So i have a new aim, if I'm not going to get thoroughly Kripke'd by the time I'm done with the verse. I need to get a chapter up every other day. Fortunately the family drama has calmed down a little so that I can try and get it done. Reviews always help though!

Would you mind if I killed you?
Would you mind if I tried to?
Cause you have turned into my worst enemy
You carry hate that I feel
It's over now
What have you done

Katie shoots upright on the moth eaten sofa, the image of her hand dragging a knife across a child's throat still fills her mind and she shudders. They have been in this hovel, wasting time, for nearly a month. She cannot do this anymore, cannot hide and wait for Dean to get himself together. She needs to be out there, she needs to be fighting to get her life back, not listening to Dean have nightmares and Castiel question everything that he has ever known.

She flings the mouldering blanket off and over the back of the sofa, setting sock covered feet on the floor and pads from the sitting room to the kitchen, goes to the fridge and pulls out a carton of juice. As she leans against the sink and takes a drink, Katie considers the situation she now finds herself in. Dean is almost ready to go back out on the road. Almost, though she does not believe for a second that they will go after Lucifer straight away, no matter what she and Dean may want, because the hunter is in no condition to fight at the moment and Castiel is still concerned that Dean will relapse and make for the first dose of angel blood he can get.

The thing that makes Katie all the more eager to go after Lucifer, is the dreams. They are brutal, terrifying, filled with scenes of torture and horror. She fears sleep now, more than she fears death or even being taken host by another angel, though Castiel assured her that the brand on her chest makes it unlikely now, most angels will not want a host so tainted, with a mark that will cause them so much pain. She is also convinced that these dreams hold an element of truth to them, that they are not Seraphiel's memories but something that she left so that Katie would know what to do when the time was right. That time being now and Katie is more and more certain of that every day.

The house is silent, Castiel being the sort not to make too much noise and risk waking the humans that he shares with and Dean at the point now where he is no longer fitting or crying but not as strong as they would like. He still sleeps in the bed, at Katie and Castiel's insistence rather than his own wish, and Castiel still watches over him most nights, in case he relapses or something else goes wrong. It means that Katie is alone and she can go ahead with her own plan, even though she knows that it is madness.

It is the work of a moment for her to decide that she needs to leave now, that Lucifer needs to be stopped now, not when Dean is ready, because people are dying and everyday there is some new atrocity on the news. More reports of escalating violence and increasing demonic sightings, creatures, beings, who have remained hidden for so long for fear that hunters would return them to Hell, they have nothing to fear right now, Lucifer walks free.

She has been preparing for days, copying the incantation down so many times that she now knows it by heart. She still takes a copy of it with her, leaving the book containing the original with Dean and Castiel along with an address and strict instructions to return it to Norman should she not return, which is looking increasingly more likely. She has taken a great deal of care to prepare for the worst, though she is not certain anymore what the worst will be.

Her meagre collection of clothing, one spare pair of jeans, a few t-shirts and a cardigan, have been packed into a backpack. There is a .45 shoved down the back of her jeans and a silver dagger strapped to her left wrist with an iron one in the top of her right boot. She knows that when it comes right down to it, she is more likely to hurt herself than she is to injure or kill her opponent, still, she carries them anyway, for the comfort that they give her more than anything, is well on her way to becoming a hunter even though it is the last thing on her mind, the last thing that she intends to become.

The weight of her backpack seems greater than she knows it really is, made heavier by the way that she knows she is abandoning Dean and Castiel. Those two men who seem to appear, increasingly, to be unable to take care of themselves, the angel lacking experience and the man lacking the motivation. She puts the thought from her mind, straightens her shoulders, opens the door quietly and slips through, telling herself all the while that she should not let it bother her, that they should not be her concern when all they have brought to her is pain and fear and danger since Seraphiel abandoned her and left her disfigured and in agony.

That thought does not completely comfort her as she begins walking, still does not give her any relief as the sun begins to rise and still she walks, following some instinct that tells her where she needs to go, an instinct backed up by her own weeks of research, research that relies on the terrible dreams she has been having. She knows that there is something there, because her dreams have been of a real place in south Texas, a mausoleum and something in her has to go there.

When she reaches the next town, she steals a car, starting it in the way that Dean taught her months before, drives until the gas runs out, abandons it by the side of the road and walks until she finds the next car to steal. The pattern continues, stealing and ditching and when sleep becomes necessary she does that in the car at the side of the road.

All told, the trip takes her four days, she has neither the seemingly endless fake credit cards that the Winchesters do nor does she have a back up driver, so when she needs to stop, she stops, sleeps if she can, walks when she cannot sleep or drive any longer. As it turns out, the final stretch into the small town is on foot, the car abandoned some six miles up the road.

What little money she has, what she has been able to steal or con out of others on her journey, is used to get herself a motel room for a few days, enough to get a decent nights sleep and get herself cleaned up before going after Lucifer. She is not sure what will happen after that, does not really care, she just wants everything to be over, the whole mess done with and if that means that she has to die, then so be it.

SPN

Castiel knows that he would be lying if he were to say that he has enjoyed most of his time on Earth since Dean rescued him from his own personal hell. He would also be lying if he were to imply that he has found a measure of peace and understanding that the has not had before. This role he has played in the last few weeks has compounded that. It has been hard, has been the role that a family member or close friend would normally take on.

The angel has never allowed himself to think of Dean in those terms, has never once believed that Dean would think of him in that way either. At the low points in their acquaintance he believes he has been, at best, to Dean, little more than a barely tolerated, dubious, ally. At the higher points he has merely been tolerated, barely trusted and the times that Dean has defended him have been only out of a sense of duty, debt and honour.

The last few weeks, however, he has been more to Dean than he ever should have been, the primary caregiver in a battle that is, in part, his fault. He has remained at Dean's side as the hunter has raged and stormed, wept and begged, laughed and screamed. It has made him wish dearly for the presence of Sam, particularly when he had bathed Dean, because there has been times when the hunter has been too out of it, too weak, to properly care for himself. Just the aid of another with the strength to help Dean has been longed for. Physical, because Katie has so very little, mental and emotional, because Castiel's own mental strength is still shattered under the weight of his own torments and he has never needed emotional strength before to have developed it.

Some days it has been all he can do not to weep with Dean, not to break down and sob, because Dean needs him to be strong even if Castiel does not completely know how to be. He alternates between anger at Katie for her lack of real assistance and admiration for her, knows that both the Winchesters and himself are nothing to her, she owes them nothing, not with the things that she has endured because of them, but she has stayed close, prepared food that even Castiel has eaten and kept her own council and silence as Dean has raged on well into the nights and through the days.

It comes as no surprise when he hears the front door click shut, soft feet treading lightly across gravel as she leaves them, the only surprise is that she has not done it sooner. He does not follow her, does not try to stop her, is aware, however, that he probably should wake Dean, aware that Dean will want to stop her. So he decides to wait, to make sure that she has definitely left before he wakes the hunter.

For now, though, Dean is asleep and this night is one of the few nights, recently, that Dean has slept without violent nightmares. Castiel decides to take advantage of that, leaving the quiet room in silence, going into the living room and expecting to see the chaos of a hasty departure. What he sees is a blanket flung haphazardly across the back of the sofa and the old book that Katie has spent her days studying on the coffee table, otherwise the room is as neat as she had been able to make it. Of her other belongings there is no sign and that makes Castiel frown, evidently she had been planing this for far longer than he thought.

He settles onto the abandoned couch, picks up the book and glances once at the instructions she has left written and folded inside, pushes them into the pocket of his jeans for later and turns his attention to the elderly tome. Curious as he has been about the touch of grace on it and the incantation that she claims to have found within, the angel has had rather much more on his mind, rather much more on his hands, and he has not been able to investigate. Now, however, he has a quiet moment and he settles down to read through it, quickly finding the page that she has poured so devotedly over.

What he finds there makes him shudder. That grace which seeps through the paper is stronger here, at it's strongest, and even though his own grace is broken and lying in shards within him, he can still see what Katie could not, can see that the writing, the words that explain the incantation, have been tampered with. Certainly, this will cast an angel out of his vessel, but unlike the implications of the words above and below, it will weaken him only, it will not lock him in any cage, leaving her wide open and vulnerable to an angry angel, fallen or not, in it's purest form.

His last thought as he drops the book on the floor is that they have to catch her, they have to find her, they have to stop her.

What have you done now Reviews are little Castiels that fly above our heads and mini Deans under the bed. A small Sam in hand and a tiny John by the chair, a review that can show how much you care.

I, I've been waiting for someone like you
But now you are slipping away
What have you done now?
Why, Why does fate make us suffer
There's a curse between us
Between me and you

Artemis