Chapter 12

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

A/N: Forgive me, Readers, for I have sinned...my last post was...um...a really long time ago. I offer no excuses, only a new chapter and a promise to do better. Enjoy!

"Oh my god, would you just stay still?" Kate smacked Dean's good shoulder roughly, garnering a wince and a growl from her grumpy older brother. Sam brushed by her, carrying a couple of folded tee shirts while failing to stifle a grin.

"Maybe if you'd quit with the butchering act—ahhh—" Dean's venom degenerated into a groan that he bit the end off of even as he glared at her, daring her to acknowledge the fact he had just displayed how much pain he was actually in. She favored him with a smirk that came out more a grimace and went back to irrigating his ripped shoulder blade. The wounds looked rather more serious than Kate let on; deep, cruel lacerations dark and laced with pus, raised and inflamed. What worried her, though, were the tendrils of dark red that radiated outward from the wounds, following the lines of her brother's veins beneath pale skin. She took a deep breath.

"Maybe if you'd let me treat this two weeks ago when we dealt with the daevas, rather than insist you were fine and try to deal with this all by yourself, then it wouldn't have gotten infected, now would it?"

"Shut up."

"Of course, being slammed around by a vampire or two certainly didn't help—"

"Shut up."

"—And don't you smirk, Sammy, I saw what that son of a bitch did to you. You're next." Kate ignored Sam's longsuffering sigh from the other side of the room where he was throwing things in duffel bags, and poured more whiskey into the cuts on Dean's back, in an attempt to stymie the infection. She winced when his head dropped into his hands. This really did have to hurt.

Taking pity, she dabbed gently at the wounds, still swollen and now bleeding sluggishly along with all the white goo that told her his body was fighting and fighting hard to defeat this thing, and looked back at Dean's face, still buried in his palms, muscles taut against the agony. Shifting directly behind him so there was no chance he'd see, Kate called up a tiny sliver of her grace and sent it through her fingertips into the battered flesh of her brother's back. She'd pay for that later—probably a good few hours of puking up everything she ate for lunch or a low-grade fever—but it was worth it when she saw some of the tension leave Dean's solid frame. She hadn't healed him much, just enough so the pain was more manageable and the infection truly dead.

Sam saw, though, and raised a single brow. Kate ignored him.

The last thing they needed was for Dean to end up septicemic. Things were…complicated…enough, what with Dad having shown up, left, and then shown up again, now getting ready to leave them—again—and this new information about Samuel Colt's gun and how it would help them in their fight, and…

Kate sighed as she applied the last of the butterfly strips to Dean's shoulder blade—the wounds were healed enough to not need stitches, thank god—and applied long strips of gauze held in place by medical tape. While she worked, she talked softly; an ongoing stream of nothing-in-particular that would help soothe and anchor her brother.

"There. You'll be sore for a bit, and you'll have to let me take those off before you shower and reapply new ones when you're done, but you should be fine. We'll keep up with the antibiotic ointment and regular cleaning until I'm sure the infection is gone."

"Feels better," Dean muttered, sweaty brow resting on a hand. Kate crouched beside him, noting the gray tint to his skin.

"You don't look any better," she remarked. He gave her a bitch face so potent it may as well have been one of Sam's, and she grinned a little. Dean tried to answer her with one of his own, but failed after a second or two and rested his head back on his hand again.

Kate's brow furrowed. "Dean?"

Fate smiled on her too-stoic older brother in that moment, for he was saved from answering her by Dad entering the room. As usual, his presence commanded all their attention, and the man nodded once.

He said, "So."

Kate cocked an eyebrow, knowing where this was going—she knew her dad—and unwilling to display any sort of regret or meekness regarding their decision to come back for him after cleaning out the vamp nest. It had been the right decision, and she'd do it again, a thousand times over.

"Yes sir?" Sam ventured.

"You ignored a direct order back there." Oddly, Dad didn't look angry at all; his expression was something else, something rare enough that Kate scrambled to identify it. His brow was furrowed, but in something more akin to concern than irritation; his stubbled face paler than she liked; dark eyes carefully blank.

"Yes sir," Sam said again, and Dean piped up a second later, voice like gravel.

"Yeah, but we saved your ass."

Kate's other eyebrow rose as she turned to regard her older brother; it wasn't often Dean talked back to their father like that. She noted similar expressions on both Sam's and Dad's faces before the older man smiled a little.

"You're right."

Both her brothers paused, confusion evident on tired faces, and Kate was sure her expression matched theirs. "I am?" Dean asked.

Dad nodded once. "It scares the hell out of me; you three are all I've got." He ran a hand over the rough skin of his jaw. "But I guess we are stronger as a family. So...we go after this damn thing together."

Dean met her eyes, visibly shocked, and they both looked at Sam, who stared back with his jaw slightly slack. The siblings regarded one another for a long moment. Slack-jawed frowns turned to full-on grins as they turned to face their father.

"Yes sir," the boys chorused together. Kate laughed.

As was typical, the warm fuzzies lasted about as long as it took for Dad and Sam to be around one another for more than ten minutes. The drive to Iowa—following the not-so-natural phenomena that apparently pointed to the Demon's location—was almost a blur to Dean; his back was still throbbing and hot, Pastor Jim was dead, and Dad was sure the Demon had something to do with it.

His whole life, they'd been hunting this thing, preparing for this, and now that they were close, Dean almost wished they weren't—and kicked himself for thinking it. Dad had gone into super-military mode, tossing orders about and expecting them to be followed; a hard exterior with an undercurrent of desperation that made Dean nervous. Sam was already starting to question those orders, and it was only a matter of time before that became an issue—perhaps an issue that got one of them killed, if it came at the wrong time. And Kate was quiet, the way she got when Dad was on the warpath. He'd never liked seeing it; it was far too contrary to the way she normally was, all ideas and enthusiasm and a fire he would never admit he depended upon to keep going.

He couldn't wait til this was over. He needed it to be over.

Another hotel room, this one in Salvation, Iowa; and Dean was pouring a cup of crappy, cheap-motel joe for Sam in the hopes it would alleviate the residual headache from his latest vision. Kate sat beside their younger brother, small hand kneading his stiff neck muscles. Dad's next words were laced with accusation, and he was looking at Dean.

"All right, when were you going to tell me about this?"

Kate and Sam both stopped moving, looked toward Dad with ill-concealed surprise. Sam stayed still, though Kate's gaze snapped from Dad to Dean a few times, assessing, ready to jump in.

Dean tried for deflection. "We didn't know what it meant."

Dad didn't buy it, eyes narrowing, impatience in every line of his face. "Right. Something like this starts happening to your brother, you pick up the phone and you call me."

Kate stood abruptly at that, as Dean dropped the coffee and the mug on the counter, gesturing for her to back down. She obeyed, slowly, eyes locked on Dad.

"Call you?" Dean asked, incredulous. "Are you kidding me? Dad, I called you! From Liv's, from Lawrence; Sam called you when I was dying." Their father had the grace to look slightly ashamed at that—Dean was still stinging that the man hadn't so much as returned Sam's message. He'd been fine in the end, true, but still. "I mean, getting you on the phone? I got a better chance of winning the lottery."

Dad opened his mouth, and Kate stood again. Dean held out a placating hand, but now she wasn't having it.

"Stop it," she growled, blue eyes aflame. "It's not Dean's job to look after us, at least not his exclusively. We're not kids anymore. We grew up, in between the rawheads and the black dogs and the skeezy motels and the bizarre hunts. We take care of each other now, and if you didn't get a call about Sam's visions, it's as much my fault as it is Dean's."

Dean thought that speech flagrantly inaccurate, but Dad just sat quietly for a second, seemingly stunned into temporary silence. Sam spoke up after a second, still rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Look, guys, visions or no visions, we know the Demon is coming tonight." Sam looked back to Dad, and Dean turned, moving back to the rapidly-cooling coffee. Kate came to stand beside him, grabbing a chipped mug and pouring some for herself. "This family is gonna go through the same Hell we did," Sam said.

Dad shook his head. "No they're not. No one is, ever again."

Dean saw Sammy nod as his phone chirped loudly and he fished it out of his pocket. Kate turned to him.

"Dad's in rare form," she whispered. He gave her a cocked eyebrow, but didn't have time to say anything before Sam's voice got his attention again. It was a tiny thing, just a small hitch in tone, a crinkled brow, but Dean was instantly tuned in and listening.

"Meg," Sam stated flatly into the phone. "Last time I saw you, you fell out of a window."

Kate had stood straight so abruptly her coffee sloshed onto her hand, burning her thumb. She didn't move, eyes hard and narrowed at the name of the demon who'd snatched her mere weeks ago. Across the room, Dad had stood and was moving closer to the three of them almost instinctively. Dean couldn't stop watching Sam.

"Just your feelings? That was a seven story drop."

Meg said something else, and Sam sat up straighter, gaze snapping to Dad, who stepped closer. Kate did too, and Dean grabbed her elbow—no, stay back, they've got this. She tugged free with a glare, but stayed put.

"My Dad?" Sam was saying. "I don't know where my Dad is."

But everyone—including the demon on the other end of the line, apparently—knew the jig was up. Sam hesitated, then handed the phone to Dad. Dean watched him, alert and wanting nothing more than to get his hands round that blonde's skinny little neck. Dad walked away from them—back to the kids, facing the danger, same as always—and said nothing for a while. After a moment, his shoulders hunched in just the smallest amount, and Dean noticed Kate take an abortive step forward as though to offer assistance. He turned to stop her.

Then Dad jerked slightly. "Caleb?"

Sam stiffened, Dean stilled, and Kate—well, Kate turned the most extraordinary shade of white, then rapidly bright red, stumbling forward again toward their dad.

"Caleb?" she asked loudly, smacking Dean's hands away as he reached for her and nearly tripping on the legs of Sam's chair. Dad gestured wildly at her, still speaking into the phone.

"You listen to me," his voice was low, dangerous. "He's got nothing to do with anything, you let him go."

Kate froze at Dad's words. Dean moved toward her, instinct more than logic affording the action. He forced himself to listen, strained to hear the other half of the conversation through the phone's tiny speaker.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Silence.

"Caleb?"

Kate sank slowly onto the bed—probably would have gone straight to the ground had it not been there, Dean thought—and Sam looked up at him. Dean knew. They all knew.

"I'm going to kill you, you know that?"

Dean felt his heart plummet into his stomach and barely managed to stifle his outward reaction, unlike Sam, who flinched outright at the practical confirmation of Caleb's demise. Kate didn't move. Dad started pacing, slowly, like a caged tiger.

"Okay," he said a moment later, then, "Okay, I'll bring you the Colt."

Kate barely registered the words over the sound of blood pounding in her ears. It made everything seem faraway and muffled, like she was hearing it underwater. One simple thought was all that she could really register.

Not Caleb too. Not like this.

Please, not like this.

Dad was off the phone a moment later, talking with the boys, arguing; Kate struggled to check back into the conversation, shake off the rushing in her ears and the way her skin felt too tight for her face.

"…just going to hand Meg a fake gun and hope she doesn't notice?" Dean's incredulous question was the first thing that finally sunk in. She forced her too-heavy head up to lock her gaze on Dad's, panic blooming in her chest bare milliseconds before the hot rage did. It took her breath away.

"I'm coming with you."

Dad stopped and looked hard at her, eyes dark and mouth set in a thin line. "No, Kate, you aren't," he responded, deadly soft. Kate didn't know how it happened, but she found herself on her feet and in her father's face.

"I want her." Her own voice was foreign to her ears, dark and low and dangerous. "I want that bitch skewered and left to rot at a Hellgate, just so they all know: she screwed with the wrong family. I'm going to—"

"I know," Dad interrupted, his hands landing on her shoulders, shockingly hot through her thin cotton tee. Or maybe she was just freezing; Kate was too numb to tell. "I know what you want, that's why you aren't going."

She felt her own face twist into an expression of hurt shock. Mission first, her mind supplied unhelpfullyhelpfully. The mission came first, and she knew that, but she couldn't seem to snap out—

"Dad, you can't go alone," Sam said softly. "It's a trap, it's too dangerous."

Dad nodded, once. "You're right. That's why Dean's coming with me."