Title: You Did it Out of Love
Word count: 2644
Warnings: self-loathing, mentions of suicide, mentions of past neglect, mentions of past self-harm (A lot happens, don't judge a fanfic by the tags!)
Summary: Kate overhears Dean telling Sam that he still doesn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. She takes it on herself to let Dean know just how wrong he is about himself. Very angsty, but ends on a positive note.
A/N: Another in the Kate/Winchester's line (following Enter Sandman 1 and 2.) Please please send feedback to lifeofsnark!
Kate shut the door of the bunker quietly behind her. She knew Sam and Dean were home from the last hunt- the Impala was back in its spot in the garage- but she didn't know how long they had been back. They could be asleep.
They weren't; before she made it to the stairs she could hear their raised voices coming from the kitchen. "Don't tell me to hurry up, Dean! I'm trying to get the bleeding stopped as fast as I can!" Sam shouted.
Kate had never heard Sam raise his voice at his brother when Dean was injured; she hurried towards the kitchen.
"Better me than you, Sammy. That thing was trying to take one of us with it, and I wasn't going to let it be you."
Kate froze. Did Dean mean…
"I told you Dean. You aren't a grunt. You matter so much; you deserve so much from life. I know you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel any more, but I still do. I can see it, Dean, and it's getting closer. Just follow me and we will get there. But Dean… god, Dean, you have to want to get there."
"Sure, Sammy." Dean sounded tired. Tired to the core.
Kate went up and sat on her bed, thinking about what she had overheard. How could Dean not care if he died? How?
Three days later, Dean bumped into Kate late in the library. She was curled in her favorite deep leather armchair, a bottle of whiskey hanging loose in her fingers. A book lay open on the floor next to her, but she wasn't looking at it. Her gaze was unfocused and vacant, she appeared to be consumed by her own mind.
"What are you doing, Kate?" asked Dean. He'd been worried about her since their run in with the dark Sandman a few weeks earlier. He knew she still wasn't sleeping much, this was evidenced in the laundry always being clean, the bunker dust-free, and the records up-to-date.
"Drinking, Dean," said Kate acidly. He snagged the whiskey bottle and poured a generous tot into the coffee mug he was holding. She grabbed the bottle back.
"Get your own, I know you have some."
"Why are you up drinking?" Dean asked in a low voice, not reacting to her venom.
"Oh you know, I thought it'd go well with some biochemistry, some light theology- I'm staying alive, Dean." She shot him a disgruntled look.
He did not approve of her word choice. "As opposed to what?"
Kate caught his gaze and did not blink, her brown eyes incredibly deep. "You know what, Dean. Dying. A prospect that clearly doesn't trouble you at all." She looked away, twisting so her head was against one of the chair arms, her legs dangling over the other. "Even after everything, I don't want to die. I don't necessarily relish being alive, but I know enough not to embrace that final plunge."
Dean had never heard Kate say so much at once. As she took another swig of whiskey, he wondered how much she had downed prior to his arrival.
Kate continued on, "I'm actually quite mad at you."
Dean blinked. "Mad at me? I know you bitch about me drinking all the beer, but I thought-"
"God, this is not about the beer! This is about you!" Kate pointed at him, her eyes glittering.
"Why don't you clarify things then, Cupcake, because I sure as hell don't know what you're talking about."
"I heard you. When Sammy was fixing you up after that last hunt, I heard you. You don't care if you die because you don't think things are ever going to get better for you." Kate chuckled. Dean was struck by the sound, it was far too bitter and knowing for someone of Kate's age. For a moment, his heart squeezed.
On Kate lectured, "You have Sam. You have a beautiful home that is safe, and yours. Since Sam came back from college, you've only really been apart because one of you was dead, or assumed dead. You literally have done everything for each other. You loved him when he was drinking demon blood, when he had no soul, when he went mad from hallucinating Lucifer. He loved you when you were young and cocky, when you sold your soul on his behalf, when you gave up all hope, when you killed- no matter who you killed."
Dean was shocked, but Kate wasn't done yet, "You are family. You are the family that every lost and lonely person on this earth wishes they had because your love truly is unconditional- Dean Winchester, you have the most love of anyone I have ever seen. But you are too consumed in guilt and self-loathing to see that a life with Sam has always been the light at the end of your tunnel."
A tear rolled down Kate's pale cheek and paused before dripping onto her shirt. Dean opened his mouth a few times before finally saying, "Kate, you can't know… there's so much. So much I've done."
"You're right," she agreed. "But all of it was done for love. For the love of Sam, the love of family, the love of humanity in general. No matter what shit cards you get handed, you make the play that will make the world a better place for someone. And that someone is never you."
They pair fell silent. Kate shut her eyes, her dark lashes highlighting the deep purple shadows beneath her eyes. Dean looked at her, a mixture of shame and admiration and despair churning in his stomach. She looked so fragile in that moment, her skin looking pale and thin with exhaustion, her fingertips faintly shaking from the drink.
"If I have to stay alive, so do you Dean," he heard her murmur. "You've even got someone to live for." Kate turned her face towards the back of the chair and sank a little more deeply into its welcoming cushions.
Dean didn't know if she was asleep or not, and he was afraid to try to take the whiskey bottle from her grasp in case he woke her up. Instead, he sat and thought over everything she had told him.
'You have a beautiful home that is safe, and yours' she had told him. It was true, he couldn't argue that. He also knew that he was lucky to have a brother like Sammy. When it comes down to it, what can I do? I can gank some monsters and rebuild a car. Not the highest qualifications there.
Kate's words swirled through Dean's head. In a way, her words revealed much about herself. It was clear she wanted a place that felt safe and like her own. Dean guessed that nobody had ever put her first. He added this to the information he knew about Kate. She went to college in Virginia. She was abused by her boyfriend who was killed by a vengeful spirit. She's smart. She spent a year hunting with Ellen and Jo before they died, and then a year on her own. She likes animals. She doesn't sleep. She named her dog Jack Daniels. Her worldly possessions fit in a footlocker and a duffel bag. Dean wanted to know more.
When Kate woke up, she was still slumped in the library. Her head hurt from the alcohol and her neck hurt from sleeping in the chair. Dean wasn't in sight. She shuffled her way into the kitchen, her bare feet cold on the tile floor. After getting a glass of water and swallowing some pain meds, she slowly made her way into the nook Sam had set up as TV room. Flipping on old Abbott and Costello flick, Kate wrapped herself in a blanket and regretted every word she had said to Dean the night before.
Dean was up in his room researching Kate- Katherine Jean Monroe. There wasn't much to see beyond a stellar academic career. He carried the laptop into Sam's room. "Can you hack into medical files and stuff and run a search for me?"
Sam turned to him, his eyes quizzical. Usually all of the research was left to himself and Kate. He wasn't sure what Dean was up to. "Sure." He took the laptop. "Wait, why are you researching Kate?"
"C'mon, Sam, just do it."
"No! This is really creepy, Dean. What are you doing?"
Dean ran his fingers though his thick hair distractedly, pacing behind Sam. "I don't know. She said some stuff last night that made me think… and then I realized that we know almost nothing about the woman who is living with us."
Sam nodded slowly, the light from his desk lamp playing over his cheekbones. He shut the laptop. "You need to just ask her whatever it is, Dean. I'm not going to hack into her life. She's already had you in her head, give her some privacy."
Dean huffed and walked back to his room. He stood looking at the weapons hanging on the walls, the records on the shelf. He went down the hall to the room where Kate slept and peeked inside. When he saw that she wasn't inside, he stepped about a foot into the room. The walls were bare, the same pale color as the rest of the bunker. Her bed was neatly made, the blanket the same wool cover that was in each of the rooms when they arrived. Dean and Sam had eventually traded theirs for something different. Kate's laptop was on her otherwise empty desk. A cell phone charger was coiled on top of the dresser. A footlocker sat at the end of the bed. A water bowl for Jack was in the corner of the room.
Dean wondered if he and Sam had ever asked her to stay with them permanently. He didn't think so. He sighed, and went to find the woman who had been at the center of his thoughts all day. She was curled up on the sofa, an old black and white comedy playing on the screen. Her eyes were closed.
"Stop staring, Dean," she huffed.
"How'd you know it was me?" he asked, curious.
"The way you walk. The way you smell," she replied succinctly. He sat down next to her on the couch.
"Why don't you want to die?" he asked, that being the most pressing question on his mind.
She slitted her eyes open. "Because it might get better." Dean gritted his teeth. It seemed that unless she was plastered, this woman did not like to talk about herself.
"I'm trying to talk with you, Kate," he grumbled.
"Are we gonna have a chick flick moment, Dean?" she quipped.
He glared at her. "How about this? I'll swap you answer for answer if you will work with me here."
She sat up a little straighter. "Deal."
Finally, he thought to himself. "Do you have any family left? I know you were reported missing."
"I do. My parents and younger brother are around somewhere. I saw online my brother graduated from college last year." She smiled faintly.
Okay, she's still checking up on a younger brother. This is good.
"Why are you still hunting?" she asked him.
"It's all I know. And it's something that needs to be done," he responded. "What about your parents? Why didn't you go to them after Jake died?"
"Not all families work like yours, Dean, you know that. There are different types of neglect. I didn't go to my parents for anything. If hunting is something that needs to be done, why don't you want Sam to continue on after your inevitable death?"
"Because he deserves it! It can be someone else's turn!" Dean knew he had made a tactical mistake when he saw her smirk. That made him mad. "What was your relationship with your parents like?" he pressed.
"Let's use some examples," she mused. "As a kid I got scarlet fever because I wasn't taken to the doctor. At fourteen I was being followed home and around school and even to church by a boy and my parents told me it was cute. At sixteen I was cutting myself to deal with the apparent disappointment I was. At nineteen I was on my own in the world.
Now that that bit of unpleasantness is out of the way, tell me a few things you have done that were much worse than anything Sam has done."
Dean growled at her, and stalked towards the door. Before he left he walked back in stood in front of her, his fists clenched. She squirmed at the anger she saw in him. He backed up a step and said, "I tortured innocent souls in hell. I've killed without thinking twice about it."
Kate cut him off, "Look, those souls were in hell, and the reason they were there had nothing to do with you. So don't consider them completely innocent. And you've killed what needed killing, Dean."
He folded his arms, the muscles in his forearms rippling. "So why did you go with Ellen and Jo?"
"I helped them with the case, and they told me I had potential. And I saw the way they were with each other… well, I was pretty burnt out with school anyway." She took a breath. "Why do you want to know all this?"
"Because you've been with us half a year and I know next to nothing about you." He said brusquely. He searched for words. "You don't still… hurt yourself, do you?" he asked more softly.
Kate sighed again, a sound of long-suffering patience. "No. I gave that up when my parents threatened to have me sent away for treatment." She saw Dean blanch. "Will you try to stick around? Please?" Kate looked up, searching his green eyes. "Please, Dean. It might get better," she repeated.
"Yeah," he said heavily. "It might. But it might not." He turned and walked out of the room.
That night, Kate walked into Dean's room. He jerked the sheets up to his collar bone, despite the fact that she had seen him shirtless plenty often. "Hey! What are you doing?" he snapped.
She set a little orange bottle with a white lid on his nightstand. A prescription bottle. It looked like her sleeping pills from before. "The day you die I am taking a handful of these."
Dean's mouth fell open.
Kate plowed right on, sure of her purpose. "You forgot about me in your plan. You're going to die gloriously in battle; poets will record your feats in iambic pentameter and sing of you around campfires for millennia, yadda yadda yadda. Sam will swoop up some girl, ride off into the sunset, and make a bunch of beautiful giant-babies. What about me? I'll be left in this bunker alone, listening to the echos of people who are no longer here. That would just kill me slowly." She rattled the pill bottle. "This is the neatest way for everyone, don't you agree?"
Grabbing the bottle, she left as quietly as she had come, the door snicking shut behind her. Dean sat in his soft bed, his head in his hands. Eventually, he dragged himself out of his room to find Kate. He was really getting sick of her speeches.
He barged into her room just as she had barged into his. He then immediately spun around and faced the wall when he caught her changing. Clothing rusted and she cleared him to turn around. He sat down on the bed next to her. "I could learn to hate you," he said conversationally.
"Yeah. I know," she responded. She tentatively leaned her head on his broad shoulder, and his arm slipped around her. "But family doesn't give up on each other."