Kat didn't really think he'd say yes, but everything around her was surreal, nothing felt grounded or constant, only a distant mirage to her eyes. She didn't really think he'd let her get behind the wheel of his car, his home, let her take control like that. But she couldn't help but try. She couldn't help but test the waters around them; to be sure nothing had really changed since the night before. She couldn't help the small smile that rose to her lips at the thought. They were Winchesters. She should have known that everything would be buried deep and forgotten about because that was the way they worked. They wouldn't stare at her like she was glass, breakable and fragile, and they wouldn't suddenly start being conscious of her feelings. She would keep being a hunter and they would keep being brothers.
They left the motel room within the hour, leaving behind the remains of salty tears and breaking confessions, slightly rumpled blankets the only indication they'd been there at all. Kat rested comfortably in the back seat while Sam stared out the window in the front, a frown on his lips. Dean had almost said yes, again. The thought seemed wrong to the younger brother, who was sure that the unhealthy connection Dean had to his car would never break, would never be lessened. It was one of the things Sam didn't want to change, out of everything in their chaotic life. It was his constant; Dean was his constant.
He could only be glad when Kat went quietly, slipping into the back seat without a fight and rifling with her sketch book again, pale fingers gliding across a page. His eyes shifted back to the window and he wondered if they would stay in this suffocating silence for the rest of the day, drowning in it until the grief hit Kat when they moved into Derry. He didn't want that weighing on all their chests, the inevitable waiting for a breakdown that might not even come.
"So what was your first hunt?" Dean asked suddenly, thankfully breaking the mounting tension Sam was sure he wasn't imagining. He could see Kat grow thoughtful in the back, her hand stilling across paper. Her head tilted to the side and Sam wondered if she would say Alistair, since it was the first thing she went after. Like Azazel was their first.
"Bobby took me to burn a ghost when I was seventeen," Kat said slowly, as if tasting the words on her tongue and she was saying something important. "There were these…these little kids hiding in the back room, trying to get away from the ghost of their mom. I ended up getting them out. They were…so grateful, so happy." she spoke softly, memories flooding through her blue eyes until they looked distant. "I think that was when I decided to do this for the rest of my life. It was...some kindafeeling."
Dean was nodding along, like she was preaching something he believed in. Sam flicked his eyes between them thoughtfully and wondered if his brother had been through something similar. If he'd saved a child that had said 'thank you' and had seen something good come from hunting. Something Sam had only seen rarely and often turned away from.
"I was younger, lot younger," Dean started, even though she didn't ask him. Sam's eyebrows knitted together in confusion, trying to recall a time his older brother had ventured information, had given it without asking, letting someone else into the mystery that was his head. Sam couldn't help but shift, leaning slightly towards him almost protectively, as if the added motion would give his older brother comfort, assurance enough to tell his story. "Dad…he'd been on a hunt…brought it back to the motel by accident."
Dean cleared his throat roughly, shaking his head with a slight smirk on his face, eyes flitting between the road and the rearview. If he'd been expecting judgment, he didn't find it, only the concerned blue eyes of another hunter, something like protectiveness swirling in with the clear color.
"It was a succubus. Had Dad wrapped around her ugly ass finger," Dean said with an almost sad smirk for another piece of his childhood ripped away from him, wretched from too-pink fingers not yet hardened by calluses and years of gripping a gun. "I got no clue what it looked like to Dad, never did say…but to me it wasn't cute. No J-Lo, I'll tell you that. Maybe a little bit of Paris," he added as if an afterthought, a grimace coloring his features for a fleeting moment. "I was too young to see anything other than what it was…hadn't grown into the ladies' man phase yet. Sammy was dead to the world, still a baby then," Dean said softer, as if the fact was something to be held higher than anything else he'd said. He shook himself, seeming to wake from a dream, something not lost on his younger brother, and Sam adopted a soft look, a smile around the edges of a sorrowful gratefulness. "Managed to gank her with a silver bullet without wakin' him up. Dad was a bit shell shocked, though," he admitted with a light smile, masking the pain with humor, trying to ignore the gnawing discomfort, the hidden wish to be normal. To have slept through it like Sam had. To have grown up far away and safe.
"How long did you hold that over John?" Kat asked suddenly, snapping him back from his reverie with those same soft eyes, eyes that seemed to see into him and knew which way to push. Dean let his smile grow into a grin, cocky attitude nearly becoming arrogance.
"Till the day he went out." It was easier, now, to talk about his father. Easier now that they had other tragedies to focus on, and his everlasting grief wasn't always on his mind. It was easier to joke about his old man, to try and see him as less than the idealistic warrior Dean had painted him to be. Easier, too, to talk about his death. Not the way Dean had taken to thinking of it, a bright fire being washed away by rivers of darkness and suffocated by the evil it had been destined to fight, but as another man, another soldier of many wars, passed on beyond a veil.
He flicked his eyes to the rearview again, unconsciously hoping to meet soft blue eyes again, eyes that understood what it meant to grow up too quickly, to pretend for the sake of a sibling, to have become a warrior before they were in grade school. But her eyes were averted to the window, fixed on a wooden, homely sign fast approaching. They were in Derry.
Both boys in the front seat swallowed, almost expecting her to break, to cry out in an expression of grief they could understand. She stayed silent, watching the trees blur into the shape of a town, slightly rundown buildings imprinting in her vision in the Land That Time Forgot. It reminded her of a trip down Route 66, deteriorating homes and businesses, lost in decades long past. Kat shifted in her seat, hands wringing together, the sharp metallic sound of rings clicking together.
When the car finally pulled to the stop, she wondered if she had aged years, decades. Finding the precinct had only taken minutes but it felt like lifetimes; lifetimes spent wondering what her life would have been like if nothing had happened. She would have gone to the little school on the edge of town, attended the large church downtown, smiled at boys who smiled back, maybe even fallen in love. She would have fought with her parents when she got older, only known pain when it was a scraped knee on the concrete outside of school. The thoughts, fuzzy in her head, swirled together until they drowned out all others, 'what ifs' and memories faded like the edges of sepia photos. She was trying to recall the full picture, trying to remember the color of her mother's eyes, the shade of her father's hair, their heights, builds. It felt like trying to remember a dream.
The precinct was small, shabby, and reminded her of every other county jail she'd ever seen on hunts. But to the woman in the back seat of the '67 Impala it was a monolith of grief and fear, waiting to sling itself onto her waiting soul. She wondered if she would be strong enough to face it. She could feel Dean and Sam waiting for her to get out of the car, probably intent on some deep conversation reserved for Winchester ears only, but she felt frozen to the seat, molded into the leather.
"You, uh, you gonna move?" Dean asked roughly, tact seeming to fly out of his brain, but he liked to think it didn't matter. He didn't need to ask if she needed help, needed a shoulder, needed him to walk in with her. He knew enough about her to see himself in the way she set her shoulders, squared her jaw and glared at him through the rearview.
"Tryin'," she answered, bitter honesty clear in her voice and Dean had expected a sharp 'yes' and for her to leave. He wasn't used to people deviating from the two paths he'd drawn out for how to help the grieving. Either they were like Sam, open-hearted and free with feelings, therapeutic crying to ease the soul, or they were like his father. Straight backed and hard eyes and never showing weakness because it meant someone could hurt you. This was a foreign mix between the two and he felt like he was learning a new language.
"Do or do not, there is no 'try'," Dean spouted off after a moment, watching her with calculating eyes, trying to gauge a reaction from her as he spoke. He couldn't hold back a proud grin when her head cocked to the side and a shaky smirk rose to her lips.
"Did you just quote Yoda at me?" she asked, an element of pleasure in her eyes that he was still unaccustomed to.
"The fact that you have to ask at all makes me doubt you are a Star Wars fan," Dean rebuked quickly, grin refusing to die as he made progress. He caught Sam's small smile coupled with the almost patronizing shake of his head that told him his little brother knew his shtick, knew the plan, and knew it was working.
"It was just your terrible acting," Kat quipped back, the blue of her eyes looking more alive, mirroring the sky on a clear day; open. She rolled her shoulders then, as if to be sure her body could still separate from the back of the Impala, and moved towards the door. Dean's smile looked almost proud as the door opened and shut firmly, with her now standing on the outside, cool wind blowing back her hair.
"I'm an A-lister and you know it!" Dean shouted before she left earshot, a chuckle rising in his chest and sometimes he wondered how he managed to laugh through rivers of guilt and grief and fear. How he managed to put deep emotions and deep conversations on the back burner. He caught Sam's almost disapproving glance and shrugged his shoulders dramatically. "What?" he asked as if clueless.
"That was the best you could come up with?" Sam asked in near exasperation. Dean would have believed him too, if not for the tinges of humor around his eyes, now a mixture of green and blue. The older man pretended to look offended, a hand to his chest as if pained.
"Worked, didn't it?" Dean answered roughly, looking away and praying Sam would drop it.
"Yeah, but it's not like you," Sam responded, genuine confusion and curiosity in his voice and Dean cringed, sighing in exasperation.
"Don't you think she's been through enough the past few days?" Dean asked rhetorically, because anyone could see she had. It didn't matter that Dean had been the one to do something about it, to try and make her smile, just the slightest.
"Yeah, but you? Man, I haven't seen you like this since-" he paused, swallowing roughly and Dean knew what would come next. His brother had never gotten over it like Dean had never gotten over their mother. Sam had never come to terms with the loss of another woman pinned to the ceiling and he was right, Dean had been like that then. The older brother had been trying for a smile and prank war and startled laugh and a loud badly-sung chorus to a song they both knew by heart. "Since Jessica."
"Sometimes people need a push," Dean said quietly. It felt to Sam like his brother was reaching out of the silence, struggling against the pull of the soft sounds of breathing, the hum of cars a few deserted streets over. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to see what kind people need, once you've been looking for a while."
Sam frowned, remembering one of many titles his brother carried; Guardian. Dean would only ever be on the outside looking in and both of them knew it. He would never mingle with the world like Sam could, never immerse himself in another life and live it like he belonged there. He was born to be a hunter, and nothing could change it.
"I wish things were different," Sam muttered, a hand running through his hair and eyes on his lap. He could feel his brother's answering sigh weighing heavily in the air between them, and he felt his shoulders sagging under the weight of the world. Sam wondered how Dean could handle it.
"Sometimes we just gotta play the hand we're dealt," Dean said wisely, his voice more subdued and calm than Sam had heard in what felt like forever. He wondered when his older brother had become so wise, such an old soul harbored in a young man's body. He smirked at the thought, because his brother had always been that way, it was just that the mask of a playboy was slipping, showing the depth beneath those bottomless green eyes.
"Don't you gotta know when it's time to fold?" Sam asked, turning his head to meet his brother's eyes and there was bleak understanding reflected back at him, raw tinges of burnt-out humor on the edges of his lips.
"You know the rules, Sammy boy," Dean said with an attempt at a grin. "Only losers fold."
Kat was walking back outside before Sam could respond, probably with a not-so-subtle jab at his father's rules and regulations. Both hunters turned to watch her walk out, clutching a relatively small manila envelope between pale fingers, head down and eyes on her shoes, each step feeling like miles. Every moment another lifetime wasted on the half-forgotten memories of a past she could never relive.
She opened the car door, swallowing around her grief as she slid into her seat, eyes averted. Dean didn't mention how he caught the red in her eyes, how he saw her hands shaking, how her lower lip trembled. Dean didn't say anything at all for several minutes, wouldn't even start the car as she collected herself and he stared out the dash like there was something interesting in the way the wind blew through the trees. Sam followed suit, gauging his own movements on his brother's.
"It's a…um…it's a cemetery on the north side of town," she said finally, glancing up quickly to the rearview and catching green eyes. Dean nodded and started the car, a throaty hum to drown out her thoughts as quivering fingers moved to open the envelope. "Demons burned down my house," she said softly, talking more to herself than anyone. "Nothing was saved. This was all they found in a safety deposit box."
She opened it slowly, like she was afraid a bomb might go off and blow her back to her own Hell. Neither brother spoke, only waited. They waited because she needed it; she needed the silence and the understanding. Her fingers trembled as they pulled out the contents, breath catching as she let her eyes trace over them.
"To whom it may concern," she read aloud softly, sounding so much younger than she was, raw and vulnerable and another piece of her armor was left in the rearview mirror, fading away. "I can only hope that I am reading this with you, sitting next to you as I tell you my story, but I can't assume that I am still around. I know that there are demons after me, they have been since Kathy and Jamie were born, and I know why. I can't bring myself to write it down, because this is my fault. I made a mistake, a fatal mistake, and because of it I know my children are going to suffer. I can only hope that I moved fast enough, that I protected us all the way He advised. In the event that they found you, that they hurt you, I can only tell you that I am so sorry, and that I hope you understand. I pray our little family managed to stay well, managed to evade the evils and darkness of the world I'd sworn I would never reveal to my children, or my husband. I pray that Kathy, if you are the one reading this, can forgive me, for what I have unknowingly cast upon you. I hope you can forgive my weakness and I hope, if I am still alive, that you can still look at me with the same adoring blue eyes I am seeing as I write this. Your father's beautiful eyes." Kat paused in her reading, her voice sounding wet and distant as she tried to keep back the tears welling in her eyes.
"None of you can ever understand the extent of how much I love you, how much I wish I had not set these events into motion. Please, please God, forgive me."
She ran a hand through her hair, and a part of her felt like tearing at it, like she needed something to distract herself from the clawing, raw emotion in her chest. She needed the pain to keep her from her own thoughts, her own fears and grief eating away at her. She glanced up and paused, breathing harsh and labored, eyes riveted on a calm pair of green-shot-gold staring back at her.
She nodded, to what she didn't know, and looked back down, staring down at her mother's signature with soft eyes. "Signed Hannah DeLaroux. Hey guys, I guess I'm French," she whispered in a sad attempt at humor. Sam cracked a smile, looking to the backseat with an encouraging look, something a brother might give a younger sibling. Something comforting and understanding all at once, like he'd been through what she had. Maybe he had, she reasoned.
"Not too much else in here," she continued, speaking with an empty voice, something Dean could recognize as a way to avoid the tears, the onslaught of emotion she would have to face up to soon. She was trying to stave it off, push it back inside her chest like she could control it. He could only wonder when the dam would break and if he could find it in himself to pick up the pieces. If he could set aside his own pride and instincts long enough to build her again, make her strong.
Kat sighed, taking slow calming breaths as if they could make her unbreakable. There was still more in the envelope, more to swallow down like a dry pill, stuck in her throat with no relief and she was choking. But there was an urgency to go on, as if the slips of paper her mother left her would be enough to give her closure, to end the questions swirling through her mind.
"There is…is a necklace at the bottom, and another piece of paper," she mumbled, fingers catching a gold chain and pulling it out into the midday light. Gold wings hung on the end, and for an insane moment, Kat wondered if her mother knew about the ones on her back, the ones branded into her skin for eternity. But that wasn't possible. "They're beautiful," she whispered, so low Dean almost didn't hear her. But he did and the wonder in her voice made the ghost of a smile rise to his lips.
She slipped the necklace over her head and held the charms tightly in her hand, as if the wings could keep her grounded. Somehow, as Dean gripped the wheel of his car, he could relate. Could relate to the need for a tether, for a link to a parent. For something to keep the memories alive because you were afraid you would forget if you didn't have one. Afraid that every stolen moment you managed to keep hidden in the back of your mind would fade away and be lost among the many roads of their pasts. Just another half-seen road sign on an interstate he didn't remember the number of.
"Nothing from your dad?" Sam asked, confusion coloring his voice, turning in his seat to look at her. They were nearing the cemetery, coming up on the rows and rows of stone, names engraved along with the short phrases meant to sum up their entire lives.
"No, there's a picture," she corrected softly, catching only the words on the back of the smaller piece of paper. "Your Dad will always be with us, just like I'll always be with you. He's our angel," she read aloud before flipping the photo over.
Her hand went slack, the picture fluttering from numb fingers like fall leaves caught in the wind. Her eyes flicked to the rearview, panic swimming in the blue and they reminded Dean of the terror-stricken eyes of the victims he helped save.
Kat's heart was pumping overtime, thundering in her ears and she could feel it in every part of her body. She wondered if this was how a person felt before they had a heart attack, life passing before her eyes and it felt like watching a movie. A fantasy cinematic experience, where nothing was what it seemed. And it seemed to her that her mother was lying, that she was crazy. That something had gone wrong in her mind to make her believe that lie imprinted on the paper.
Because that man wasn't her father. He wasn't the kind man with fluttering blonde hair and dark eyes that could swallow her whole, he wasn't the one that played with Jamie for hours on end, adoring his only son. He wasn't the man that bade her goodnight in the soft glow of evening, the man that comforted her amidst early childhood nightmares. He wasn't the one who broke apart her and Jamie's frequent fights in the yard, wrestling each other in a tangle of pale limbs and grass stains. This wasn't the father she'd yearned for attention from, the one who liked Jamie more than her and tried to hide it. He wasn't the one who rarely held her, too busy with her brother. The one who stared at her like she was something foreign, something he hadn't even noticed before that moment.
She gasped for breath, realizing she'd been holding it, and leaned down, fingers trembling as she reached for the picture again. Black, tangling hair came into view, reaching his chin and looking windswept, like he'd been driving with the windows down. He was taller than her father would be, an arm stiffly wrapped around her mother, Hannah, with a contented look in his eyes, not quite smiling. Those eyes. Her eyes. Brilliant blue staring back at her, and she didn't know what to think. But his other arm was cradling her, little her when she was only about two, baby arms wrapped around his neck for support. He looked strong, and unaccustomed to the closeness of a child, staring down at her with absolute wonder as she stared back. Kat smiled as she studied her toddler self, doe-eyes blown wide with awe and adoration on the man in front of her. She would have thought he was glowing, the child's eyes were that interested. And he was looking back, not like she was some apathetic mouth to feed, but like she was a creature of the fey, a mermaid, a baby angel lacking a harp. He was looking at her like she was beautiful.
"What's wrong?" Dean asked, looking ready to pull over with a sharp turn of the wheel and come to her aid. They were about to make the final turn, about to reach the final resting places of Hannah and Marcus DeLaroux.
"T-that is not the man my mother married," she stuttered out, wishing she could say that it wasn't her father, wishing she could believe that. But she was overwhelmed with memory, sensation, each ticking second she could ever remember about the man that raised her. There was no connection; no link to him that made her want to insist he was her father, that half of what made her could be traced to him. It didn't feel that way, it felt distant, and maybe the printed man staring back at her really was her father.
"Who is it?" Sam asked, head tilting to the side as he turned again to watch her. He caught Dean's tense shoulders in the corner of his eye and wondered what his brother knew, what burden of knowledge he was struggling under this time.
"I-I think it's my father, my real father," Kat whispered, almost without thinking. Without focusing enough to catch herself and maybe she did believe it. It was easy to believe, easy to accept, when nothing about her life made sense and she was just lost in the swirling world of evil and pain and loss. She was just trying to break water, find enough room to breathe.
"What about Jamie?" Sam asked, watching her like he thought she might explode, might lose it, might throw away the hunter inside of her and become a grieving daughter, a broken victim. Become what logic said she should have been.
"I don't know, I just don't know," she whispered, head hanging. Hair fell into her eyes to shield her and she wondered how much pressure she could take before she broke. How much weight she could pile onto her shoulders and still stand up. She felt like falling, like crashing to the ground and staying down.
The car rolled to a stop, fields of stone before them, the last memories of fading pasts, families laid down together in eternal peace, lovers as close as they could get to the other. Names engraved and fading, weather grating them down until the body beneath the ground no longer possessed an identity. Dean opened his door, cool air caressing his skin, and he realized this was one of the few times he was in a cemetery under the sun, as the glare caught the paint of his car. He moved to the backseat, opening the door and leaning down until he met Kat's eyes. He thought they looked turned inward, like she was closing herself off from the rest of the world one second at a time.
"Stop that," he said strongly, bringing her back to the present and he hated that he sounded like his father. "Don't think about that now. Now you gotta get out of my car and go say goodbye to your parents, the people that raised you and loved you. You owe them that."
Dean's voice was calming, safe, something grounded to pull her back from the doubt and loneliness inside her head. She nodded automatically, shifting to get out of the car and she felt numb, impervious to the world around her. She wondered if she would even feel pain, then. She was tempted to pinch herself, to drag herself from this dream-turned-nightmare. But then she would wake up on Ash's couch with a bottle of half-empty whiskey, without the Winchesters, still reeling from whatever close call she'd had on her last hunt.
So she stood up as Dean moved, let her eyes roam over the rows upon rows of the dead and followed the directions the officer inside the precinct gave her. Dean and Sam stayed behind, both standing out of the car and in the sunlight, trying not to watch her too closely. Name after name came and left her vision and she wondered how many people came to visit them, came to stand in front of lost parents, friends, daughters, brothers.
Finally, her steps stilled, her eyes caught on two names sharing the same piece of stone. 'Hannah and Marcus DeLaroux, loving parents.' She wondered if that was all they could be defined by, all that made up who they were and how they lived their lives. She was sure they were more than just loving parents. Her mother was an artist, from what she recalled; her father a businessman with a knack for cards. Their lives amounted to more than engraved words on a rock.
"I-I don't know what to say," she whispered, a hand rising unconsciously to wipe at her face, as if expecting salt water to have traced its way down her cheeks already. She didn't know how she wasn't crying, how she wasn't breaking. "But I forgive you, Mom. How could I not? I loved you, loved Dad too, even if nothing's really like it was, and I'll never really know you. You'll never see me grow up, and I'll never watch you grow old…Mom, you won't cry when I move out of the house, and Dad, you won't walk me down the aisle. But…I think it'll be okay," she drifted off in a whisper and took a deep breath.
The sun's constant burn was making her uncomfortable, and her neck hurt from looking down, as if staring at the headstone was the same as keeping eye contact. She didn't want to stay there, whereall she could think about was a past she could never live out the way she should have, a childhood lost. She didn't want to live on the 'what ifs' of something she could never have. She would never be normal, it was time she accepted it completely. Her eyes flicked up and caught the distant figure of the Impala, two tall hunters leaning against it, feigning casual as they waited for her. Waited so they could move on, to another adventure, another hunt, something she could dive into while still sure someone was there to watch her back. Someone to talk to, someone to lean on, because she didn't have to be alone. Not anymore.
"I know I'll be okay."