Chapter 1 - Unearthed
Kat felt the weight first, as if her body was wrapped tightly in a sleeping bag. It was stifling, and when she opened her mouth to take a breath, a powder fell in, and she choked. She tried to move, and it felt like she was swimming in quicksand. She didn't dare open her eyes, because she suspected it would only be dark and powder would fall into her eyes too. She breathed quickly through her nose, encouraging herself not to panic. She began to claw her way up and through the darkness, and when she reached over her head, her hand broke through the surface of whatever she was in. She plunged her other arm up, grabbing onto the surface and using it to pull herself up while she tried to elevate her legs and step on the substance. When her head broke through, she opened her eyes, and her breath quickened. That powder had been dirt. She had been buried. She pulled the rest of her body out and laid on the ground for a minute and evaluated herself and her surroundings.
She was in a wood in a clearing, and there were several fallen trees that seemed to form a circle bordering it. She sat up and looked behind her, finding a simple wooden cross marking the spot where she had been buried. Her initials, K. E. W. were engraved on it. She was clad in what she thought she had been wearing when she'd died: jeans, an AC/DC t-shirt that had once been Dean's, a green jacket, black tactical boots, and even her sports watch. All of these items were streaked with mud and caked with dirt, and she figured her face was too. She scrubbed her hands off on her jeans as best she could, and then she wiped off the face of her watch, peering at its date dial. Though it didn't show the year, it relayed the date as September 18. She patted herself down, searching in vain for a phone or for anything else that might have been in her pockets.
Finding nothing, Kat got up and began walking in a random direction, hoping to find civilization. She had no idea where she was, but as she walked, she tried to recall what she last remembered.
Kat remembered dying, and she remembered Hell. She remembered sitting by Crowley's side, chained to a marble throne, while he judged souls entering Hell. Some souls were the remnants of people who had committed atrocities such as murder, rape, and human trafficking. Others were just people who made a wrong choice or sold their souls. Each soul would come forward to the throne and present their case, but no matter what they said, they were doomed to Hell. Crowley explained that he judged about one-thousand souls a day, and that there were so many souls in Hell, that most of the people she saw had died a few hundred years ago. Before their judgment, souls just rotted or were tortured and tormented by demons in the pit.
When Crowley decided he was done judging souls for a time, Kat was led to a cell down a dark hallway where she stayed until a demon came to fetch her for Crowley's judging again or for another errand he wanted her to attend. The ruse was that Kat was Crowley's pet, and that he toyed with her and showed her off as a trophy. Kat would attend some of his crossroads deals, where she was invisible in the shadows, watching while someone bartered away their soul. After every deal, she was again put back in the cell. Except for one instance, and she shivered and hugged herself instinctively when remembering, she was kept relatively safe. Crowley had never hurt her, and he was almost always able to protect her from those who wanted to, under the pretense of being possessive of his pet. Crowley reminded her over and over again to remember his actions and how important they would become in mediating between parties later. He continued to be elusive with the information on what he meant with her and her brothers' potential and the coming war, and she eventually stopped asking.
The last thing she remembered before waking up in the ground was a man in a trench coat being led to her cell by Crowley.
"This is goodbye for now, Katarina," Crowley had said, taking her hand to help her stand from the stone ground.
"Who are you?" Kat had asked the man in the trench coat apprehensively.
"That is not important," the man had replied shortly. Without saying anything else, the man had grabbed Kat's shoulder. His touch had burned, and Kat had screamed, her knees buckling.
Now, walking in the woods in the middle of nowhere, Kat's shoulder spiked as she remembered the man's touch. She shrugged off her jacket as she walked, throwing it over her left shoulder so she could pull up the sleeve over her right one. What she saw there made her stop.
There was a raised, angrily-red handprint on her shoulder. Kat was decently slim and toned due to hunting, so the hand's thumb came across her collarbone. Kat winced as she prodded the handprint; it stung at her palpation and was hot to the touch. Shivering again, she pulled her sleeve back down and jacket back on.
After a few more minutes of walking, Kat came upon a road, and a few more minutes after that: a gas station. It was one of those rural, one-pump places, and it looked deserted.
Not deserted, just closed. According to the hours board, the gas station didn't open for another couple hours. Feeling slightly bad, Kat gained entry by throwing a rock through the top of the glass door and unlocking and utilizing the door handle from there. A newspaper stand stood by the door, and she grabbed one, confirming the approximate date and seeking her location. The newspaper was for Shindler, South Dakota.
It made sense that they would bury her near Bobby's, Kat mused to herself as she gathered up some water and food and shoved it all into a cinch sack she got off a rack. She and her brothers had always lived a life on the road, and Bobby and his house had been one of the only semblances of permanence they had experienced. It had been one of her favorite places to get left while her dad and brothers were hunting.
Kat had just turned to leave when she suddenly dropped to her knees, clenching her fingers in her hair and screaming. A shrill, loud ringing had resounded through the gas station, and it made her feel as if her ears were bleeding. The glass doors and windows shattered, and the ground began to shake. Kat rolled away into the side of the front counter of the station, glass pinching and cutting her skin as she did so. A crash across the station caught her attention, and she looked up to see that one of the racks had fallen over, and it was creating a domino effect sending the one closest to her crashing down onto her. Kat flinched and threw out her arms instinctively, though she had no idea why because she was not physically capable of stopping the rack's momentum. After a moment, when a large shopping aisle did not smother her, Kat opened her eyes.
The aisle was hovering about a foot above her, her arms still outstretched towards it. Kat scooted away through more glass, focusing on keeping her hands facing the rack. When she was clear and had kicked her cinch sack free, she stood slowly. She straightened and closed her palms, letting her arms drop to her sides. The rack unceremoniously crashed to the ground where she had been cowering moments before. Kat stared at the rack and then at her hands, and in examining herself, she noticed that she was unharmed. She distinctly remembered feeling her skin break and blood trickle out due to the glass on the floor, yet she couldn't find a single scratch on herself or any blemish besides the handprint.
Like a true Winchester, Kat quickly shoved away her incredulity and fear as to what this meant and why on earth wasn't she hurt and how the hell had she stopped that rack and…? She shoved it down; she would deal with it later. First, she had to find Sam and Dean.
