Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own 'em. Just playing in the sandbox.

Sam typed away quietly at his laptop, ignoring the frequent flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder outside; settled on the brown comforter of their latest motel-of-the-week. Well, he hoped they wouldn't be here for a week; the carpet was stained, the walls moldy, and the smell was horrid—disinfectant over rot.

Nasty.

As a precaution, he and Dean had settled Kate over top the blankets, using one of theirs from the Impala to cover her up. Sam was of the opinion they were going to have to break down and use the ones from the bed soon; their sister was shivering violently where she lay a few feet away. Dean—miraculously healed of whatever damage the electrocution had done and released less than six hours ago from the hospital—was off on a supply run, presumably for Kate's "stomach flu." And definitely, Sam tried not to laugh at the thought, cleaning his Baby up.

It was his own damn fault. Sam had taken one look at their sister when he arrived at the hospital, and demanded they stay in town that night. Kate was deathly white, sweating, lips bloodless, and walking gingerly, like it hurt. Dean had given her a concerned look, but protested that he wanted nothing more than to be as far from this hospital as was humanly possible, and Kate—of course—had agreed with him. They'd gotten all of an hour from Springfield before Kate had lost the battle with her nausea—all over the carpet in the backseat.

His own apprehension aside, Sam had had to work hard to mask the laugh that built in his throat at Dean's face—equal parts shock, horror, and genuine concern. They had pulled off at the very first motel they could find after that, in tiny Oxville, Illinois; it was disgusting, even by their standards, but at least Kate had a place to puke and wait out this fever. Dean had stayed long enough to carry her inside, then left her in Sam's care as he went to stock up and clean up, all three familiar with the Sick Sibling Procedure—younger stays, older goes for supplies.

A sudden flash followed almost immediately by a deafening crash of thunder had Kate sitting bolt upright in bed. "Sam?" she rasped. He smiled.

"Hey, sunshine, how you feeling?"

"Screw you," she moaned irritably, collapsing back against the headboard, and Sam laughed out loud. "Where's Dean?"

"Gone to get supplies and clean up the Impala."

"In this?" Kate gestured outside and swallowed convulsively. Sam grabbed the trashcan as he walked over to sit on the bed beside her. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Yeah, you look it."

"God, you're a jerk."

"But you love me."

"A delusional jerk."

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day, sister mine."

Kate opened her mouth to retort, but instead ended up hanging over the side of the bed, spitting up bile into the dirty plastic garbage can. Sam held her hair out of the way silently, concerned at the heat radiating off her pale skin.

Kidding aside, her condition really was concerning him. This was no normal stomach flu—they'd all seen enough of that to know what a bug looked like, and this wasn't it. Her fever was too high, her breathing too shallow, heartbeat too thready.

"God," she groaned as she wiped her mouth and sat back, eyeing the water he offered for a second before closing her eyes. "H'rts, Sammy."

"Where?" he asked, urging the glass a little closer. "You should drink a little."

She huffed. "Everywhere. But mostly m' head. 'S like a migraine. And I'll just throw up again."

"Sip slowly," Sam insisted. "The last thing you need is dehydration in addition to all this." Sighing, Kate sipped at the lukewarm water as ordered. Sam was frankly shocked that was all the fight he'd got out of her—she must be really feeling crappy. After half a glass, she was looking a little green around the gills, so Sam put the glass on the bedside table as she shifted to lie down.

He reached out to stroke her eyelids—a trick she'd used on him as a kid to help him fall asleep, one that was surprisingly relaxing. Kate winced and turned her head, muttering, "Eyes hurt too, sorry."

"This doesn't seem like a normal bug to me," he confessed, moving back over to his laptop to do some research of a different sort. "What happened to you back there?"

Kate just groaned and turned over, her back to him. "N'thing. 'S just a flu. Better 'n the mornin'."

Yeah right.

As she fell back into a fitful sleep, Sam shook his head and examined what he knew.

She was alone at the hospital (if you don't count an unconscious Dean).

She was alone with the demon.

She ousted the demon—with nothing more than her mind, which was weird enough.

Dean was miraculously healed hours after she arrived—also weird.

Weird stuff happens around us, though.

Except her physical state after the weirdness is the same both times—flu, fever, migraine, puking everywhere.

If this is like last time, it's going to take her a few weeks to be back to full strength.

So is Dean's miracle related to the same thing as the demon was?

Sam didn't like where his logic was leading. Everything pointed to something…supernatural, frankly. Like his visions—and what they did to his body—she seemed to have some sort of ability going on that her body wasn't accustomed to handling.

Wait a second.

Sam clenched his jaw. Was she—

The door clattered open, interrupting his train of thought, his older brother stomping in amidst a howl of wind and rain.

"Damn, it's like the freakin' apocalypse out there," Dean griped. He tossed the plastic bags on the table unceremoniously, and Kate jolted awake with a groan. Sam sent the oldest Winchester a withering look.

"It's okay, Katie; Dean's back."

"God damned pack of elephants," she muttered faintly, long fingers slipping into her hair and clenching around her head. Sam winced sympathetically. Dean's green eyes were wide, noting the fetal position and head holding; he sat next to Sam—much more quietly this time.

"How bad?" Dean asked in a low voice.

Sam shook his head. "Hope you brought plenty of medicine."

Lightning streaked across an eerie green sky, casting her pale skin in a strange light. Thunder followed no discernible pattern as it would in reality, crashing and rumbling at random.

Kate blinked, noting the odd shrubby trees in a wide circle around her. Despite the driving rain, delicate white buds bloomed thickly on the rough branches, nodding in the wind but seemingly untouched by the icy drops that stung her skin.

I'm dreaming.

"The dog got away," Sam's voice was right beside her, but he was younger than he ought to be—the fourteen year old who had tried to catch the stray pup with her in that tiny town in Kansas all those years ago. "It's not fair, Kate."

"I know," she replied automatically, reaching for him, but he disappeared.

"You should know better," this time it was Dean, on her other side and the proper age. But his eyes were all wrong, dark and somehow sinister. "You're holding him back. Both of you are."

Light flashed again—brilliant white-blue this time—and her dreamscape vanished, leaving a scruffy, tall man before her.

"Nat?" she asked. "Am I still dreaming?"

"No." The angel seemed completely nonplussed, as if he belonged there.

She fought irritation out of her voice. "So you can just come on in here and take over whenever you like, huh?"

One thick eyebrow raised, and she was sure it would've looked more elegant in his true form rather than this oddly-familiar one her mind had assigned the angel. "If you like, I can wait until you awake and come back."

Knowing what that would look like to her already-concerned brothers, Kate conceded with a small shake of her head. "No, this is probably better. What do you want?"

"You are ill."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Dark eyes narrowed. "Do you always employ such…crass language?"

"How long have you known me?"

"All your life."

Kate sighed. Apparently literalness was the name of the game with this guy. "Yes, I usually employ crass language. What are you here for, Nat? I need to rest so I can heal."

A hand waved dismissively. "The grace imbued in your soul will restore the balance in your body in mere hours. Your brothers have nothing to fear."

"Yeah, except they don't know that, do they?" Kate forced her voice to remain calm, impassive. "They believe I'm really sick. I can tell I'm really sick—sick enough they may take me to the hospital if it keeps up. This fever is out of control."

"It is rather high, for a human."

"What happened, anyway? Why does my body do this?"

Nat tilted his head in that irritatingly almost-endearing way. "I can only theorize."

She gestured expansively. "Theorize away. Because this can't keep up forever, my brothers are going to figure out there's a pattern here if I keep getting sick after miraculous things happen."

"We believe the human body is not accustomed to the use of angel grace as an ability within it. When you use your grace, it seems to overstimulate your cells—and thereby, your nerves, organs, everything."

"So my body reacts accordingly—flu in response to overactive white cells; headache in response to overstimulated senses of sight, hearing, touch…"

"Yes."

"How long will it take to normalize?"

The angel shook his head. "We do not know. Last time, when you fought Phoebe the demon, it took mere hours before your body began to regulate."

"But weeks before I was well again."

"That was the fault of the pharmaceuticals you took," Nat fixed her with a hard stare. "Your body overreacted to them too, prolonging your pain."

Kate sighed. "So I'm supposed to not only expect Dean and Sam to believe I'm fine, but convince them I don't need meds."

"You must. Their…'solution'…will only exacerbate your body's reaction to the grace."

"Well, shit."

"Well, shit," Dean grunted, and Sam looked up from his laptop. His older brother was sitting beside Kate with an oral thermometer, glaring at the small plastic device as though it had personally offended him.

"What?" Sam asked.

"One hundred and four," Dean reported, beginning to shake their sister gently. "We need to get some aspirin in her. Come on, Kate, wake up."

Sam stood as Kate moaned, blinking owlishly before squinting and burying her head in the thin pillow again.

"Come on," Dean coaxed. Kate slapped him away weakly, and Dean scowled. "Kate, don't do this. You need water and pills. Come on."

"No," her words were muffled by the cotton pillow, but her curled-up, head-hidden posture said everything she wasn't really able to with words. "No pills."

"Kate," Sam tried to help, a hand on her shoulder making her flinch away.

"Stop! Jus' lemme sleep. Be f'ne 'n a few hours."

"Katharine," Dean used his big-brother voice now, the one neither of them dared disobey. "Take the damned aspirin."

She smacked his hand away—harder this time—and opened bloodshot eyes. "No. Dean, give me twelve hours, if it's not better I'll take them then."

"Why?" Sam asked. "Why not just take them now?"

What is she doing?

"Can't," she muttered. "Don' wanna get add'cted."

Dean rolled his eyes. "They're friggin' aspirin, Kate, no one gets addicted to aspirin."

But she was out again, or just ignoring him.

"Got half a mind to just stick 'em in your mouth and let 'em dissolve," Dean muttered, tossing the pills on the table ill-temperedly.

"Try it and I'll bite your fingers off," Kate threatened clearly, eyes still closed.

Dean glared hard at her and slammed the door to the bathroom as he went in. Kate sighed, and Sam sat on the other bed, perplexed.

What exactly just happened?

For the rest of the afternoon, Dean drove Sam mad with his fidgeting. He cleaned the guns (again), then stared at the tv, then puttered around in the tiny kitchenette, then paced, then stood by the window and watched the rain come down in sheets.

It was coming up on ten o'clock when Sam had had enough. "Dean, seriously!" he cried, exasperated. "Sit down, man."

Dean just growled at him and flopped onto his back on the end of the bed. Sam resisted the urge to stretch his leg just so and push his brother off.

He had a feeling Dean wasn't in the mood, even though he himself would've found it wildly entertaining.

"Why's she gotta be so damn stubborn?" Dean whined.

Sam snorted, not dignifying the question with an answer. No need, when they both knew why already.

She was a Winchester. Stubborn was a prerequisite.

Twelve hours on the dot after Kate's refusal to take the aspirin (never mind it was near midnight now), Dean snatched the thermometer off the bedside table and shook their sister—still gently, Sam noted with an inward smile. Kate stirred and opened her eyes blearily, shifting back toward them and stretching with a slurred, "wha' happen'd?"

Sam could tell immediately she was feeling better. She wasn't moving like she was in pain anymore, her skin wasn't sheened with sweat or that scary paper-gray color, and she didn't wince at the light. Dean didn't give her a chance to talk before stuffing the thermometer in her mouth; Kate yanked it back out and sat up, eyes never leaving Dean's as she placed it carefully beneath her tongue—by herself.

Yeah, she's feeling better.

Dean didn't move until the device beeped softly. He reached for it, but Kate beat him to it; studying the display before handing it to her older brother with a look that bordered on smug.

"Ninety-nine point eight," Dean muttered, and Sam felt his confusion deepen at the exact same time his amusement spiked. The oldest Winchester sibling looked simultaneously relieved and irritated; a look that Sam and Kate had spent years deliberately garnering from him.

It was in the rule book. Kate had told him so, when they were little.

True to form, Dean didn't stick around long after Kate shoved him off her bed and went to take a shower. Sam knew he'd been wound up tight with worry all day; now that the danger was past, Dean would go relax the way Dean relaxed best—at a bar.

Which suited Sam just fine tonight. Dean wasn't the only one who'd been worried sick, nor was he the only one with plans for the rest of this night.

Kate stepped out of the bathroom just as Dean shut the motel room door with a semi-grumpy, "Back later."

"Something I said?" she asked, stuffing her dirty clothes into her duffel before tossing it back in the corner. Sam cocked an eyebrow.

"Nah, he just needs to chill."

"Ah," Kate's lips curled into a grin. "Well I'm sure he'll come back nice and relaxed."

Sam laughed. Drunk Dean was even funnier—and more fun to prank—than Sober Dean, and he had no doubt Kate would try to rope him into some shenanigans early the next morning, when they two were up but Dean was sleeping it off.

"Probably," he conceded. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good," came the response. "Almost back to normal."

Sam kept his tone neutral. "Well, whatever that was, it hit hard and fast."

"Mmm."

There was silence for a few minutes as Kate scribbled in her journal while Sam clicked away at his laptop, not really looking at anything in particular. He lasted less than sixty seconds.

"Kate."

"Yeah, Sammy."

"That wasn't a flu."

His sister paused, then continued writing. "Sure it was."

"No," he set aside his laptop and turned, swinging his legs off the side of the bed to face her properly. "It wasn't."

Kate kept writing, studiously ignoring him.

"Kate."

"What, Sam?"

"Stop it. Look at me."

She set her pen in the spine of the journal and turned longsuffering blue eyes to him. "Happy?"

"Not even remotely. I know something's going on with you, and I think I know what it is."

Expressions danced over her face in the space of a second—shock, disbelief, fear?—before she settled on annoyance.

It was such an older sibling tactic, annoyance, that Sam had to physically try not to roll his eyes.

"Oh yeah? What do you think is going on with me, Doctor Winchester?"

Ignoring the sarcastic jibe, Sam matched her with a glare of his own. "You're like me, aren't you?"

This time Kate didn't try to hide her shock. "Like y—what?"

"Psychic," Sam said slowly, as though talking to an idiot. "You've got the psychic thing going on, like me."

"Sam—"

"Your body responds to it a little different than mine, and maybe yours is a bit more developed or something, because I can't heal people, by any stretch of the imagination; but we're the same, you and me. Aren't we?"

Kate blinked, mouth gaping like a fish. She closed it, but it fell open again a moment later. Still, she was silent.

"Come on, don't insult my intelligence," Sam couldn't decide if he was more relieved or worried, having his suspicions confirmed.

He wasn't alone.

Kate was like him.

Whatever horrid fate awaited him awaited her too.

"Sam, I—"

"Why didn't you just tell me?" Relief was giving way to a sense of betrayal that took him by surprise. "Why let me be so afraid of this when you could've told me all along what's going on?"

"Because I couldn't!" Kate interrupted, and Sam stopped talking long enough to notice her face was pale again. She continued, "Because I don't know if it's the same thing, Sammy. I don't think it is."

It definitely is.

"But there is something going on," he confirmed.

"I just…" Kate shoved a hand into her hair, pulling and brushing at her blonde curls—a sure sign of emotional distress. "Sam, I can't—"

"It's okay," he assured. She didn't want to talk about it, was probably afraid of it, didn't know what was happening…

God, he knew the feeling.

"It's okay, Katie. We don't have to…but…aren't you going to tell Dean?"

"No!" her eyes widened and her back snapped to ramrod-straight.

Wow, Kate, okay. Geez.

"No," she said again, visibly forcing herself to relax. "He's already worried sick about you, I don't want to make things worse."

"Kate, he's not stupid. You keep having reactions like this, he's gonna figure it out, like he did my headaches and nightmares."

Kate shuddered. "I know."

Suddenly, despite his previous assertion that they didn't have to talk about it, Sam wanted nothing more than to have answers to the million questions chasing themselves around his skull.

"When did it start for you, Kate?" he asked before he could stop himself. "Why are your abilities different from mine? Where did this come from? How come you can heal but I can't? Can I?"

Can I heal people?

That would be a useful skill.

"Sammy, I don't have answers for you," Kate said quietly, swinging her legs off the bed to face him. She leaned forward, took his hand in her smaller one, held his gaze. "I don't know much of anything about all this. I only knew I couldn't let Dean…die." She shifted, looking at her fingers, clenching around his restlessly. "I just wanted—needed—to help."

Sam clenched his jaw against a wave of emotion. "I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry, it's all right, Kate. I won't tell Dean. But—" he ducked his head to catch her eyes, forced her to look at him. Let the weight of his words show in his gaze. "You need to. You can't keep something like this from him. You shouldn't. We'll handle it better together, all of us."

Kate's eyes skittered away and down, and her ears turned bright pink. "Yeah, Sammy, okay."

Deciding he'd made his point, Sam let the conversation hang for a second before sitting back and squeezing his sister's shoulder. "You're really feeling better?"

She nodded, gave him a small smile. "I am. Think I'm gonna sleep though, I'm still pretty tired."

Sam followed suit, putting his laptop away for the night. By the time he settled himself cozily in bed and flipped off the light, Kate was turned away and breathing deeply.

Sam sighed into the darkness, letting himself absorb the night's revelations.

I'm not alone.

Kate is like me.

We're gonna get through this together.

I'm not alone.

He fell asleep to the words rattling in his head like a mantra.

I'm not alone.

A/N: How about that season finale, eh? Holy cats.

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