Chapter 11

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

Kate was flung back to consciousness as quickly as she'd been thrown from it. It was disorienting; she woke gasping, arms jerking outward in the same desperate bid for balance as they'd been when she blacked out—

Or at least tried to jerk outward.

Fuzzy-brained, it took her a moment to realize she couldn't move her arms, to register the rough feel of ropes around her wrists, the unyielding rigidity of stone (or concrete, maybe?) against her back.

"Ah, you're awake," Meg's smooth voice came from the shadows before Kate had a chance to blink the spots from her vision. She panted, trying to slow her breathing, to quiet her thumping heart so she could hear, could focus. "And just in time for the big climax, too. Your father should make his appearance any minute now."

They were in some sort of large...storage room? Floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall let in enough light for Kate to see lots of concrete—floors, walls, supporting pillars, one of which she was tied to—a large altar in the center of it, on which rested god-only-knew what kind of nastiness. She recognized black candles, a skull of some kind, an elaborately-carved goblet.

My father? What?

"What…" Kate wheezed. Why couldn't she catch her breath? "What…are you? What d'you…want?"

"Two very good questions," Meg admitted. "That you'll hear the answer to in a moment, because John will obviously ask the same ones." She stepped out of the deep shadows, barking a word in some language Kate couldn't recognize. Following movement out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw her shadow on the wall to her right—with an inhumanly tall, crouched figure over her, massive clawed hands wrapped tight around her ribcage. The creature's wolfish mouth was bared in a snarl that looked like a smile and Kate felt a chill race over her skin. The pressure around her torso loosened fractionally at Meg's order, enough to send goosebumps up her arms as she realized what had murdered young Meredith, and probably Banker Ben too.

"You have a daeva," she said, tilting her head—partially out of curiosity, and partially to relieve the pounding in her left temple. She wondered vaguely what Meg had hit her with; it had obviously been enough to give her a mild concussion.

Unfortunately, Kate was all too familiar with the feeling.

Meg was staring at her, seemingly surprised she would know what a Shadow Demon was. Kate cracked a grin, going for Dean's patented Snark The Bad Guys Into Submission method. "What? Didn't you know that's what they're called? Or are you dabbling in stuff way too big for you, little girl?"

Kate couldn't help the sharp intake of air as her head jerked to the right, her left cheekbone stinging with the force of the strike Meg had delivered, and her ears ringing against the pain. She blinked hard.

"Stop calling me that," Meg hissed in her ear. "You have no idea who I am."

"You're right, I don't. You could just tell me," she suggested. Meg straightened, looked down at her, stepped back with a smirk.

"And ruin the surprise? What a shame that'd be."

"Perhaps," a voice came from the corner, behind Kate. Her heart thumped inside her chest in instant recognition, and she twisted, ignoring the way the shadows tightened painfully around her torso. "If we didn't already know who you are."

"John," Meg greeted amiably, but Kate refused to turn back around, jaw clenched against both agony and tears. She wanted to shout for her dad, but said nothing instead, knowing that they couldn't afford emotional displays at the moment.

When they got out of this, though…

"Kasadya," John greeted the demon who was Yellow Eyes' right hand. He was getting close now, he knew it, and the thought bloomed a fierce sort of anticipation in his chest; it was tempered, though, by the sight of his daughter bound to the pillar a few yards away. She was pale and bloody, blonde hair hanging limp and sticking to her sweaty face. She stared at him with such a painful combination of grief and hope that his breath hitched. He emerged from the shadows and walked smoothly to Kate, kneeling beside her and brushing damp hair out of her face as he checked her cursorily for injuries.

There were a few—claw lacerations at the juncture of neck and shoulder, more on her left thigh. They were deep, would need stitching, but she was in no danger of bleeding out just now. Still, rage coursed hot through his veins at the sight of his girl's blood, and the demon standing over her, smiling. "What'd you do to my daughter, bitch?"

"Tsk tsk," Kasadya tutted. "Now, John, that's no way to talk to a lady." She fiddled with the amulet around her neck, and John heard something crack. A blurt of agony escaped Kate's lips, despite her obvious efforts to hold it back, and she tossed her head back against the concrete miserably. A glance at the wall revealed the shadow of the daeva, which had wrapped itself around Kate's torso like a snake, grinning as its clawed hand raked slowly down her cheek. She whimpered as it left a deep cut from her temple to her chin. John's hands tightened in her hair while he looked up at Kasadya.

"Stop it," he said evenly. "I'm here to deal, no need to involve her."

The demon just kept grinning and made no effort to stop the creature. She seemed to consider for a moment before gesturing toward the daeva, which growled menacingly. It constricted viciously again, and John had to mask an outright cringe at the sound of bone crunching somewhere in Kate's chest. His daughter screamed, and John stood slowly, fixing the demon with a glare that had been the last thing several monsters ever saw.

"Dad," Kate gasped behind him, but he forced himself to focus on the threat before him. Hesitating now would get them both killed.

"Stop it, Kasadya," he commanded, calling on that deathly calm that had so often saved his life in this line of work. "You wanted me, you got me. Leave my kids out of this."

The demon laughed and waved her fingers lazily. John looked to the wall; the daeva squeezed once more, driving a pained cry from Kate's ravaged throat, before it unwrapped itself from her torso and melted into the long shadows of the dark room.

John took a deep breath. "All right, I will go with you. Quietly, even. Let her go."

"Ah," Kasadya adopted an air of false regret. "See, I'd love to, but I really can't do that." She sauntered closer, and John had to force himself not to retreat a step. "We can't have her too close to our young Sammy, see? She's far too dangerous."

"Dangerous?" The question escaped before John had a chance to pull it back. He cursed himself internally for revealing his lack of knowledge, conceding an advantage.

Kasadya favored him with an indulgent smile. "What, don't you know? Your pretty little girl isn't exactly kosher, John. In fact, she's almost as much a freak as Sam."

"Dad, help," Kate rasped from the floor, and John refused to acknowledge the way his heart thumped in response. Instead, he debated whether to ask Kasadya for clarification, a chance to figure out what was going on with Kate…

The opportunity passed when the demon continued. "Plus, we need Sammy nice and isolated. But your older boy, he's a pretty good guard dog, I'll give him that. We'll have to take care of him at some point; though if we play it right, we can probably get Sam to do it himself." Her grin turned feral.

John ignored the jibe, the implication that Sam would ever—could ever—kill his brother. "If you don't let her go, we have no deal."

Kasadya laughed. "What makes you think I need you to deal, Johnny-boy? I have you already." She stepped right into John's space, mere inches from his face, and smiled. "You're not going anywhere. At least not of your own free will."

Kate bit her lip hard enough to taste blood, in a last-ditch effort not to scream. She couldn't afford to scream, she didn't have the breath to spare. Her right side, one of the big ribs halfway down, was on fire. The rush of warm wetness blooming under her shirt told her the bone had protruded through the skin, but what was more painful—and frightening—was the bone that wasn't protruding. The other half of the break had been shoved inward by that inexorable pressure—into her left lung. She was trying to squirm at the same time she was trying not to, her brain giving contradictory orders to escape and to minimize the agony, receiving nothing but blinding pain regardless of what she did.

The pressure that had released when the daeva left her was building again, but…different.

Internal.

Kate realized with a jolt of panic:

She couldn't take a breath.

"Dad," she gasped, but it wasn't near loud enough. "Dad."

Oh god, she couldn't breathe. Her chest felt like an elephant was sitting on it, bands of steel constricting her lungs and preventing the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. Black spots dancing at the edges of her vision, shadows lengthening and twisting and reaching for her.

She made a conscious decision to try something Nat had mentioned last time she saw him.

Then, gentle pressure on her wrists, barely registering as she fought to inhale. A nearly inaudible snap, and she was free. Uninterested in the conversation between her father and her enemy, uninterested in anything but oxygen, Kate rolled onto her knees and elbows, curled in a vain attempt to apply gravity to the air sticking in her chest. There was a hand on her back, a voice shouting in her ear.

"Kate? Kate!"

Sammy, she vaguely recognized, but that was all she had time to think before his palm came down hard on her back, sending waves of agony through her torso. The scream he forced out of her was choked and far too soft. She was fighting to stay awake now, oxygen deprivation sending her brain into a stupor as she scrambled to find that power she knew resided in her soul.

Come on, come on!

"…'s wrong?" Sam was asking, curled around her on the cold concrete floor, hands roving as he attempted to triage her. His damp fingers found the compound rib fracture and he gasped in horror.

"Dean!" he bellowed. It was loud enough for Kate to hear clearly in spite of the fuzzy ringing in her ears. She shook her head to clear it. Something was happening; her brain was starting to itch like it did when she'd healed Dean. She twitched in Sam's arms.

Dad and Dean were mere feet away, maybe distracted by whatever Meg was doing, or maybe distracted by the daeva, but maybe not. And she couldn't let them see what was about to happen.

"Sam," she choked, trying with every fiber of her being to calm down, slow her heart, relax her muscles. Just enough to get a little air. Sam locked eyes with her, squeezed her right arm. Kate tasted something coppery and tried not to choke on the thick liquid.

Oh god, she was bleeding internally.

Shit shit shit.

"Kate?"

Closing her eyes, she forced the words out into Sam's ear.

"Can't le'th'm…see," Sam heard, and he scrambled to try and keep up with Kate's reasoning.

"Can't let who see what?" he asked urgently. He needed to get her to a hospital—scratch that, they really needed to call an ambulance, he was fairly certain she had a punctured lung.

But Kate wasn't listening to him anymore, head tilted back and her face twisted in agony. Her mouth wrenched open as if to scream, but all that came out was a strangled moan as a blue light caught Sam's eye. He looked down and coughed out a blurt of shock.

The puncture wound was glowing. Bright tendrils of light seeped out of it, illuminating the blood and the jagged edge of a rib. Without thinking, Sam shifted so Kate's injury was pressed against his own torso and wrapped both arms around her smaller frame, his back to the fight going on behind him.

God, let her be okay, he prayed to no one in particular as the heat from…whatever was going on…seeped through his shirt. He cursed his timing; he and Dean had had to triangulate their father's position from a distant train whistle and the time of the call, and it had all taken far too long. By the time they'd arrived at the warehouse and heard the scuffle upstairs, followed by Kate's agonized scream, she'd already been injured.

One look at the carnage and the altar had told Sam they were dealing with some sort of demon—but Meg's amulet was something new. He'd never seen anyone summon or bind a demon of any kind with an amulet. Their dad clearly had the right idea, because as soon as Sam released Kate and Dean broke cover to attack Meg, Dad had gone for the amulet.

Daeva, Sam had realized in the instant before Kate stole his attention again; and now he was curled around her, trying to hide the fact that she had some sort of power that was healing a punctured lung. Whatever it was, it was working; he could feel her ribs expanding now as she sucked in air hungrily.

It was mere chance that led him to look up at the gray wall in that moment, just in time to see the somewhat-humanoid figure of the daeva standing over him, clawed hand raised high in preparation for a strike. He barely registered Dean's shout of his name.

Sam rolled, folding Kate into his arms as the daeva's claws raked down his back, burning. He shouted wordlessly against the pain as he landed a few feet away, clutching his sister while the creature slashed him again—bicep this time, and Kate got a bit of it when the long claws left his arm and met her side. She shrieked, but before either of them could do much else, a deafening crash sounded behind them and Dean hollered his own cry of pain.

"Close your eyes!" Dad bellowed.

Sam barely had time to acquiesce before light so bright it hurt his eyes filled the room. Belatedly, he heard the sound of a flare being struck, then Dad's booming voice again:

"Sam! Bring your sister, let's go!"

But he didn't need to bring Kate anywhere. Eyes shut tight against the penetrating light, Sam felt her cold fingers close around his forearm, heard her ragged breaths near his right side.

"Come on!" he shouted as he got his legs under him. Kate didn't let go, her nails digging into his skin. Sam couldn't complain; the slight pain was a small price to pay in exchange for his sister being able to run out of there beside him.

They stumbled down the stairs blindly and out of the warehouse entirely. Sam heard Kate yelp as she tripped on something—Meg's limp body, wide brown eyes open and unseeing, a pool of blood testifying to the fall she'd obviously taken from the third-story window.

Dean or Dad? he vaguely wondered as he pulled Kate along.

Out here, he could see his brother and his father, and he followed close with his eyes fixed on the leather jacket Dean always wore. Beside him, Kate's breathing was shallow and pained, but she didn't stop running until everyone did, across the street near the Impala.

"It was…a daeva…" Kate ground out, trying to catch her breath. "Have to…go…."

"She was controlling them," Dad added. "She's dead, and the amulet's destroyed. They're free now."

Kate looked up, blue eyes wild. "Exactly. Come after us…next…"

Dad shook his head, but whatever he planned to say next, he never got the chance. Sam didn't quite register what he was doing before he'd closed the scant distance between them and folded his father into a bear hug, head buried in the man's shoulder the way he used to when he was a kid in need of reassurance.

Dad didn't hesitate to return the embrace, and Sam decided then and there that none of their differences, nothing he'd said or dad had said or their stupid petty fights mattered; his father was here, was alive, and was the only one he knew who understood Sam's pain.

He wasn't the only one in their family who had watched the love of his life burn on a ceiling.

The thought tightened something in Sam's chest, making it hard to breathe. "Dad," he choked, barely aware he was trembling. Dad didn't say anything or pull back, he just held Sam tight.

"It's all right, son," he murmured so only Sam could hear, while the youngest Winchester worked up the ability to wall up those tears that were currently dripping onto Dad's shoulder.

"Jess," he whispered, heart breaking anew for his stubborn beautiful blonde, and the ring he'd never get to give her.

"I know, Sammy. I'm so sorry."

The embrace lasted several long seconds more, before Dad seemed to suddenly remember Kate's injuries. He pulled back, though he kept a hand on Sam's shoulder, and they turned to face Dean and Kate. She was leaning heavily against her bloodied older brother, holding still-tender ribs.

"Katie, we gotta get you to a hospital," Dad was muttering, attempting to pull her arm away so he could look. "That was a compound rib fracture, your lung should have been…how are you still standing?"

Her eyes were wide, like a deer caught in headlights. "I'm okay, Dad," she assured, letting him pull her arm away and lift her bloody shirt just enough to see the former injury. The skin was blood-smeared, but flawless where the break had been, her chest expanding and contracting as she breathed normally.

Not even a scar.

Go on, tell them, Sam encouraged silently.

"How?" Dad was asking. "The daeva—"

"I think it was an illusion," Kate answered before he could finish the question, and Sam resisted the very real urge to bash his skull against a wall in frustration. "Because I'm fine."

Why wouldn't she just tell them?

Of course, he of all people know how Dad could be—maybe Kate just wasn't equipped to handle an interrogation tonight. He wouldn't blame her.

"Your shirt is soaked with blood," Dad countered. Kate just looked at him, blue eyes wide and glossy with unshed tears. The silence held for a beat, before Kate threw herself into Dad's arms, not unlike Sam had moments earlier.

Sam smiled when Dad's arms tightened around her.

For the first time in months, Dean let himself breathe. He was surrounded by his family, at last; Kate was in Dad's arms and Sam was beside him, leaning on his shoulder and trying not to be too obvious about it. Dean had just about had a heart attack when he saw the daeva's shadow standing over his brother and sister, but Sam was no idiot—they'd all managed to make it out fine.

His spine tingled unpleasantly. They needed to go, and now.

"Guys," he ventured, unwilling to interrupt the reunion, but he figured it'd all be meaningless if they were dead in the next ten seconds. "We gotta go."

Dad pulled back, held Katie's shoulders and looked her over once. There was something in his gaze Dean couldn't understand—and didn't like. It was reticence bordering on suspicion, and he couldn't think of one good reason why Dad would look at Kate like that. He shifted uncomfortably as Sam took Kate's arm and pulled her to his side, leading her toward the car. Dad turned his attention to his eldest.

Much as he wanted to hug the man, Dean said first, "Dad, you can't come with us."

Kate and Sam went instantly still, expressions ranging from shock to disbelief to denial—but Dean looked at Dad, who simply nodded. His younger siblings found their voices, tripping over each other in their protestations.

"What? No of course he has to—"

"We just found him—"

"He can't! We almost got Dad killed in there."

"Dad, please, you gotta come with us—"

"Don't you get it? They're never going to stop, Sam, they'll use us against him!"

"I don't care!"

"Stop." Dad's tone was final, the kind none of them ever argued with, not even Sammy. Dean's chest ached. "Your brother's right; it's too dangerous."

Kate cut in. "Dad, no; we need you!"

"No we don't," Dean said, almost hating it was true. "We can handle ourselves. And Dad's less distracted without us."

He felt the sting of the words even as he registered it on Kate's face. A distraction. Dad's kids were a distraction, a stumbling block in the way of getting the job done. Kate's eyes hardened, and she looked away, leaning into Sam as she gave up the argument. Dean wanted to reassure her, promise her that wasn't how he'd meant it—no, he wanted Dad to assure her of those things. They'd mean nothing coming from him.

But Dad was pulling him into a hug that rubbed over several deep lacerations, prompting a pained gasp from the younger man.

"Look out for them, Dean," Dad was whispering in his ear. "And look after yourself, too, hear?"

Dean wrapped his arms around Dad's back, taking more comfort than he'd ever admit aloud in the warmth of his father's embrace. "Yes sir."

Dad pulled back, set his hand gently on the side of Dean's jaw and gave it a pat. "That's my boy."

Then he turned and walked away.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Shout outs to my girls Nova42, CornishGirl, and cfccfc for helping me nail this down how I want it and for inspiring me to write more every day!

Don't forget to leave a review or pop me a PM with your comments-I love your feedback!