Chapter 15

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

It was three-twenty-seven on a Thursday afternoon when Dean died.

Kate knew Sam was talking to her, or…saying something, at least; her brother was staring down at Dean, cradling him in his arms and moving his lips as he cried. He was rocking back and forth, pressing Dean's pale face into his palm as though trying to force himself to believe he was really gone.

Maybe he wasn't talking at all. Kate couldn't tell. Her ears were stuffed with cotton, her brain refusing to accept what was right in front of her.

Dean was dead.

No.

No.

He'd been too much a part of her to be gone. Dean was light, was life; movement and resilience and joy in spite of what they did for a living, what they saw on a daily basis. He was her protector, her friend, her constant, her brother.

And she was sitting here on the blood-soaked carpet, eulogizing him in her head. The thought hardened something inside her, choking off her grief and mobilizing her to action.

No.

This isn't how it ends.

She stood, distantly shocked her watery legs would support her, and turned to leave the room. Sam called her name, and it might not have stopped her but for the tone of his voice—all vulnerability and heartbreak. He sounded like someone had destroyed his heart. Kate almost stumbled to her knees again from the pain of it, but somehow she pasted on a small smile and turned back to him.

"Stay with him, Sammy. I'll make it okay."

Sam stared at her, and she left before he had a chance to protest. Numb feet carried her through the bright hall, into the stairwell, down down down into the basement. Somehow she found the boiler room. Instinct told her Dad would have come here to summon and distract the Demon with the Colt while she and Sam rescued Dean.

Her breath hitched at the thought. All she could see were Dean's green eyes, staring sightless at the ceiling five floors above her.

No.

Quiet voices led her to the east side of the boiler room. A single window near the top of the wall spilled weak light onto the concrete floor, where she saw the conjuring spell laid out, bronze bowls of herbs and black candles and white chalk. Dad was standing there, and a man with yellow eyes before him, smirking. Kate felt a tremor run through her entire body at the sight of him.

Dean.

"You bastard," she nearly choked on the words, to her shame. Both men looked up, yellow and brown gazes fixing on her face as she took three more steps into the room. Dad's eyes widened—this wasn't in the plan—while Yellow Eyes just smiled wider.

Dead.

He's dead.

"Kate?" Dad was paling fast, looking anxious enough to drop his tough-guy façade in front of the bad guy in favor of figuring out what was ailing his daughter. But Kate didn't even see. All she saw was yellow eyes and a leering grin.

"You fucking bastard. Bring him back, right now!" Kate took what was supposed to be a threatening step forward. She wasn't sure how well she succeeded at threatening, since she was shaking, could feel the tremors in her hands and face as she struggled to maintain a modicum of control.

Dead.

The demon tilted his head curiously. "Your brother, he…ah," a look that strayed dangerously close to glee crossed his features. "He's very much not you, eh? Not so much luck evicting my son from his body, how unfortunate."

"Oh, your son is gone," Kate snarled. "Sent back to Hell kicking and screaming like an infant."

She meant to goad him, but Yellow Eyes didn't take the bait. He refused to blink, just held her eyes and asked serenely, "You didn't know we could kill our hosts on the way out?" The Demon continued, cheerfully. "Poor Dean."

Dad made a strangled noise somewhere in the background, but all Kate was aware of was the red at the corners of her vision. With a roar of rage and grief, she charged the Demon, Ka-bar raised uselessly.

Dead.

Two steps. That was as far as she got before she ran into what felt like a brick wall. Something solid had her in invisible clutches that needled at her skin, stabbed at her bones. Yellow Eyes had both hands up; one holding her back, the other hurling her father into the wall, Kate noticed vaguely. She growled, clenching her teeth, and tore free of the hold, shouting as her nerves protested the rough treatment. The Demon's eyes widened for a second, but then he lowered his hand and grinned as she ran at him.

Kate didn't know where the strength to do it came from, but she brought the knife down in a lethal arc, steel blade finding a home in the Demon's heart. Blood welled around the wound, filling her with a satisfaction she was sure she shouldn't feel while killing something, even a monster like this one.

It took a moment to register that her enemy wasn't falling, that the sounds of distress she'd become accustomed to hearing from a dying creature weren't hitting her ears; she raised her eyes to his face.

He was laughing.

She felt her face crumple before she could stop it, hot tears sliding down trembling cheeks, features twisted in fury. She folded her fingers around his thick throat and squeezed, even as part of her knew he could throw her off in a moment.

He allowed the show of temper, which made her even angrier.

"Bring him back." She didn't recognize her own voice, low and filled with furious intent.

"You know I can," Yellow Eyes said conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather, and not the entirety of Kate's world crashing down.

Dead.

"How?"

"Katie, no!" Dad shouted from faraway. Kate turned in time to see Yellow Eyes shove him back into the wall, hard enough to crack the plaster and probably something in his back. Dad grunted in pain.

"Sit tight, John, let the grown-ups talk."

Kate didn't take her gaze from her father. He was shaking his head fiercely, clearly telling her not to even talk about a deal, to stop while she could.

He didn't understand she never had a choice.

Kate threw one last glance at him—forgive me, Dad—and turned back to the Demon. "How?" she asked again. Yellow Eyes smiled.

"We'll make a deal. Dean's life for, oh, say…your soul."

Kate felt something in the vicinity of her heart clench, throat closing up in terror. "What exactly does that mean?" she asked, proud of her voice for not cracking.

"Not much," Yellow Eyes chuckled. "Just that when you die, I own your soul. You come chill with me in Hell, instead of going toward the Light."

Eternity in Hell, in exchange for her brother to live. "And Dean comes back whole and healthy?"

"Good as new," the Demon confirmed.

Dead.

Dad was growling in the background when Kate nodded. "Deal."

Yellow eyes sparkled, and Kate suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a very unwelcome kiss. The Demon wasn't polite about it either, vicious and harsh and more of an attack than a gesture of affection. Kate yelped and shoved him off, hand coming up in a slap almost out of instinct.

"What the—?"

"How else do you think soul deals are sealed, sweetheart? Handshakes just ain't what they used to be—"

A painfully loud shot thundered through the air in the boiler room, and Kate jumped as she felt a bullet whiz by her ear, missing her by what had to be inches. The Demon's eyes widened as his bones lit up from within, like lightning strikes illuminating the internal frame of his vessel. His breath stuttered, choked, stopped entirely as the body dropped to the ground in front of her. Black smoke issued faintly from the hole in his temple, and Kate forced herself to take a breath.

Dead.

Yellow Eyes was dead.

She stared down at the inert body, eyes gone back to their natural blue, and barely registered a faint pity for the Demon's poor vessel before her own situation hit her like a freight train again, and she rounded on Dad.

"Why did you shoot him so fast? We don't even know if he brought Dean back yet!"

Dad was staring at her like he'd never seen her before. She was breathing like she'd just run a marathon, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, little abortive furious movements.

"Are you seriously asking me that right now?" Dad's voice was low; a warning, if she'd cared to take it.

"That whole fucking thing might have been for nothing, if he didn't have time to hold up his end of the deal—"

"Hold up his end…Kate, you just sold your soul to a demon!"

"For Dean, Dad!"

"Are you out of your mind? Dean would kill you—"

"Well he'd better get in line. I wasn't about to just let him die!"

"And now you're going to die! And you're going to go to Hell, because a demon owns you!"

"A dead demon," Kate rolled her eyes. "I knew you'd kill him, and I needed him to bring Dean back first. So he owned my soul for about two seconds. He's gone now, it's a moot point."

"A—" Dad looked ready to explode, or maybe faint. Kate wasn't sure which at this point. "A moot point? You—"

"Kate? Dad?"

Sam came round the corner first, hazel eyes almost comically wide, and on his heels a figure that made Kate's knees lock in an attempt to keep her upright. Spiky hair and wild green eyes, skin so pale his freckles stood out like paint splatters on a canvas, Dean stormed into the room, breathing hard.

Kate was pretty sure she stopped breathing entirely, watching in what felt to her like slow motion as Dad crossed the room in two strides and pulled Dean into his arms fiercely. They hugged for a long moment; Dad's shoulders shook as badly as Dean's hands did, and they laughed as they pulled away. Kate wasn't ready for anything even resembling laughter, felt tears coming even as she tried to contain them. But her face was contorting beyond her control, her chest heaving, her legs weak with relief and joy and gratitude and horror and grief. Dean's gaze found her over Dad's shoulder, and he came to her. Folded her in his arms and kissed her head, and her hands found the strength her knees were lacking, latching onto the back of his shirt til it hurt, refusing to let go.

"Katie," he was whispering in her ear when she could finally hear again, blood settling into a more normal pattern of flowing through her veins instead of rushing headlong to one place or another. "Katie, what happened?"

She shook her head, not ready—not able—to address it, not yet.

Naturally, Dad didn't much care what she was emotionally ready to handle. "She made a deal to bring you back, Dean."

"Dad!" There wasn't a worse way to word that, she was convinced. The guilt and horror that flashed over her big brother's face was proof of it. "Dean," she said quickly, trying to forestall the guilt-fest and freak-out session she knew was coming.

"What?!" Sam said loudly behind her, but she talked right over him.

"Dean, it's okay, I had it under control. Dad had the Colt still, and I figured while Yellow Eyes was distracted with me, he'd finish him. I just had to get you back in the process, I couldn't let you—"

"You figured?" Dean asked, incredulity still warring with horror on his face. She winced.

"Yes, I figured. I had no way to know for sure. But it's over now! You're back and I'm safe and Yellow Eyes is dead, and can't we please just celebrate, you guys?" She looked around at her father and brothers, the only three people she had in the world. "It's over, this thing hanging over our heads for twenty years, it's done. He's dead. Dean," she turned back to him, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. "It's over."

If Kate had been right about one thing, Sam thought, sliding into the vinyl booth of the diner in Munci, Indiana, it was that Yellow Eyes was well and truly dead. His vision-dreams had stopped entirely in the two weeks since that crazy afternoon, and no one had come to collect on Kate's soul deal, so they were all hopeful that she was right about being free of Hell's clutches.

Hopeful was the operative word there, and it wasn't a state of affairs Sam found acceptable. He'd been doing what reading he could on the road since then, and it looked like he was going to be doing a lot more; soul deals weren't well-documented or easy to find information about.

Kate slid in across from him, looking a bit pale despite the current celebratory—and therefore, gently-paced—road trip they were on, hitting up some of their favorite places they'd visited over the years. This diner was one such spot; apple pie so divine, Dean had never forgotten it even though they'd only eaten here once, twelve years ago.

His big brother was beside him—right where he belonged, Sam thought—grinning wide enough to crack his face as he made a show of perusing the laminated menu.

"Dude, the burgers here are awesome too. You cannot get a salad tonight," Dean commanded emphatically, and even though Sam huffed and prevaricated, he knew he'd be ordering a burger. He had found himself ridiculously willing to do anything and everything Dean so much as hinted at since his death and subsequent resurrection.

It was a pattern he'd have to quit, before Dean got used to it, the smug bastard.

But watching him now, childlike glee on his face just from being in a burger joint with awesome apple pie, it was hard to do anything to dampen that. Even if it was just a salad.

Kate sighed from across the table, folding her menu quietly and folding her arms over the tabletop, looking at both of them. Sam tilted her head; this was Kate's We Need To Talk pose, and he wondered if they were about to find out why she'd been so tired lately.

She waited until the waitress—a young blonde thing with legs that just wouldn't quit, or at least that's how Dean described her—took their orders and swept away toward the kitchen, taking Dean's gaze with her, before Kate cleared her throat.

"Guys, we gotta talk."

To his credit, Dean's attention snapped back at an impressive speed. He looked attentively at his sister, and Sam wondered if he was seeing what Sam himself saw—the strain underlying Kate's every move, the exhaustion in the lines of her face, the fear in her blue eyes.

"Yeah, we do," Dean answered, without accusation or anger.

Kate looked at each of them in turn, then sighed. "I know you're still mad at me about the soul deal thing, but it's not that."

Dean's eyebrows shot up, but Sam knew where this was going, and braced himself.

"Sam isn't the only one with bizarro psycho powers," Kate confessed, looking straight at Dean, obviously resisting the urge to spill the truth, fast and defensive. Dean froze, but waited for her to continue. Kate took a deep breath. "Mine are different from his. I don't know the details, but…well we know Sam's powers were granted somehow by Yellow Eyes, or had something to do with him at least. Mine were—are—the polar opposite."

Sam stopped looking at Dean, attention fixed entirely on Kate.

Her powers were the opposite of his?

Nice of her to tell him so earlier.

Stuffing down his burgeoning anger, he forced himself to listen as she continued.

"Just after the demon thing at Liv's place, weird shit started happening." Kate picked at the edge of the table. "I kept seeing this blue light at the corners of my vision, and then in Lawrence, I saved Sam's life by throwing up some sort of…I don't know, force field, without trying."

Sam blinked, and she looked at him apologetically. "You were unconscious at the time."

"A force field?" Dean hissed, incredulous. Kate nodded, shamefaced.

"Yeah, I still haven't been able to replicate that yet. But it freaked me out well and good, so I asked Missouri if there was something wrong with me. She said no, but gave me a sachet of herbs to help me perceive supernatural entities temporarily, in case something was working mojo on me."

Sam nodded—at least she hadn't been a total idiot about the situation.

"But I never used it. I was getting ready to, when this…" Kate trailed off, looking for all the world like she was gathering her courage to say what came next. "This is gonna sound crazy, but…it was an angel I'd been seeing."

Sam's brain stalled. The only thought he could process was what?

"What?" Dean asked.

Kate was nodding. "I know, angels. Our lives, man."

"Are you sure it was an actual angel?" Sam found himself asking, then wondered how he'd been coherent enough to even manage that much.

"Yeah," Kate assured. "It was definitely an angel. Being made of light, two wings, super bright and loud, the whole bit. He told me—well, showed me, really—that they, er, Heaven, had decided they needed a…" she seemed to struggle with this part, "weapon…to counter the one Hell had created with Sammy."

Sam's blood ran cold.

"What?" came from cotton-dry lips. Kate was staring at him, empathy giving way to stubbornness. She reached across the table and took his hand. He tried to pull back, but she held fast.

"Whatever Yellow Eyes did to you, it was so you could serve Hell when you were, I don't know, ready or whatever." She refused to let his gaze go. "But it doesn't matter now, Sammy, because you're not serving Hell and you never will. It doesn't matter now."

Sam clenched his jaw, struggling a little to breathe.

"So what, Sammy got demon power shake and you got angel juice?" Dean asked, and he didn't seem nearly as surprised as Sam thought he ought to be about all this. "Yeah, I know, Kabaiel told me when he was inside my head."

"You didn't tell us that," Sam tried not to make the words accusatory.

"Yeah well, she didn't tell us she's got angel mojo either." Dean startled just a little, looking like something had just occurred to him. "That's how I survived the heart damage, isn't it?"

Kate nodded, looking far more miserable than someone who saved their brothers' life should look.

How messed up were their lives, exactly?

"And that's why you got sick?" Dean asked. Kate nodded again.

"The angel—Nathanael, was his name—told me the human body isn't designed to handle angel grace, so when I use my abilities, it overstimulates all my body processes. Hurts like hell," she confided.

There was silence at the table as the pretty waitress came back with their orders. No one touched their food. Dean barely managed a grateful smile for the girl, who looked disappointed as she walked away.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Dean asked quietly. Sam saw the guilt flash over Kate's face; she had to know that question would be foremost in their minds.

"He told me not to," she said softly, then added quickly, at the looks on their faces, "I know it's not an excuse, I'm not trying to make excuses. But Nathanael, he told me I'd hurt you by telling you, that it would ruin everything, that they'd kill me if I told you because Heaven has a plan and they don't need a 'loose cannon' running about, I believe were his exact words."

So Heaven was blackmailing his sister? Sam was having trouble processing.

"I figured," Kate said. "I figured, it's Heaven, right? If anyone is the good guys, it's them. And even Dad doesn't tell us how all the pieces fit, we just…do what we're told…" she slumped at the end, obviously knowing it was a lame excuse. "I'm…just so sorry."

No one said anything for a few minutes. Sam picked at a piece of lettuce on his cooling burger, not the least bit hungry.

"What changed?" Dean finally asked, startling Kate, who'd been studying the cheap formica table top. She looked up at his question, perhaps startled as Sam was by the lack of resentment in the tone of it.

She looked at him, blinking hard and twisting her mouth into a grimace that was almost as much anger as it was horror.

"Nathanael ordered me not to 'interfere' that night in Salvation. Told me it was all preordained and I had to stay out of it." Her eyes flashed—definitely anger this time—as she looked at Sam. "He wanted me to send you in there to deal with Yellow Eyes on your own, which granted, you mostly did because Kasadya showed up; but I wasn't about to...I couldn't do it, Sam."

One corner of Sam's mouth quirked up in an encouraging little half-smile. "I appreciate that," he said.

"After that, he visited me once, after Yellow Eyes' death. He was…furious." Kate smiled a little, and the expression had a little bit of smugness to it. "He said we changed a lot of things that should never have been changed, and he was pissed about the soul deal."

"Yeah well, on that we agree, at least," Dean muttered, but Kate went on after an apologetic look.

"Said I was worth too much to end up in Hell's hands, blah blah blah. I told him to get lost. He reiterated that Heaven was about to put out their equivalent of a bounty on my head, and that he was through with me. Then he was gone and I've not seen hide nor hair of him since."

"How long ago was that?" Sam asked, slightly concerned. Heaven wasn't exactly powerless; it would probably be a simple matter to find her for them, and he'd very much like to have his sister not dead within the next ten minutes, thanks.

"About a week," Kate confessed, and this time the fear in her eyes was unmistakable, poorly hidden though it was.

"Holy shit," Dean muttered, looking sick.

"We need to see if we can find out anything about warding against angels," Sam decided.

"There's…one more thing," Kate added hesitantly.

"Going for a record here, aren't you, sister?" Dean asked, but he settled back to listen anyway.

Kate fidgeted. "An angel showed up in my dreams last night. Sometimes Nat used to do that. But this one wasn't him. It just told me to meet it, that it could help keep me—keep us all—safe."

"Are you going to meet it?" Sam asked.

"Of course not," Kate looked at him askance. "I just thought…you two should know. We're about to have angels, of all things, on our tail, and I don't have a clue how to handle that."

A/N: Hope you enjoyed, everyone! Don't forget to leave a review, my muse eats them up like pumpkin chocolate chip muffins!