you?"

Dean chuckles. "Gonna need a lot more whiskey for this." He throws his ounce back and sighs. The burn takes some of the twitches out of his fingers. Soothes him.

Then Katherine's phone starts to ring on the bartop.

When she returns from the bathroom, Sam is closing out their tab. "Dean's in the car," he says, shoving his wallet into his pocket. "We've gotta go."

"Why, what happened?" She asks. She feels numb as she accepts her cell phone from Sam. "How did you have this?"

"Bobby's in a hospital about an hour from here."

Katherine frowns. "We're not anywhere near Sioux Falls."

"I know," Sam sighs, putting an arm around her shoulder, and pulls her forward.

✕

"We've run every test we can think of. He seems perfectly healthy."

"Yeah, except he's comatose," Katherine seethes, wildly gesturing to Bobby in the hospital bed. He isn't intubated. He didn't need a defibrillator. He's on an IV and that's it. And she's angry at the doctor. She rubs her forehead and sighs. "I'm...I'm sorry."

"Miss Donovan...you're his emergency contact," Dr. Gooding says. "Are there any illnesses or allergies we need to know about?"

"No," she scoffs. "No, he's had the flu one time in my whole life." She puts her hands on her hips and stares at Bobby. "You did a CT?"

"That was the first thing we did," he nods.

"And his bloodwork's fine."

"It's perfectly normal," Dr. Gooding confirms.

"Okay but...if he's comatose, for no good reason, then it has to be something with his brain," Katherine insists. "Swelling?" Dr. Gooding shakes his head. "A bleed?"

"Are you in the field?"

"Yeah, kind of."

"Valedictorian of her class," Dean says.

"That's not a thing," Katheirne whispers.

"I mean, kind of—"

"So you don't know what's causing it," Katherine says. "That means you don't know how you treat it."

"That is correct."

Slowly, she nods. "All right. All right, thank you."

"What do you think?" Sam murmurs. Katherine waits for the door to close before she stalks over to the cabinets, opening every door and drawer until she finds Bobby's personal belongings.

"I'm thinking the reason he's in Pittsburgh is because he found a case and no one else could take it," she says. Then she starts muttering obscentities under her breath about how an old man shouldn't be hunting anymore and he needed to do whatever the hell she told him to do because she knows best. She digs through his wallet before finding a receipt. "He checked into a motel here three days ago."

Bobby's room was nothing short of insignificant. It looked like no one was even there, and they would've thought they had the wrong room if it weren't for his empty duffle on the other side of the bed. No newspaper clippings...not so much as a beer can.

Katherine snaps her fingers and turns to the closet. She never hung her clothes up in motel rooms, but her father did. Bobby did. Sam watches her move in double time. She yanks the door open and tugs on the cord hanging from the ceiling. Clothes...she moves them aside. Yahtzee.

"Good ol' Bobby, always covering his tracks," Dean mumbles, coming to stand beside her. "The hell is all of this? Silene Capensis...which, shocker, means absolutely nothing to me. Brains?" He looks to Katherine and Sam.

"Buncha herbs," Katherine murmurs. "That one's African dream root. Got an obit." She tugs the clipping from its thumbtack in the wall. "Doctor Walter Gregg, 64, university neurologist...just went to sleep and didn't wake up. Just like Bobby." She hands the paper to Sam with a sigh and shifts her weight. "So...Bobby was hunting something, and then it started hunting him. Uh...you two stay here, see if you vcan make any sense of this."

Sam frowns at her. "Where are you going?"

Katherine flicks the obituary. "Gonna look into the good doctor himself. Dean—" He tosses the car keys to her without a question. She grabs their bags and moves everything into Bobby's room.

"Why don't you take Dean with you?" Sam suggests. "May be better with two people where you're going." Katherine glances to Dean, who hasn't looked at her, and nods.

✕

"You're Doctor Gregg's lab assistant."

"That's right."

"His death must've come as a shock to you." Katherine's striking blue eyes flit about the office as she nears the desk.

"Yeah, it did. But still, it's what you wish for." Helen shrugs. "To go in your sleep—peaceful."

"And he studied sleeping disorders?" Dean asks, looking down at a journal on the subject. The man's desk is littered with books and journals, published studies. Walls are decorated with accolades and photographs.

"I don't understand," Helen says with a frown. "I went over this with the other detective."

Katherine frowns, turning to look at the woman, and glances to Dean. He has the same speculative look on his face. "You already spoke to another detective?"

Helen nods. "Yes. A very nice older man with a beard."

"Oh," Dean hums. "Well, would you mind going over it again?"

"The thing is, I'm kinda busy. Maybe we could do this later?"

Katherine's eyes narrow a little, and she runs her tongue over her teeth. "Sure," she chirps, smiling her hunter's smile. Lethal. Helen is in her crosshairs. "Yeah, we can just bring you down to the station later this afternoon and get your statement on tape. Y'know—official-like."

Helen hangs her head in defeat for a moment before holding her hands up in surrender. "Look—I didn't know about Doctor Gregg's experiments, okay? Not until I was cleaning out his files."

"Sleep experiments."

"No one knew. Not the university, not anybody." Helen crosses her arms. "I already spoke with a lawyer, and he told me I couldn't be held liable for anything."

"Maybe not liable," Katherine hums in agreement, nearing the graduate assistant. "But if you withhold information—any information—you will be charged with obstruction." In her heels, she towers over Helen, cold blue eyes looking down her nose at the woman.

Dean shifts a bit.

Helen sighs, rubbing her temples. "Look, I'm just a grad student. This was a gig to cover tuition!"

"Want to know how you will not be charged with obstruction?" Katherine lightly asks with a sharp smile. "Hand over all of the doctor's research."

One file box later, Katherine is sauntering to the elevator with Dean right beside her. He leans against the railing after hitting the button for the lobby and looks her way.

"You were pretty freakin' incredible," he says.

She smiles a little unsurely, shly, which is a marvel in and of itself. "Oh. Thanks." Her bangs fall from the rest of her hair and shield her eyes, but the pink in her cheeks is undeniable. "Pull a couple of big words with big threats and...people kind of turn to mush."

Dean offers her a small smile and looks to the elevator doors. "How's your headache?"

Katherine blows air through her lips. "Raging. Wanna get a drink while we look through the files?"

"Think Sam will be mad we didn't invite him?"

She chuckles. "No. He's...I don't think he wants to drink again any time soon. He's too much like me when I'm drunk anymore."

Dean's brow furrows, and the elevator dings. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, well...there's a lot to be sad about. Alcohol doesn't numb things for a lot of people...just brings it to the surface." She pushes out of the elevator with Dean behind her. "I don't think he wants to think about it anymore. No use, ya know?"

Dean lets it marinate as they sip on their whiskey and flip through journals. Katherine diligently makes notes, but Dean's mind wanders, kind of like the Impala on a two-lane.

"Hey." Dean clears his throat and sits up a little straighter. Katherine peers up at him and sets her glass on the table.

"Find something?" She asks.

"No. Well, not quite. But that's not what I wanted to talk about." He clears his throat again. "I...am sorry." Katherine's gaze melts, her face turns soft. Pity. Dean resists the urge to mortar the cement wall he wants to put up. "I don't know if I've apologized for it. And the fact that I don't know is pretty shitty."

"Apologized for what?" She asks.

"What I did to you." Dean stares at his glass, chewing on his lip. "To us. I tore us apart."

"Dean," Katherine sighs. "You've apologized plenty. There's no point in rehashing something that's been rehashed time and time again."

"Yeah, there is. I haven't done you justice."

"There's no justice to do, Dean," she states, voice hardening. "What happened with us is in the past. The best thing to do, for everyone, is to move forward." Katherine swallows. "I've forgiven you, but I don't think you've forgiven yourself."

"I don't think it's a forgivable offense, Katherine Louise."

"Don't call me that," she says into her glass. "I hate it when you say my name like that."

He raises a humorous brow. "Katherine Louise?"

"No, like...like condescending, but...not." She shakes her head. "Stop apologizing about it, Dean. Let yourself heal."

"Open wounds don't really heal."

"They do if you stop picking at the scab." She lowers her eyes to the journal she's reading.

"Have you thought about what'll happen a few years from now?"

Katherine sets her pen down and stares at Dean. "What?"

"You told me at your wedding you wouldn't give up hunting down every last demon on the face of the earth," he chuckles. "I don't like getting in the way of you when you're angry, so I believe you. But...when a soul goes to Hell...it doesn't come back the same way it was when it went in, you know?" Her eyebrows knit together, and he sighs. "I'm going to be like Ruby one day. Like Meg. Black-eyed, black-hearted. I'm going to be the thing you hunt." His green eyes meet hers. They're broken. "I want you to have Ruby's knife and be ready for the day we meet again."

Katherine's blue eyes scour his face for a few long moments. "You're miserable when you're buzzed, you know that?"