Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.” His voice surrounded her, filled the air and blanketed her skin, and Kairos smiled despite herself. She didn’t bother to look over, to see what form her old companion had taken for the time being, but she wasn’t so rude as to completely ignore him either.

“She walks into mine,” Kairos finished. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of brilliant light that was barely being contained within the day’s chosen vessel. The radiance could be overwhelming, she could feel the heat washing over her exposed flesh, but she still wouldn’t look his way. Something else held her focus.

“Is this one yours?” His need to be seen quickly won out, and he moved to walk away from her. Past the girl that Kairos had been observing for the past hour. He stood on the other side of the girl, and his vessel was so ordinary. Average. Completely forgettable if passed on the street.

“Yes, I believe it is,” she answered without looking away. In unison, the two of them lowered themselves towards the ground. The girl was sitting in the dirt, tending to the flowers with bare hands. Kairos knelt on the soft green grass next to her, allowing her white dress to pool around her kneeling form. Her companion didn’t kneel, merely bent down so that they could maintain eye contact over the top of the girl’s head.

“This is your choice?” The tone was light but with an undercurrent of confusion, a touch of pity, and Kairos smiled. In front of them, completely unaware that she was being flanked by godly beings, the girl spoke kindly to the flowers as she pruned.

“You never liked this story,” Kairos remembered. There was no malice in her voice, no judgment. Her companion had his favorites, as did she. He reached out, fingers stretching towards the exposed side of the girl’s throat, and Kairos watched as the girl paused her work.

“Too convoluted, ruins the purity of true love,” he mused. His hand seemingly swept over the girl’s hair, but she couldn’t feel the gentle touch. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter and possibly mournful. “She was doomed as a failure from the start.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” Kairos quickly countered. The girl’s hands were bleeding, she had worked without gloves and pricked her fingers countless times, and she wiped the blood on the rough material of her jeans. Her fingers shook as she reached for the last flower, but her touch was careful against the dying petals. She could easily rip at the decay, tear away what was already dead, but she cradled the wilting flower in her rough hands instead.

“You remember the rules.” He wasn’t asking a question, she had no reason to answer. Her lack of response caused him to continue, to propel this conversation to its end. “If this world is the one you have chosen, if she is the one you have chosen?”

“This is my choice,” Kairos confirmed.

“You can give her one choice, only one. After that, observation only,” he needlessly reminded her. Their deal had already been struck, she didn’t need reminders. Sometimes, she thought he just enjoyed hearing himself speak.

“Until you return,” she pointed out. In front of her, the girl was crying silent tears as she cut the head of the flower. Dark and brittle petals fell into her bleeding hand, and the girl whispered sweet-nothings to the decay cradled in her palm. Promised the dead that the sacrifice would lead to rebirth, to everlasting beauty. It was quite dramatic for such a simple pruning, but teenage girls had a certain maudlin poetry to them.

“Don’t sound so sad, Kairos,” he said as he slowly stood again. He swept his hand over the bowed girl’s head and paid no mind to her tears, and Kairos tipped her head up to look at her longtime companion. Once he left this place, he would start culling the other universes he had created. The other stories, the other failures. “We’ll start new worlds, with better characters.”

The girl was singing now, quietly and terribly off-key, because this flower had been her favorite in the garden. Smaller than the surrounding blooms, colors not as vibrant, always leaning a little to the left. Every time she visited the garden, she passed rough fingertips gently across the uneven petals. Removing the head hurt her, caused something inside of her to ache, and Kairos listened to every thick syllable that fell from the girl’s lips. This girl wasn’t some character. She was a living being, with thoughts and dreams and fears and pain. She was alive, decaying and everlasting. Humans were precious, each life diverse and worthy, but he had stopped seeing that long ago. He wanted the perfect story, but humans were not perfect. They were flawed and beautiful. It was a shame that he had stopped seeing the little details to focus only on the bigger picture, but Kairos would show him. This world would be different, and he would see. That sacrifice could lead to rebirth, not just an end.

“I have not given up yet.” Kairos kept her words quiet, respectful, and she watched as the girl tipped her head back to feel the sun on her face. On what Kairos was sure was a whim, her companion bent down and placed a phantom kiss against the top of the girl’s head. Even though the gesture couldn’t be felt, the girl closed her eyes and smiled.

“I’ll see you soon.”

A promise. A threat.

Her companion was gone, leaving Kairos alone to kneel next to the girl. The flower was still cradled in her palm, the petals shriveled and fragile, but the girl was careful. Kairos flowed to her feet as a woman called the girl’s name, and the girl was so careful to keep her hand open as she stumbled upwards into a standing position. She brought her hand in close to her chest, protecting the dead head of the flower, and then turned to run towards the voice calling her name. A moment later, Kairos could hear the woman chastising the girl for tracking dirt into her clean kitchen. Over the admonishments, the girl asked if she had chosen the right time to prune her favorite flower. Had she waited too long? Had she been too hasty? Kairos didn’t listen to the woman’s answer. She reached out and pressed a fingertip to the freshly cut stem, and she knew that the flower would regrow. Never as vibrant as the others but no less beautiful. Loved by a girl who spoke softly to doomed things.

“You will always make the right choice, Emma. Have faith.”

Chapter Text

“Shit, sorry!” Emma Motley’s entire world shifted on its axis as she quickly tried to get her right foot back under her, failed spectacularly, and her quietly cursed apology was swallowed up by the sound in the packed bar. She was prepared for the fall coming her way when a strong hand clamped down on her elbow to pull her upright, and she could feel her eyes widening in surprise as she looked up at her rescuer after being set to rights.

“You okay?” The deep voice was warm, unhurried with actual concern and not a hint of annoyance, which wasn’t the usual reaction to getting knocked into. Especially in a bar. Emma flashed her best smile after hearing the genuine tone and craned her head back to get a good look at the guy. Apparently, she had been saved by a giant lumberjack with surprisingly nice hair. Seriously though, the brown locks were down past the sharp line of his jaw and seemed to actually shine under the dull lights of the bar. Her focus was quickly pulled upwards though, dude was seriously too tall, and she noted the dark smudges under his eyes as markers of too many sleepless nights while wishing she could tell the color of his eyes. Maybe if he were closer to her level? Wait, the dude was talking to her. She could see his lips moving. “–hurt you, did I?”

“What? Huh?” tripped off her tongue. Right, she had been kind of staring silently up at him. So she distributed her weight evenly between her feet and tempered her focus as she softened her wide grin into a friendly smile. “No, Bunyan, I’m totally okay. Just had a long night, ya know?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said with a quiet laugh and completely ignored her random nickname. Most people at least looked annoyed whenever she bestowed any kind of moniker, so this guy was really starting to wrack up favorite points. His hand slid away from her elbow, basically setting her free, and there was just enough space on the crowded floor for her take a half-step back without knocking into anyone else.

“Thanks for saving me from breaking my face.” She held eye contact while speaking, and he looked a little less tired when he returned her smile. He had an interesting face, she thought, but she had already made the decision to call it a night. As much as she had enjoyed collecting strangers’ stories over the years, she was tired tonight. So, before he could say anything in response or her mouth could start running, she dipped her chin and slipped between the bodies behind her.

By the time she worked her way through all the bodies and stumbled out of the front door of the bar, she was coated in a thin layer of sweat and breathing a little out of rhythm. She took a few steps away from the door, made sure to stick close to the wall, and just enjoyed the cold night air on the small bits of her exposed skin. The end of her nose seemed to immediately start stinging from the cold, but she smiled anyway as her head tipped back to look at the sky. It was a beautiful night, even with the cold night air, and she kept her face tipped upwards as she started her walk across the parking lot. She’d never been one of those kids who liked looking up at the sky; she hadn’t looked for shapes in fluffy white clouds, and she had never wished on stars. Her mother had always called her grounded, and it was probably too late to change now. She looked down with a quiet sigh as she took the final step away from the gravel parking lot and onto hardened dirt. The bar was situated on the outskirts of the small town, away from everything else, but the RV Park was relatively close by. Most definitely within walking distance, which was really all that mattered. As she made the walk, she hummed the song that had been playing in the bar and kept a careful eye on her surroundings.

It wasn’t too long before she was walking through the small RV Park, and she grinned as she caught sight of her home on wheels. The dark blue paint caused her beautiful bus to blend into the surrounding darkness, and she lightly patted the side of the bus before unlocking the modified door and letting herself onto the bus. She locked the door after flipping on the lights, moved up the few steps, and held onto the bucket seat she had installed on the passenger side as she toed her hightops off. With her feet only covered by thick socks and toes newly popped, she looked down the length of the bus and found everything exactly as she had left it. When she first started hunting, she lived with the man who showered her the ropes. On the hunts that took them out of town, they stayed in the cheapest motels with the worst water pressure and the itchiest thin pillows. Back then, she’d been so full of anger and then so intensely curious that sleeping on the lumpy mattresses had barely blipped her radar. After a year of hunting with training wheels, she had been ready to go out on her own. Before leaving the nest though, she’d been determined to find something better than living out of motel rooms. She’d lucked up after only looking around for a couple of weeks and met a mechanic that helped her fix up an old school bus. He’d thought she was taking a gap year, sightseeing across the country before starting college, and he’d loved the challenge of turning the bus into something comfortably livable as opposed to just survivable.

Now here she was, over a decade later, living on a school bus and still enamored with her strange little home. Her fingers traced over countertops and brushed against walls as she walked the length of the bus, until she reached the very back. A bed took up most of the space, and she flipped on the light bolted above the bed. Her thick blanket was still bunched up in the center a little, her few pillows were scattered, and her files were spread out on one side of the bed. Not a single thing was out of place, and she spun around on her heel so that she could drop back onto the firm mattress that had the perfect amount of give to it. (Sometimes, when she was tired enough to let her mind wander onto useless things, she thought she might have been a little bit of a hedonist if her life had turned out differently.) Her heels pushed against the bed as she scooted backwards, until her head touched against a pillow, and she wiggled a bit to get comfortable before reaching over to the small pile of files. She grabbed the top one and pulled it over, and she flipped the folder open to quickly scan the information again.

All boiled down, it was a simple salt and burn that had pulled her into town. Vengeful spirit, dead citizens, nothing she hadn’t seen before. She’d done her research, posing as a smalltime journalist, and knew that her next step was to pay a visit to the local graveyard to dig up the body. Unfortunately, it was a Friday night and the local highschoolers were a little too creative. There was some kind of event tonight, honoring one of the recently killed teenagers by partying it up in the graveyard, and she didn’t begrudge the kids for coping by getting drunk close to the fresh grave. The grave that she needed to dig up was on the far edge of the graveyard, mostly separated from the main part of the graveyard, but it was definitely still too close for comfort. Her only hope was that the spirit didn’t kill anyone else that night, and she was going to have to spend another night in town before finishing the job. One night wouldn’t kill her, ha, so she could wait.

There was nothing left for her to do tonight, all of the heavy lifting would take place the following night, so she closed the folder and then reached over for the other files. She gathered everything up, stretched to dump them into the trunk at the end of the bed, and then collapsed back against her bed. She was tired, and she could actually turn in early for once. In the morning, she could go to the cute little diner in town for a big breakfast. Maybe take a book up on top of the bus, she had a little wooden deck up there, and soak in the crisp spring sunshine while reading something just for fun. Something with a happy ending.

Emma’s day had been absolutely wonderful. She had started off with a hot shower before making her way into town, and she’d had a booth all to herself as she ate a large breakfast. Considering the path her life had taken, she didn’t really worry about dying of bad cholesterol but still avoided heavy meals whenever she was hunting. She had learned that lesson the hard way, hunting a werewolf after eating a large spaghetti dinner. This hunt was going to be simple though, she could feel it, and she had let herself indulge in a large breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and a large stack of chocolate chip pancakes. The rest of the daylight hours had been spent on top of the bus, reading Harry Potter, and just enjoying the downtime. She’d had to buckle down after sunset, and she was now steadily digging up a century old grave and humming quietly under her breath.

“The hell is this?!” The voice came from above her, a kind of furious sounding whisper that was loud in the night air, and Emma’s first instinct was to drop down in an effort to hide. Instead she froze, with her shovel buried in the dirt, and cursed her rotten luck. (What was that saying her mother had grumbled when she was a kid? If it wasn’t for bad luck, she’d have no luck at all. Seemed about right.) She had finally reached the coffin, was almost done, so of course she got caught now. Still, she pasted on a cheery smile and slowly turned to look up at the top of the grave she was standing in.

“You? I know you,” a different voice said after she had turned around. She quickly looked between the two forms standing on the edge of the grave, and she recognized one of the guys from the bar the night before.

“Hey there, Redwood! What brings you here at this time of night?” she asked as she leaned her forearms against the top of the shovel. The tall stranger that she had knocked into less than twenty-four hours ago bent down and then slowly stood up with her container of salt in his hand.

“Same things as you, I guess,” he told her. There was a sheepish smile on his face, and she decided that it was a good look on the friendly giant before the man next to him opened his mouth and caught her attention.

“Wait, hold up, you’re telling me this little girl is a hunter?” His tone wasn’t mocking, just genuinely confused. Befuddled, her mind supplied after a moment. Her eyes moved from the tall one to the slightly shorter but still unfairly tall one, and she felt herself smiling as the guy obviously sized her up and found her lacking.

“Don’t be such a sexist, dude,” she said with narrowed eyes and a wide grin. She watched as he mouthed the word dude and then looked over at the much nicer guy, and she felt a little tendril of amusement as she realized that he had to tip his head up the smallest amount to make eye contact.

“How do you know her?” Shorty asked. The taller one glanced down at her, for some reason that she didn’t have time to discern before he was looking to the side again, and she waited to see how this would play out. They were clearly hunters, which was only a relief because it meant that they didn’t care about a little grave desecration. There was also some relief over them not trying to kill her, so she took the moment to have a quick break.

“This is the girl I told you about, in the bar last night,” the tall lumberjack explained. Well, her break was over. She turned around to start shoveling again, because she really needed to get this done before someone else stumbled up on them or the vengeful spirit figured out what was going on.

“The one you stepped on?” This time, the shorter guy’s tone was heavily colored with amusement. It was nice to know that she’d made a lasting expression, and she smiled at hearing the humor in the man’s voice. Taking care of the supernatural and amusing strangers at gravesides, that was what Emma Motley was all about!

“Yes, Dean, that one.” That tone was a mixture of exasperation and fondness, and she knew what to call the (slightly) shorter one now.

“You’re really a hunter?” Dean asked. She thought about looking over her shoulder but ultimately decided against it, because she was doing something that was actually important and a little time sensitive. The spirit hadn’t killed anyone the night before, and she didn’t want to give it time to get in one last kill.

“Nah, I got into necrophilia a couple of years ago. It’s become an addiction. I’d try therapy, but I don’t think I could handle prison,” she rambled out. She’d cleared the top of the coffin and around the sides, and she was pretty sure that she could pop it open now.

“She’s joking, right?” Dean asked in a too-loud whisper for their current whereabouts.

“Yes, she’s joking.” The taller one, who she was now affectionately calling Redwood in her head, paused. She could tell it was a pause, because the air felt slightly tense as she felt eyes on her. She was proved right a moment later when Redwood asked, “Right?”

“You think necrophilia is funny? You guys are sick,” she quipped and then forced the lid of the coffin open. There was the sound of creaking wood as dirt formed a small cloud around her, and she squinted through her stinging gritty eyes to look at the pile of bones. To think, that was what everyone was reduced to in the end.

“Need any help there, kid?” She had to admit that she found Dean amusing, and she turned around to look at them both as she tossed her shovel out of the grave.

“Depends. Think you two lugs can lift me?” she asked as she started to crawl her way out of the grave. She watched as Dean rolled his eyes before immediately reaching down, and he pulled her out of the grave all on his own. Okay, so those layers were hiding some serious strength. Good to know. Dean easily set her on her feet, and she let her head fall back so that she could grin up at him. “Thanks for the lift, Deano.”

“Mind if I?” Redwood asked while waving her salt. She had already done the heavy lifting, so she didn’t mind letting someone else handle the salt sprinkling. Her arm raised to gesture for him to have at it, and she started knocking clumps of dirt from her clothes as Redwood poured her salt over the exposed skeleton.

“What’s with the old lady gloves?” Dean asked while she was shaking her hair out. She should have put her hair up, she usually did on hunts, but she had been changing up all kinds of things lately. Her hair was as good as it was gonna get, without a shower, so she flipped it over her shoulder and looked up to meet Dean’s eyes while stretching out her glove-encased hands. The leather was buttery soft and a dark pink, and dirt slipped right off.

“Like I want to dig graveyard dirt out from under my nails for the next month? Pass,” she explained with a grin. Next to her, Redwood was dousing the salty bones with lighter fluid. While Dean was very clearly scrutinizing her, she patted at her pockets until she found her lighter and the newspaper article where she had first read about the job.

“Can’t believe we came all this way for nothing,” she heard Dean say as she walked to the very edge of the grave. She watched as the newspaper caught fire, waited a moment for a good flame to build up, and then dropped the flaming paper into the grave.

“I know, right? Hunters really need to be centralized and organized, but we’re all just so darned independent,” she said as she watched the skeleton burn. She knew she had to wait a bit, just to make sure that it all stuck, and she looked over her shoulder at the very tall hunters now standing behind her. Seriously though, even the shorter one was too tall. She knew that she was slightly shorter than average standing at only a couple of inches over five feet, not that she ever let her lack of height slow her down, but she felt absolutely small standing in front of them. Tiny. She kept looking back at them though as she let herself think aloud, “Normally, I’d tell you two that I’ve got this handled and that you can take a hike. I’ve had a good day though and I’m feeling slightly less distrustful than my usual normal, so I’m thinking of asking you two to help me repack the grave before someone else comes along. Thoughts?”

“Yeah, of course we’ll help,” Redwood answered immediately. His eyes remained steady, locked with hers, and she felt herself smiling as she took in his expression. Wasn’t there a rule against hunters being so earnest looking?

“We helping out strangers now?” Dean asked after looking away from her. Shit, she hadn’t introduced herself. Some hunters knew her name and weren’t exactly happy with her at the moment, the dull throb across her left collarbone was a clear reminder of that, but she wasn’t going to let the possibility of violence get in the way of proper manners. Her mother had raised her better than that. She turned around fully to face them, the bones were salted and burned and no longer posed a threat, and she quickly pulled her gloves off and tucked them into an empty pocket of her jacket.

“Sorry, I forgot my manners while I was digging up the dead lady. Emma Motley,” she introduced and held her hand out in front of Redwood. There wasn’t any recognition in their expressions as a huge hand carefully grabbed hers, and the knot of tension in her stomach eased as Redwood shook her hand.

“I’m Sam, and that’s my brother, Dean,” Redwood said and tilted his head towards the shorter one. The names were almost achingly familiar, and something hot and heavy settled in the center of her chest as she looked between them.

“Sam and Dean? Winchester?” she couldn’t help asking. Sam and Dean were average enough names on their own, but how many hunters were brothers named Sam and Dean?

“Uh, yeah, that’s us,” Sam answered quietly. He’d looked at the ground for a moment too, like he hadn’t wanted to meet her eyes, and Dean looked a little tense around the edges as she continued to look between them because she couldn’t choose who to focus on.

“Huh, I was starting to think I’d never run across you two. Bobby’s going to be so pissed that I finally found you,” she joked as her eyes flitted between them.

“You know Bobby?” Dean asked immediately. She felt her smile widening as she thought about the older hunter, and she resisted the urge to tell them about how she’d spent a year of her life living in Bobby Singer’s house. Learning how to fight monsters while building a garden in his backyard. (There were happier memories of Bobby’s house, but her mind skittered away from those. No time for dwelling.)

“Yeah, he eased me into the life and saved me more times than I have time to count,” she admitted. Bobby could have easily left her behind that night, could have left her in the house where her mother died and never looked back, but he he’d made a different call. She was so grateful for that, for him. She should probably make sure that he knew that, before— Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that, and she idly rubbed under the deep ache across her collarbone as she glanced over her shoulder at the open grave behind her. “He’d also probably kick my ass for just standing around with a grave dug up, so are you two gonna help me or not?”

“Right, sorry,” Sam said and bent down. He picked up two shovels, pressed one against his brother’s chest, and then smiled at her as he stepped forward. She returned the look before bending down to grab her own shovel, and the three of them moved to the massive pile of dirt that she had dug up on her own.

“Thanks, for the help. Filling it up always takes longer,” she said once they’d gotten into a rhythm.

“Surprised you got it all on your own,” Dean grunted out. He flashed a smile when she looked over, and she thought about kicking him and just barely refrained. Kicking strangers was rude, especially when the strangers were being helpful.

“Women can be hunters too, y’know,” she told him. She kept her tone light, conversational, and Sam leaned forward enough to catch her eyes.

“Ignore him, he’s an idiot,” Sam said just loud enough for them both to hear him.

“Am not! I’m just saying, she’s a little thing. It’s impressive. I’m impressed,” Dean seemed to ramble out. She tossed in another clump of dirt and then looked over, and Dean’s smile looked a little more friendly now.

“I am not a little thing. I just look comically short next to Redwood over here.” Her words got a small smile and ducked chin out of Sam, but Dean mostly just looked confused.

“Redwood? Why Redwood?” he asked as he stopped to study her. Instead of following his example, Emma scooped up another shovelful and tried to explain why Redwood had stuck in her head.

“Because they’re tall and majestic, and your brother clearly has the better hair care routine. So, majestic.” She was still talking when Dean reached up to touch his own hair, and Sam was now avoiding her eyes. “It’s a total compliment. Redwoods are awesome.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sam mumbled after a moment. Dean had stopped rubbing a hand over his hair and was back to shoveling now, and Emma laughed under her breath as she continued on. She’d never met a hunter that could take a compliment, and Dean looked torn between amusement and offense. The conversation had reached an end though, and the three of them worked in relative quiet after that.

Between the three of them, it didn’t take long at all to get the grave refilled. Emma knew that the boys had done most of the work, she had flagged a little in the middle, but neither of them complained. She also didn’t let herself feel bad for slacking off, because she was the one that dug the thing up and then burned the bones. She’d put in the brunt of the work, because this was her hunt. Once it was all over, she had the urge to drop to the ground next to the freshly packed grave to rest her aching body for a bit. Her bus was parked nearby though, ready for her to take off and drive into the night, because she had lingered here for long enough.

Oddly enough, she wanted to hang around and talk to the Winchesters a little more. There were a lot of hunters that were pissed at the Winchesters right now, homicidally pissed even, and she’d heard a rumor about Sam being the antichrist. Those hunters were the same ones that weren’t her biggest fans, proven by the bruises that littered her body under her baggy clothes, and she had never been quite like other hunters anyway. For one, she didn’t blame either of the two lugheads standing in front of her for starting the Apocalypse. Bobby had always praised the both of them, in his own gruff way, and she trusted Bobby. There was another rumor though. Something that seemed impossible, but she had stopped believing in that word years ago.

“Alright, kid, spit it out. Why are you staring at me like that?” Dean asked. She snapped to attention as she realized that she had been staring in the vague direction of his face, and she watched as he hurriedly swiped a hand over his face and up into his hair. “I got somethin’ on me?”

“First off, I’m not a kid. I think we’re the same age actually,” she pointed out. It was a stupid thing to say, downright moronic to bring attention to her age, and she tried not to squirm as the brothers looked carefully at her. Most hunters tended to look older than their years, came with the job, but she was sure that Bobby had mentioned something about Dean being her age. The problem now was that Dean looked his (possible) thirty-one years, while she looked barely old enough to legally purchase alcohol. Why didn’t she ever think before opening her mouth?

“Do they even let you into bars?” Dean asked. The dude looked absolutely baffled, and Sam was studying her a little too intensely. She shifted on her feet and gripped the handle of her shovel a little tighter, and she didn’t owe these guys anything. No explanation for her accidental comment. There was time though, wasn’t there? Enough time for a bit of graveside conversation?

“Few months ago, I was on this witch hunt and got hit by some spell blowback after the showdown,” she admitted with a shrug. Dean still looked confused, but Sam’s brain was clearly working overtime as he quickly looked her over again and then met her eyes.

“Youth spell?” Sam guessed. She shrugged again and then nodded, and she could see Dean starting to smile. Preparing to say something, and she met his eyes as she gave a quick shake of her head. Dean’s lips didn’t even finish parting, and she knew that he could see. Some would view getting hit with a youth spell as good luck, she’d been aged down an entire ten years, but she’d also had to see the mangled bodies of nearly two dozen children. No extra time was worth that much loss, and the youth was wasted on her anyway. Then she thought about what she wanted to ask, what she really wanted to know, and thought that maybe trading a story for a story might work.

“The witch, every couple of decades, she’d kidnap twenty or so kids from all over. Get them into one place and start her spell. Me and another hunter, we picked up her pattern and tracked her down. We didn’t make it in time to save the kids. By the time we got there, the spell was practically over. When the witch died, me and my partner got hit instead. Aged down ten years just like that, the both of us,” she said with a snap of her fingers. Dean and Sam both had that look that all hunters got when they lost, when they got the monster but didn’t save the day. The tight clench of the jaw, hardened eyes, sloped shoulders. Emma could feel the failure in the center of her chest, cold and heavy.

“You told us that for a reason,” Sam said after a slow beat. As if they had all paused to pay their respects to the ones who hadn’t survived, and Emma felt her throat dry out as she looked up at Sam’s eyes. The skin underneath still looked bruised from too many sleepless nights, and she didn’t have to ask this. She didn’t have to, but she swung her gaze over to Dean anyway.

“Is it true you got out of Hell? Bobby said that you were gone and then that you came back, that you came back,” she emphasized. The words just rolled right off her tongue, and the band around her throat that she spent most days ignoring felt like it tightened a notch. She’d been feeling the pressure more acutely these past couple of months, like the slow tightening of a noose. In front of her, Dean slipped into a kind of tense calm that she recognized. It was the kind of calm right before pulling the trigger, but Sam’s larger form fidgeted as he shifted his weight to a different foot and looked down at the ground. Oh, it was definitely true and stamped all over their body language.

“Got a reason for asking?” Dean asked as his eyes narrowed on her. The amused and confused hunter from the grave refilling was gone, replaced by the perfect example of a hunter. She just knew that if she made one wrong move or said the wrong thing, he’d attack. She could respect that.

“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” Sam asked in a low voice before she could answer. He had the right idea. Loitering next to a recently disturbed grave probably wasn’t the best idea, but she also didn’t want to spend too much extra time in town.

“Yeah, we can walk and talk,” she decided. She ducked down to grab her salt and toss it into her bag, glanced inside to see her lighter fluid along with a few other emergency items, and then she slung the bag over her shoulder as she stood up. The shovel was propped on her shoulder as well, and Dean fell into step next to her with Sam on his other side. At least they weren’t flanking her.

“We’re walking, so start talking,” Dean said after a moment. She looked over at him and raised a brow, but his expression remained as steady and as hard as a rock. His eyes though, there was no way to hide the emotion there. She couldn’t read anything more than the suspicion, the intensity was a little overwhelming, and she looked out ahead of her to navigate in the dark graveyard.

“In forty-three days, my soul is getting dragged straight to Hell. Demons are always talking about how fun the place is, so I thought I’d get a second opinion before taking the trip,” she said with a shrug. It was Hell. She had some idea of what was waiting for her, but it seemed idiotic to pass up a chance to hear from a former guest.

“Why would you sell your soul?” Sam asked quietly. Emma dipped her hip to avoid a large headstone, noticed Dean doing the same to avoid her bumping into him, and then looked over and up at Sam on Dean’s other side.

“Kind of a personal question, don’t you think?” His expression immediately dropped, a clear apology on his tongue, and she felt like smacking herself but continued speaking instead. “Shit, sorry, old habit. I’ve got a little over a month left, so who cares about some idle conversation? My little sister was in an accident, she was dying, and I wanted to make sure that she’d live a long and healthy life.”

She’d done a little more than that. The car that had hit her only living blood had also hit her sister’s sister, the two girls were the same age and had been adopted by the same family, and Emma had been a wreck before and after hearing the news. She never even hesitated on making the deal to save her sister’s life, and she’d taken on an extra deal with the demon who owned her soul to save the other little girl as well. That part she was keeping to herself, even if her time was almost up and it didn’t matter who knew about her many sins. Next to her, the brothers were communicating without saying anything. They were just looking at each other, occasionally shifting their facial expressions. She’d seen her sister and the other adopted girl do the same thing, during the times that she dropped in to check on them.

“She know what you did?” Dean couldn’t possibly know how that question ripped her up inside, and she let a completely humorless laugh slip out as they crossed over into the newer part of the graveyard.

“I was sixteen when she was born, eighteen when our mother died, and she got adopted by some nice family. She doesn’t know anything about me, but I still check in on her. As much as I can. She’s all I have left,” she confessed. She didn’t tell people about Violet, especially not other hunters, but she didn’t think either of them would even remember this conversation. They were gearing up to fight the Apocalypse, according to Bobby. Bigger monsters to fry and all. She glanced over at Dean as they neared the road and then asked, “So, got any tips for me?”

“There aren’t any survival tips for Hell,” Dean said while holding eye contact.

“Fair enough,” she returned with a more genuine laugh. She had already known that, hadn’t she? The three of them paused next to the road, and her head turned towards the left. Heading south out of town, towards where her bus was parked and waiting.

“Is there, uh, is there anything we can do?” Sam asked. She turned her head to the opposite side, made note of the older dark car parked farther down the road heading north, and then she met Sam’s eyes. He looked like he actually meant the question, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling up at the friendly giant.

“I knew what I was doing, and I’ve had time to accept what’s coming. You two have got the rest of the world to save,” she said as lightly as possible. She noticed the way they both tensed and how their expressions darkened, and she put her back to them as she started walking towards her bus. This job was done, and she needed to get to the next one. Still, she tipped her head back so that she could call out to them. “For what it’s worth, I’m rootin’ for you two! You totally got this!”

Emma slipped onto the bus, stowed her bag and shovel in the passenger’s seat, and quickly got the big thing started. She felt it rumble to life around her, shifted into a comfortable position, and pulled out onto the road. There was no point in lingering (any longer than she already had), and she could stop in a few hours for a quick shower. For now, she didn’t mind a little bit of graveyard dirt. There was a vamp infestation down in Florida, one that was getting out of hand, and it’d take a couple of days to drive all the way down. So what if she only had forty odd days left? While she was alive, she was going to keep doing what she was good at. If the Winchesters pulled off saving the world, she was going to make sure that there were a few less monsters roaming around.

“That was…different,” Sam settled on. Dean had already been driving for a few minutes, the silence in the car only broken by the quiet radio, and he heard Dean grunt quietly. Either in acknowledgement of what Sam had said or in agreement, it was difficult to tell. “Do you remember Bobby talking about an Emma?”

“Nope,” Dean said while already reaching inside his jacket. Sam relaxed in his seat and watched the road as Dean looked down at his phone, but his mind was on the cemetery behind them. Emma had seemed normal enough. He thought nearly everyone was short and hadn’t really paid attention until Dean pointed out just how small Emma actually was, and the baggy clothes she had been wearing had only made her look smaller. Size or not, she had dug up a grave completely on her own and hadn’t needed their help at all.

“Run into some problems?” Bobby asked in greeting. Dean had managed to get the phone on speaker, and Sam leaned to the side a little so that he could hear better.

“Someone beat us to the grave. Little thing named Emma Motley, said she knew you. That true?” Dean looked at the phone as Bobby started laughing, but there was barely any humor in the sound.

“Couple years after that fight with John, I found Emma on a hunt. Witch, killed her mom and nearly killed her. When it was over, she asked to come with me. Said if I didn’t help her, she’d find the monsters on her own.” Bobby’s fond tone was nearly overshadowed by grief, Sam could hear it in the thick sound of every rough syllable, so she hadn’t been lying about Bobby saving her.

“If you two were so close, how come we never met her before now?” Dean asked. Hunters were solitary, occasionally paired up for the more difficult hunts, but it sounded like Bobby actually cared about Emma. When she had mentioned Bobby, something in her expression and body language had softened. Had eased.

“Got into a fight, back in oh-two. Haven’t seen each other since, just some calls here and there,” Bobby admitted. Sam easily did the math; they’d had a fight and a falling out two years after she sold her soul, and three years before Sam started hunting again.

“That got anything to do with her demon deal?” Dean asked. His brother was a tense line in the seat next to him, and Sam felt the same sense of surprise that had rushed through him in the cemetery. Emma had stated it so simply, as casual as bringing up a future vacation plan, but she had been talking about selling her soul.

“She tell ya about that?” Bobby sounded surprised, probably because most hunters were more secretive, but Emma had seemed different from most hunters. A bit lighter, despite having a damned soul. Dean grunted, this time in the affirmative, and Bobby let out a similar sound. “It’s not just that, but that ain’t none of your damn business.”

“You saying she’s bad news?” Dean was the only one talking, asking questions, because Sam was still processing. When was the last time he’d met a hunter that hadn’t been up in arms and ready to kill him? (He couldn’t think about Jo and Ellen, about Ash. Not now.)

“I’m sayin’ she’s complicated. A damned good hunter, and that’s all I’m sayin’,” Bobby roughed out. Dean didn’t argue for more information and Sam didn’t say anything either, because it didn’t really matter. Dean and Bobby continued to talk, about some hunt in North Dakota, so it was a good thing they were already driving east.

The call ended barely two minutes later, and Sam’s eyes closed as he slumped down in his seat a little. He’d traded some sentences with Emma in the bar the night before and hadn’t really talked to her much tonight despite how much of her personal life she’d revealed, so why was he still thinking about her? Maybe it was because she had seemed so accepting of her fate. Not resigned, because she hadn’t seemed like she was giving up. She had seemed so normal while they worked, easily traded jabs with Dean and smiled easily up at him, and that was after knowing who they were. He hadn’t met another hunter that was so open and relaxed, and he wished that they’d been able to actually talk. Sit down, have a meal, and just have a conversation. The Apocalypse was looming closer though, and there wasn’t time for anything like that.

It felt like Adam had been screaming for a lifetime, but only a few days had passed since he was coerced into giving Michael permission to possess him. At least, he thought it had only been a few days. Time felt wrong under possession, he had learned. Because an archangel was possessing him, while he screamed uselessly in some dark back corner of his own consciousness. It was exhausting. Sometimes he screamed out curses and every blasphemous thing he could possibly think of, and sometimes he yelled ridiculously annoying song lyrics just so Michael wouldn’t think that he was giving up. Whenever Michael met with another angel, Adam threw his fists against the door because the dark corner of his mind that he’d been stashed in looked like his dorm room in college. Small, messy in an organized kind of way, and dark because the curtains were closed tight and the overhead light was turned off after the damn thing kept flickering and messing with his concentration back when he was in college and the only thing he had to worry about was studying. Now, the light was off because that was how he remembered the dorm room. Now, he kicked and punched against a flimsy wooden door that refused to budge while screaming anything he could think of to piss off an angel. (At one point, he might have called out for his brothers. For Sam and Dean. In the beginning, what felt like that first day, he might have yelled their names. Before he realized that no one could hear him.)

“Quiet.” It was strange to hear his own voice mixed with something that was definitely not any human’s voice, and the walls around him shook with the force of the single word. Under that sense of otherness, Adam thought he could feel annoyance.

“If I’m bothering you, you can stop possessing me,” Adam pointed out. It felt like he was burning as everything around him blurred, and then he could suddenly see again. Not just the memory of his dorm room or some other construction in his consciousness, but he could actually see out of his own eyes. Unfortunately, that was all he could do. He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream for help or yell at the archangel, but at least he could see again. That was something. Why could he suddenly see?

“Adam.” The sound of his name, said in his own voice, stopped his swirling thoughts. He was looking into a mirror, a rectangular box stuck to an off-white wall with a mirror slapped onto it, and he could see his own reflection and what looked like bathroom stalls behind him. The air was thick with the smell of bleach, the lights above him were too bright and buzzing, and this looked like a gas station bathroom. In front of him, his reflection crossed its arms even though he could see his hands braced against the sink.

“When does this stop getting weirder? Because I am over things weirding me out,” he said. He could speak, but he couldn’t yell when he tried to. Also, when he spoke, his reflection didn’t move.

“Why do you keep fighting me?” He wasn’t seeing his reflection. He was seeing Michael, who looked exactly like him. Trippy. He should have listened to Sam and Dean. He should have just stayed in Heaven. He never should have trusted the angels.

“Because you locked me in a room and tortured me until I let you possess me,” Adam reminded him. Michael’s jaw locked as his eyes darted down, and Adam recognized the look. It was his own I’m-guilty-but-it’s-too-late stubborn look. He hated seeing his expressions on Michael’s face, which was actually his face. Being dead had been so much simpler.

“That was not how I wanted to gain permission, but we are running out of time. Do you understand that? Lucifer must be stopped.” It was Adam’s voice, but it wasn’t. Michael talked lower than he did, a little quieter, and there was something in his tone that Adam couldn’t recognize. Something unfamiliar and other.

“Your lackeys left out the part where killing him also kills off humanity.” He watched his mirrored self straighten his shoulders and stand taller, and he could tell that Michael was preparing something to say. So Adam beat him to the punch with, “I’ve picked up a few things, over the past couple of days. Like how you don’t really like humans. How’s that make you any different from Lucifer?”

“I am nothing like my brother.” This time, Adam could clearly hear the rage and disgust coloring Michael’s tone. Something that he usually didn’t let slip around the other angels. Pissing off an archangel probably wasn’t a smart idea, but he was already possessed. What else could Michael do? Kill him? Adam knew he wasn’t that lucky.

“Oh, I don’t know. Neither of you have a problem with killing humans. Where’s the difference?” From what Adam had been able to overhear, the angels were preparing for paradise. Once Lucifer was killed and humanity was basically erased, there would be paradise. For the angels. The only thing standing in the way of that was the sheer stubbornness of Adam’s half-brothers, and he wished he could apologize to them. Because of him, Michael was one step closer to finishing the Apocalypse.

“Lucifer has to be stopped,” Michael said with conviction. That belief in destiny that was such bullshit. Destiny said that Sam and Dean were meant to be the vessels used to fight the Apocalypse, but Adam and some other unlucky bastard were the ones currently possessed. Adam was able to roll his eyes and curl his fingers against the porcelain sink, and he could feel where his body heat had warmed the porcelain.

“You said that already,” he pointed out. In the mirror, Michael narrowed his eyes but didn’t offer any other explanations. After a lifetime jammed into an unknown number of days, Adam was finally being acknowledged and he could already feel it starting to slip away. Could feel Michael preparing to take full control again. Maybe that was why he gave voice to his panic and rushed out, “Aw, come on, man! You had me resurrected, locked in a room, and literally gutted before taking full control of my body! Don’t think I missed the part where this possession kills me afterwards, because I picked up on that too! Even criminals on death row get a last meal! What the hell do I get?! Huh?!”

“You want a last meal?” Michael’s tone was even, but Adam thought he could sense a little bit of confusion.

“I want to know that my last moments are my last moments,” he confessed. He wanted to be free, he wanted to see his mother again, but he knew neither of those things were possible. So, if he couldn’t have anything that he actually wanted, then he at least wanted a last moment as himself. Was that too much to ask?

“Then go. Have your last meal,” Michael told him. Adam blinked, and his reflection had the same dumbfounded expression. Michael wasn’t gone, Adam could still feel him rattling around inside his consciousness, but Adam was the one in control. He turned to the side, all of his limbs were in working order and doing exactly what he wanted, but he still stumbled as he moved towards the bathroom door. He thought about finding a car, but he didn’t know where he was or where he could go. Michael was still possessing him, so it wasn’t like he could just run away.

“How long has it been? Since you possessed me?” Adam looked at his hand, at the way his fingers splayed out across the dark red paint of the bathroom door. Somewhere in his mind, he heard a number. Eleven. It’d been eleven days since that room in Van Nuys, since the torture and his surrender, and the world was now eleven days closer to ending.

The bathroom door opened easily with a bit of pressure, and he spilled out into the small gas station next to a drink cooler. He looked over the familiar labels, realized how dry his mouth felt, and then quickly looked around. Short and narrow aisles, a bored looking cashier at the other end of the store was flipping through a magazine, and it was dark outside the glass doors. Adam walked away from the now closed bathroom door, turned down an aisle, and then stopped when he realized there was already someone standing at the other end. He thought the store had been empty, and then he realized that the person was so short that he hadn’t been able to see her over the aisles. He turned to the side before the woman could realize that he was staring at her, and his stomach clenched as he looked at the bags of beef jerky. He remembered eating, before the possession, but that was over a week ago. Michael hadn’t had any food, angels apparently didn’t need to eat, and he felt like he was starving. His hands raised to pat at his pockets, first his jeans and then his jacket, but he didn’t have anything. Not even any change.

“That is some sad looking jerky.” Adam tensed at the quiet voice and watched as a small hand appeared in his line of sight, and he watched as slim fingers pinched the bottom of a bag and angled it to better see through the clear middle of the bag. “See? It’s all thin and the bag is less than half empty. I’d need like a dozen bags to stop this weird beef craving I’ve got going on, and they’re charging almost five dollars a bag. That’d be, what? Over sixty dollars, with the tax and all? I ain’t payin’ sixty dollars for beef jerky that’s just going to make me feel sad.”

“What?” Adam heard himself ask. The woman had just kept talking as he stared down at her, and she looked up at him for the first time. Her face was pale and he could see what he thought might be a streak of dirt down the right side of her neck, and her left eye was purple and swollen. She looked like she had just been in a fight, and she winced even as she smiled.

“Sorry, I ramble when I’m hungry. Thought I’d stop in to get me some road food, but nothing here is really doing it for me. What about you?” The eye was so swollen that he could only see a squinted sliver of her left eye, and there were marks around the outside of the dark bruise. Like a scrape.

“What about me?” he asked. He couldn’t understand why this woman was talking to him, and he realized that at some point he had become paranoid. Maybe it was because of all the dying and being possessed. Being paranoid after all that was reasonable, wasn’t it?

“You see anything in here that’s even remotely appetizing?” she clarified. He looked around him, but there wasn’t much to see. This aisle was mostly candy, with a small section of small chip bags, and the next aisle over had various non-food related items. His eyes scanned over a bag of charcoal before turning to look down at the woman again.

“Not really,” he answered truthfully. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have any money to buy anything with, so his last moments were going to be spent feeling hungry in a small gas station. Awesome.

“Yeah, I think I’m just gonna hit up the diner next door. I don’t really like eating in diners alone, people who eat in diners alone always look like psychopathic serial killers, but I might actually become homicidal if I don’t get a burger or something soon.” She paused after that and looked around, while Adam tried to process her ramblings. “Hey, you wanna come with me? Make me look a little less creepy?”

“Depends. You actually a serial killer?” he asked. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be able to cover his tab, so he couldn’t go with her. The fact that she was a stranger didn’t matter. He was starving and would gladly welcome a burger right now, but he didn’t like the idea of stealing.

“I don’t think I fit the height requirements to be a serial killer,” she said with a quiet laugh. She really was tiny. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, he felt kind of uncomfortable just looming over her, but he also knew that size didn’t mean shit. Before he could say that though, she started talking again. “I totally understand if you don’t want to have dinner with a stranger, that would be very reasonable of you, but I really do hate eating alone. Plus, you look like you could use a meal and a friendly talk. So, how about it? My treat.”

“I can’t let you pay–”

“If I’m asking you to eat with me, then I’m definitely going to pay. It’s only fair,” she said and shrugged. When she lifted her shoulders, she winced again and then smiled up at him. People didn’t just ask strangers to eat with them, but he was so hungry. He knew he had a limited amount of time, so it was this or nothing. If she did turn out to be a serial killer or some kind of monster, she was in for a nasty surprise. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be so easy to kill when he had an archangel stalking his cerebellum.

“Yeah, okay. As long as you’re paying,” he said and felt himself smile. After eleven days of possession, he felt like a stranger in his own skin. It was unsettling and annoying, but he made himself hold the smile and hoped that he didn’t look like some kind of creep.

“That’s the spirit, kiddo! Let’s go get some burgers.” He watched as she turned around and started walking off, and he shuffled along behind her. She was limping, just a little and not too noticeably, and he wondered what had happened to her. Some kind of crazy bar fight? A car accident? No, a car accident wouldn’t really explain the black eye. He settled on the bar fight idea as they exited the gas station, and he looked around the dimly lit parking lot. Next to the gas station, there was a brightly lit diner. As they crossed from one lot to the other, they passed a motorcycle that she patted affectionately on the seat.

“The bike’s yours?” he asked with a small amount of surprise.

“Yeah, she’s mine. Not my usual choice for transportation, but I’m just passing through,” she said over her shoulder. Maybe she was driving the bike because she’d had an accident on her usual vehicle and had just cracked her face against something. That was possible, wasn’t it?

When they reached the front of the diner, he stepped up to her side and used his longer reach to open the door for her. She grinned up at him before walking under his arm and into the diner, and he followed in after her. The inside of the diner was cold, especially after walking through the warm night air outside, and he felt his skin prickle despite the jacket and thick jeans he was wearing. In front of him, the woman raised her arms to cross them over her stomach and then started towards the far end of the diner. Away from the other few people dining, away from the booths close to the register. She chose a booth at the back of the diner, on the opposite side of the swinging door that led to the kitchen, and she slid into the side of the booth facing the rest of the diner. Adam slid into the seat across from her, and he didn’t like that he couldn’t see the majority of the diner. He could hear people behind him, talking quietly over the sounds of silverware on plates, and it made him tense. He had never been like that before, uneasy when he couldn’t see all around him. Hell, he had sat in booths just like this whenever John—

“What can I get you to drink?” Adam jumped so hard at the waitress’s voice that his knees knocked into the underside of the table, and the waitress looked away from her notepad to raise a brow at him while he tried to give her a smile that he hoped conveyed it’s-all-good.

“I’ll take a coffee, black, but I think my friend might want a break from caffeine,” the woman answered first. Right, yeah, he didn’t really want any caffeine. (He probably wouldn’t be in control of his body long enough for caffeine to have an effect anyway.)

“Just water for me, thanks,” he finally settled on. The waitress wrote it down and then walked off without saying anything, and Adam looked across the table. He thought the woman looked amused, the black eye kind of complicated his ability to read her expression, and her fingers drummed against the tabletop.

“You okay?” she asked him. She asked him, while sitting there with a shiner after limping across the parking lot.

“Yeah, fine,” he forced out. She looked skeptical but didn’t question him further, and he watched as she reached to the side of the table. Towards the window, where the menus were stacked in a little metal holder behind the napkins dispenser. He took the laminated menu she offered and let his eyes scan over the food options, but his mind was working overtime and not processing anything on the menu.

John had stopped by randomly and sporadically, but their visits were routine. If it was his birthday, they went to a baseball game. Any other time, they went to a diner. John would always pick the back booth, and he always sat with his back to the wall. While Adam would talk about whatever had been going on in his life at the time, John would scan the diner. He’d brought it up with his mom once, and she had reminded him that John was ex-military. That a soldier wouldn’t want to leave his back exposed. It had made sense, and Adam had stopped paying attention to it. Now that he knew what John had really been, it made even more sense. John had known that monsters were everywhere, around every corner, and he had always been looking for them. He was sure there was another reason why this woman had picked a booth with a clear vantage point; it wasn’t because he didn’t think that a woman could be a hunter, that was some sexist bullshit, but hunting wasn’t a common job. Right? Maybe she was ex-military. Maybe she was a cop or had some other job with the same kind of training. Same kind of thinking.

It felt like no time at all had passed before the waitress was back, and he lowered the menu as he watched the older woman place their drinks on the table. The woman’s coffee first, with steam rising from the surface, and ice clinked against the thick plastic of his cup. He dropped the menu onto the table and picked up the cup with both hands, and his dry lips stuck to the straw as he took a long pull. The water was almost painfully cold as he drank it down, but he couldn’t make himself stop drinking. He sucked down over half of the water before finally lowering the cup, and the woman and the waitress were both looking curiously at him. He shrugged because he couldn’t exactly tell them that he hadn’t had anything to drink in eleven days, and the woman pulled the waitress’s attention as she started to order. She kept it simple, a stacked burger with no onions and a side of scattered hash browns, and he told the waitress that he’d have the same. Even down to the no onions, because he’d never really been a fan.

After the waitress walked off, the woman reached her hand out towards him. He looked down at her hand, noted the bruising and scrapes across her knuckles, and then quickly dropped his eyes down as he realized what she wanted. He passed over his menu, made another note of the dirt under her nails as she took it from him, and he looked up again as she deposited the menus back into their little holder. She dropped her hands onto the table, swollen fingers tapping quietly, while looking down into her steaming coffee cup. While she was looking away, he studied her face. The bruise looked bigger and uglier under the bright fluorescent lights. The swollen skin around her eye was shiny, like she had put something on it, and the scrape looked deeper than he had originally thought. With his new paranoid way of thinking, the scrape looked more like the deep wounds of a blade. She must have looked up without him noticing, because he was still staring directly at her when he heard her voice again.

“What? Somethin’ on my face?” she asked. She was grinning as she asked the question and held it after their eyes met, and he knew it wasn’t his place to ask what had happened. She was a stranger that was going to pay for his last meal, but she was still a stranger. “I’m just messin’ with ya, kiddo, so stop lookin’ at me like that. I know I look like I lost a round to an angry bear.”

“Did you? You know, lose a fight?” His words came out quiet and a little stuttered, and her smile tightened as she held eye contact. Well, mostly. He wasn’t sure if she could actually see out of her left eye. She raised her cup and drank down her coffee, and he was sure that she had just drained the entire cup when she lowered it back down.

“Nah, I won this time,” she said and started to tap her fingers against the table again. The waitress walked up to their table, stopping Adam from having to think of something to say, and she refilled the woman’s coffee first. With her other hand, she lifted a full pitcher of water and he smiled up at her as she refilled his cup. She returned the smile after a moment, studied him before setting the pitcher on the table next to his cup, and then she told them that their food would be right out before walking off with just the half-full coffeepot.

Before, Adam had been great at talking to strangers. He could make idle conversation with anyone, anywhere, no matter how he was feeling at the time. Now, he could barely maintain eye contact and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He died about a year ago, he wasn’t exactly sure of the date but knew it was springtime twenty-ten, so he didn’t know any current news. Talking about the weather was usually a good safe topic, but he didn’t know anything about the weather or even where he was. It had been warm outside, not too humid and hadn’t been raining, but he didn’t know if that was normal for whatever region he was in. How was he supposed to start a normal conversation when he didn’t know anything?

“Anything you want to talk about?” The woman’s voice was quieter now, softer, and her words didn’t have the same drawl to them. The confusion he felt must have been showing pretty clearly, because she huffed out a quiet laugh and then pressed her palms flat to the table as she leaned back against her seat. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger, y’know? Someone who’s not going to judge you because they don’t even know you, and someone you can tell your secrets to because you’re never going to see them again. We can just sit in silence though, if that’s what you prefer. Totally up to you.”

“Totally up to you.”

Nothing had been his decision since he died. In Heaven, he had no control over which memories that he existed in. When Zachariah had come to him, he had been given a choice that wasn’t really a choice. The resurrection, meeting his brothers, the possession. None of it had been a choice, not really, but this was. He could sit quietly, eat his free food, and then go back to being a sightseer as an archangel used his body to finish off the Apocalypse. He could talk, but he knew he couldn’t just talk freely. What would he even say? That he was feeling a little down lately because this all-powerful archangel had jumped into his skin and turned him into a puppet? That he was currently playing a part in finishing off the Apocalypse that would most definitely result in this nice stranger’s death? No, he couldn’t talk freely. Even if he did try to say any of that, he was sure that Michael would stop him. He would also come off as completely insane. So he couldn’t talk about his actual problem. Was there anything that he could talk about?

“I just met my brothers for the first time,” was what slipped out of him. Both of the woman’s brows went up in surprise, and her head tilted down just a little as her hands moved to wrap around her coffee cup.

“I’m sure there’s a story there.” She raised the cup to press her lips against the edge, but she didn’t drink.

“Not much of one,” he said quickly. She just looked curiously at him before tipping the cup enough to take a tentative sip, probably checking the temperature, because she then took a much longer sip. “We have the same dad, but he never told us about each other. I didn’t know I had older brothers, and they didn’t know about me.”

“Kind of a dick move, no offense,” she said and then took another sip. She lowered the cup back to the table but kept her hands pressed against the sides, and he felt himself smiling.

“It was a dick move, but I think he thought he was doing the right thing,” Adam said slowly. He was sure that John had his reasons; if Adam had known that he had brothers, he probably would have looked for them. Would have found out about monsters. Maybe he wouldn’t have been eaten. John hadn’t known how things would end for him though, and there was no use in blaming the man for how his life turned out. From what he’d picked up, Sam and Dean had known all about monsters and had still died.

“What are they like? Your brothers?” the woman asked. He didn’t know how to answer that, so he looked down at his clenched fists in his lap and tried to think. She didn’t press, just took sips of her coffee and hummed quietly, so he could actually take his time thinking about it.

Being told that he would be resurrected really hadn’t prepared him for being alive again, and he had been angry at his brothers and their angel for getting in the way. All he’d been focused on was doing what he needed to see his mother again. He’d been told about his brothers, about Sam and Dean Winchester, but that hadn’t prepared him for actually meeting them. He regretted being so angry, for being so desperate to get away from them, now that he knew the truth. He wasn’t even the one that Michael had really wanted, but he was the one saddled with the archangel now. Even after being a complete ass and taking off though, they had come for him. Dean had grabbed him and held him up, had been willing to carry him out of that room, but everything had turned sideways. Maybe John was wrong for keeping all of them apart, but Adam knew he was wrong for running from them. Now it was too late.

“Here you go,” the waitress announced. Identical plates were slid onto the table, the waitress topped off the woman’s coffee for the second time, and then they were alone again. Adam waited until the woman had lifted her burger and taken a huge bite before saying anything, and he pushed his hash browns around with his fork while talking.

“One of them kinda looks like our dad,” he started. Sam looked like their dad. His hair wasn’t as dark and he was definitely taller, but Sam had the same eyes as John. It’d been a bit of a shock, the first time he’d been close enough to note that green-brown blend, but that was where the physical similarities ended. Dean didn’t look like their dad, but he moved like him. “My other brother, he had the same mannerisms as our dad, you know?”

“My little sister tugs on the ends of her hair when she’s thinking, like our mom,” she told him. She said it and then immediately took another huge bite of her burger, and Adam’s stomach clenched in hunger and maybe a bit of something else. He didn’t really want to analyze it.

“Yeah, things like that. The way he even sat and walked reminded me of—Dad.” He’d started to say John, because he had never gotten into the habit of calling the man dad. The woman nodded while she chewed, and Adam finally picked up his burger. It tasted even better than it looked, better than it smelled, and he took an immediate second bite even though his mouth was full.

“Were they nice?” Half of the woman’s burger was gone and Adam wasn’t far behind her, and he slowed down his chewing as he thought that over. Dean had come for him, had wanted to take his place, and Sam. He had been kind even when Adam was lashing out, and the look in his eyes had been both pleading and mournful whenever Adam glared at him.

“They are, nicer than I thought they’d be,” he said and stuffed his mouth again. He watched as the woman crammed the last of her burger into her mouth, it caused her cheeks to bulge out, and Adam followed her example. She grinned as his cheeks puffed out to match hers, and he felt himself trying to smile even as he hurriedly chewed. She finished first and then slumped back in her seat with a sigh, and she broke eye contact to look out the window.

“Having half-siblings is kinda weird. A different parent, different ways of being raised, but they’re still your blood.” He hummed because his mouth was still full, and he could see her cheek twitch under the dark bruise like she had started to smile and then stopped. “Me and my little sister have different dads, and I was sixteen when she was born.”

“Are you close?” Adam asked once he’d finished with his burger. He started to pick at his hash browns as she continued to look out the window, and she didn’t look very old. Maybe barely into her twenties, despite the threads of silver in her dark hair. Some people went gray prematurely. He’d be surprised if her sister was older than six or seven.

“I love that kid more than anything,” she said quietly. Somehow, without really processing his actions while she was apparently lost in thought, he had nearly cleaned off his plate. Without him saying anything and without her even looking at him, she pushed her plate and untouched hash browns over towards him. “You know, I wanted brothers when I was a kid.”

“Why brothers?” he asked and then started in on her hash browns. She finally looked away from the window and smiled at him, and he noticed that her smile was crooked because she was trying not to move the left side of her face.

“In second grade, there was this kid in third grade that liked to bully the younger kids. When he picked on my friend, she got her older brother to scare him off. She was the coolest kid in class for weeks because of that,” she somewhat explained.

“He ever pick on you?” She hummed something that sounded affirmative, and Adam tapped his fork against the side of her plate. “What’d you do?”

“First, I asked my friend if I could borrow her brother. When she told me that she’d miss him too much, even if I only borrowed him for a little bit, I sucked it up and dealt with it myself. Next time he picked on me, I punched him in the nose. Turned out to be more effective than an older brother,” she said and widened her grin until her bruised skin scrunched up. It had to hurt, just looking at it hurt him, but she held the grin with ease.

“Who needs brothers?” The question slipped out, and the woman raised a brow in question as he shoveled in the last of the hash browns.

“That mean you’re staying away from yours?” she asked when he kept his chewing slow. He knew that Michael would take control as soon as this was over, he was surprised the archangel had let this go on for this long, so he knew he’d never get to see them again. His body was going to be used to fight Lucifer, and he’d heard enough from Michael’s powwows with the other angels to learn that the fight would burn his soul out. No Heaven. No Hell. Just, nothingness.

“I’ve managed a whole life without them,” he decided to answer. His life hadn’t been particularly long, but he had never felt like he was missing out on anything. Having a dad or someone else around when he was younger would have been different, not necessarily better, but it was too late for thinking about what-ifs. It was too late for anything.

“Mind hearing some advice from a complete stranger?” He thought she looked sad as she asked it, not like she was going to burst into tears or anything, but she seemed to almost pull in on herself.

“I could use some advice,” he told her and tried to smile. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off, so he reached out for the pitcher of water to refill his cup. This was almost over, and he wanted one last cup of ice cold water.

“Don’t give up on your brothers.” He paused with his full cup raised, the straw was even poking his chin, and he pulled the cup away as he tried to figure out what to say to that. Thankfully, the woman kept talking and gave him a little more time. “Family is about a lot more than blood. I’m not saying you owe them anything just because you happen to share some DNA, but they didn’t know about you either. I can’t speak for them or anyone else, but I can tell you what it’s like having a younger sibling. If they are family, in the truest sense of the word, they’ll worry about you. They’ll want to know that you’re okay. That’s what family is, and maybe it won’t hurt to give ‘em a chance at that.”

“You came for me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re family.”

He hated his reaction. His throat got tight and itchy as his eyes started to burn, and he could hear the ice hitting the edges of the cup as he let it drop back onto the table. He wasn’t outright crying but wasn’t too far from it, because what was the point? What was the point of all of it? John found him and made him believe that he had someone else other than just his mom, until he just disappeared. Adam died. He lived long enough to know what it felt like to have teeth ripping into his skin and had to look at a monster wearing his mother’s face as he slowly bled out, and none of it meant anything. John had already been dead, and he and his brothers knew nothing about each other. Heaven hadn’t been a happily ever after. Memories were all great and good, but it hadn’t felt right. Of course he listened when Zachariah promised him that he could see his mom again, and he held onto that childish hope of seeing his mom again even while faced with his living brothers. Adam said yes to an archangel, and now his body was going to be used to end the world. Meeting Sam and Dean, it didn’t mean anything. So why was he on the verge of breaking down in this small diner? Why he did he actually start to cry, enough to make his cheeks itch and to clear his vision, when some strange woman reached across the table to hold his hands?

“Shit, kid, I’m sorry. I wasn’t tryin’ to make you cry. Y’know, it’s okay if you never see them again. Who knows? Maybe they’re actually a couple of jerks, and you’re better off without them,” she rushed out. He focused on her hands as he got the tears to stop; the skin of her palms and her fingers were rough, scratchy with calluses, and her grip was strong despite the extensive bruising and swelling across her knuckles. Her thumbs were idly brushing across his knuckles, a soft soothing gesture, and he took in a long breath and slowly let it out.

“Look, I can’t change the past. I wish I could, but from here on out—”

What would Sam have said, if Adam hadn’t interrupted him?

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Adam forced out. The woman pulled her hands away a moment before Adam registered the waitress standing at the side of their table, and the woman started rambling about how good the burger was while the waitress gathered up their dirty dishes. It kept the waitress looking in her direction instead of over at Adam, so he was able to turn away enough to hopefully discreetly use his jacket sleeve to wipe at his face. By the time the waitress was gone, Adam’s sleeve was a little wet but his face was dry.

“Look, I’m sorry if I overstepped.” The woman looked apologetic as well, and he made himself smile as their eyes locked again.

“You didn’t,” he said quietly. He wanted to tell her that it was good advice, advice that he’d take if he could, but there was no way that he could explain that situation.

“Alright, if you say so. I’m gonna go pay the bill.” She looked at him for a moment, so he nodded his head once in agreement. He looked down as he heard her start to move, she was sliding out of the booth seat, and he felt her hand on his shoulder. Just a quick squeeze, a small steadying gesture, and then she was walking off.

Adam leaned forward and pressed his palms flat against the table, and he slowly levered himself up. His feet took his weight, his hip dinged against the edge of the table and started to throb, and he walked through the diner. He could hear the woman talking at the register, her voice was quiet but the diner wasn’t exactly crowded, and he looked at his hand as he pushed open the glass door. The air outside was still warm, a sharp contrast to the cold diner, and he took a few steps forward as he looked up at the dark sky. The place was pretty isolated, so he didn’t think he was close to a city. The stars were easy to see. Could’ve been anywhere in the country. Anytown, USA. It was beautiful, and it was all going to be destroyed. For what? Some old grudge between some archangels? Because the angels believed that it was God’s plan? He was still just looking up at the sky when a small weight knocked against his side, and he was already smiling when he looked over and down at the woman.

“I don’t know how to say thank you,” he told her. Thanks to her, he got to have his last meal. A diner burger with a side of hash browns. Best meal he could have asked for.

“I don’t know, I think you said it pretty well,” she teased. She was nice. An actual kind stranger. Was killing her really part of God’s plan?

“Thank you,” he repeated anyway. Her smile softened as she used her shoulder to bump his arm again, and her eyes darted to the side so that she was looking at the other end of the parking lot.

“Need a ride anywhere?” He was already shaking his head when she turned to look up at him again, and she smiled wide enough to cause herself to wince. “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. She was walking away even as she told him to take care, and he lifted a hand to wave when she looked back over her shoulder. One hand raised so that she could return the wave, and he stayed rooted to the spot as he watched her. He wasn’t sure how she was even able to get onto the bike after the way she limped over to it, but she swung her leg over with ease. A moment later, she was peeling out of the parking lot. He turned his head to watch as the motorcycle drove off into the darkness, and it was over now. He tried to take a step forward and couldn’t, his body wasn’t under his control anymore, but he was able to look up at the stars.

“There are some good humans.” He knew Michael was listening, had probably never stopped listening, and he wondered if the archangel had learned anything from his dinner with the stranger.

“This fight has nothing to do with humanity. Lucifer has to be stopped.” Yeah, Adam had heard the speech. Several times now, in fact, and didn’t feel like listening to it again.

“Good people, people like her, they don’t deserve to die,” Adam tried to reason.

“That woman’s soul is damned to Hell.” Okay, Adam hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe the stranger really had been a serial killer and he just bumped into her while she was in a giving mood. Whatever. That wasn’t the point he was trying to make, but the archangel was just way too literal.

“My soul wasn’t, I was in Heaven, so maybe I don’t deserve to die. Or whatever is going to happen to me when you go nuclear,” he managed to say. He could feel Michael taking control, and it was like he was fading. He tried to hold on, to fight, but Michael was stronger. He was forced back into his consciousness, this time into the dusty tomb where he’d been eaten alive, and his hands pressed flat against the cold stone wall. He was trapped, again, and he knew he wasn’t going to be freed. “Will it hurt? When you burn me out of existence?”

Michael didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Because it wasn’t like it mattered. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen. Michael flew away from the diner parking lot, ripping Adam’s body apart and healing it instantly, while Adam screamed and hit his fists against the walls. He was trapped. There was no way to escape, no way to change anything, but he couldn’t just stop fighting. Not now. Not yet. Not until it was finally over.

“I’m going out.” The sudden words caused Sam to blink the book in front of him back into focus just in time to hear the creak of bed springs, and he looked over to see the stubborn set of his brother’s jaw as Dean patted at his pockets. He knew that gesture, the familiar check for keys-phone-wallet in that order, and then Dean was walking towards the motel door.

“What about—” Dean’s fist hit against the door, causing the flimsy wood to rattle and shake in its frame, and Sam felt his shoulders jump up to his ears before he forced himself to relax in the very uncomfortable chair he was wedged into.

“What about what, Sam? Sitting around here isn’t helping anything, and I’m getting ready to crawl outta my skin. Stay here if you want, but I’m going out,” Dean announced again. When he looked over his shoulder, Sam kept his gaze level and didn’t say anything. What was there to say, at this point? Dean sighed, seemed to sink in on himself for a minute, and then his shoulders squared before he yanked the door open. “I’ll be back later. Don’t perform any dark rituals without me.”

Sam listened to the motel door slam and then waited until he heard the Impala peeling out of the lot before letting out a quiet, “Jerk.” Just saying the word without hearing the response left him feeling a little jittery, and he shook his hands out before running his fingers through his hair. His fingers stuttered against tangles and he could feel grease coating the strands, and he was glad Dean wasn’t around to see the way his nose scrunched up in slight disgust. It’d been over two weeks since Adam disappeared, since the absolute disaster in Van Nuys, and they were both still on edge. They couldn’t find Adam or Cas, and Sam wasn’t sure which disappearance Dean was more concerned about. (For Sam, the concern was about equal. They were both family, in different ways, and Sam couldn’t dismiss the fact that Michael had a vessel now. Had Adam.)

The whole situation was fucked, slightly more than usual, but there was one problem that Sam could fix. So he grabbed some clothes, his shampoo, and left the bathroom door open as he took a quick shower. The lukewarm water and open door meant there was no steam by the time he was done, and the shower helped him to wake up a little and marshal his thoughts. He could maybe try a location spell. He wasn’t sure how he’d look for Cas, but he might be able to use his own blood to look for Adam. It was vague, but he thought he remembered reading about a spell that used bloodlines. He and Adam shared a father, and maybe that would be enough to try. Would that count as a dark ritual?

His phone was ringing as he walked out of the bathroom, the stock ringtone was loud in the quiet room, and he quickly swiped the phone up before it could vibrate over the edge of the table. He wedged it between his ear and shoulder, winced as he thought about his still wet hair dripping all over the phone, and roughed out a quick hello as he walked back over to his bed. He’d pulled on another pair of jeans and a tee shirt in the bathroom, just in case something happened and they needed to leave in a hurry, but he hadn’t grabbed any socks. He hated walking in motel rooms barefoot. So he kept the phone clenched with his shoulder as he dug through his bag, and he waited for whoever it was to speak. It wasn’t Dean, he didn’t hesitate, and he knew someone was on the line because he could hear breathing. Quick breathing, like someone had been running. He pulled his brows together as he stopped searching through his bag, and he reached up to pull the phone away as he looked at the screen. The number wasn’t familiar, wasn’t any of Dean’s burner numbers or any of Bobby’s that he could remember, and he tucked the phone back against his ear as he heard some kind of commotion. A scuffle?

“Jesus, dude, what the hell?!” It was a woman’s voice, kind of familiar but hard to tell with the sudden yell ringing in his ear, and there was the sound of a definite scuffle. Then there was a loud yelp, a little more muffled, and maybe this was an accidental call? “Next time you think it’s a good idea to slap someone’s ass, remember this moment. Got it?”

“Um, hello?” he tried again. There was a quick curse, a quiet kind of gurgling sound, and then he could hear that fast breathing sound.

“Shit, sorry about that. I must have hit the call button when that dickbag decided to be, well, a dickbag. Had to educate him on proper gas station etiquette. All I wanted to do was get some gas without being sexually harassed, y’know? It’s no wonder the world’s gone to hell. Shit, dammit, forget I said that. That was insensitive. It’s been a long…life.” At the sound of the quiet laugh, Sam finally put a name to the familiar voice. Emma Motley.

“No, uh, it’s okay. I mean, I get it.” He pushed out a sigh, tried to remember all the times that he could talk properly, and tried again. “Are you okay? Do you need some help?”

“You mean with the dickbag? Nah, I’m sure he’ll think twice now before following his impulses. I’d ask if you’re okay, but that might be a little insensitive too.” He could hear other voices in the background, vehicles starting up, so she must still be at the gas station. Before he could ask why she called, she started talking again. “I’m sorry to bother you, I know you’ve got a lot going on, but Bobby gave me your number.”

“No, it’s okay. You’ve got good timing actually. Not really doing anything at the moment,” he said slowly. She had expected him to be busy. Should they be? Doing what? They had tried to find Adam, tried to find Cas, and they still didn’t know how to stop the Apocalypse. Michael had a vessel now (Adam), so the fight could happen at any moment.

“Awesome! So, I need a gold dagger. I’ve got silver, copper, and even bronze. I’m just missing gold, and I’m hunting down a banshee. I called Bobby, but he said you guys are closer. You got a spare? I can totally pay for it,” Emma rambled out. Sam remembered seeing Dean throw some daggers into his duffel a while back, and he quickly crossed over to Dean’s side of the room and started digging through it.

“Yeah, I think we do. Give me just a second and…yeah, I got one here. Where are you?” he asked as he held the gold dagger in his hand. Well, it was small and more like a gold knife. It should still do the job though.

“Right outside of Rockford.”

“Illinois?”

“Indiana. Bobby said you guys were only a couple of hours away,” she told him. Rockford. His mental map told him that was close to Seymour, which would put her about two and a half hours away. Definitely a lot closer than Bobby’s place.

“We’re close to Bluffton.” Sam gave her some more specific directions to the small town of Grady they were holed up in, was relieved that her own mental map was clearly well defined, and she hung up with promises to be at the motel in a couple of hours.

Sam tossed his phone back onto the table, finally found his socks in his bag, and he sat down on his bed while he pulled his socks on. With that done, he walked back over to Dean’s bag and zipped it up again before picking up the dagger he had left on the floor. He thought about calling Dean as he walked over to his book bag, in the most literal sense of the term, and he pulled out a few books that looked promising. Dean would probably want to know that someone was dropping by their motel room, and Sam spread his books out across the table around his laptop. He’d need to make notes of what he found, if he found anything, and he watched as his old laptop struggled to come on. If he survived the Apocalypse, he’d need to replace it. They had to get through this first. Well, right now he was going to research locator spells while Dean was out. He probably should call Dean, but he knew that he sometimes needed some time to himself to sort through things. Adam and Cas were both gone, missing-they’re just missing, and Dean needed a moment. Also, they could trust Emma. Bobby had spent a year with her, still talked to her regularly despite a falling out, and they could trust her because Bobby did.

The time passed quickly; doing any kind of research was always strange when it came to gauging time, it took both forever and no time at all, and he jumped a little when he first heard the knock at the door. He checked the time on his laptop before standing up, and it had been just over two hours since Emma called. He left everything where it was as he pushed up from the chair, but he did reach back to touch the gun tucked into the back of his pants when he reached for the doorknob. He slowly opened the door, just a crack, and Emma was looking over her shoulder. Over the top of her head, he could see a black motorcycle parked nearby and not much else in the parking lot. She turned back around to face him, and she grinned as soon as their eyes met.

“I thought my memories were exaggerating, but you really are tall,” was Emma’s greeting. It wasn’t the first time that someone had mentioned Sam’s height, but she was at least smiling as she said it.

“You’re just really short.” Sniping back at Dean was easy, but he usually didn’t tease or joke around with strangers. Emma was like them though, wasn’t she? A hunter, and she had been easygoing when they met. She even laughed at his comment and nodded in agreement, and Sam opened the door wider so that she could walk inside.

“How you doin’, Sam?” she asked as she collapsed into a chair at the table. He slowly walked around her and looked at the ugly bruise surrounding her left eye, at the way the green blended into the yellow edges, and he carefully lowered himself into the chair next to her.

“I think I should be asking you that,” he said. He tried to resist the urge to scan her for injuries, failed, and didn’t see anything else. Just the left eye. The bruising was healing, there were some deep marks right next to her eye, and she was holding herself stiffly. He was also sure that silver hadn’t been threaded through her dark hair the last time they met.

“Small run-in with some people who don’t agree with my extracurricular activities,” Emma said around a grin. When he raised his brows and prepared to ask what the hell that meant, Emma smiled a little wider and knocked a fist against his chest. “Story for another time. It’s your turn. How’re you doing?”

“You mean with the Apocalypse?” he asked. Emma raised a brow at that, and she shifted a little so that she was facing directly towards him.

“Did I ask how the Apocalypse was doing? I’m asking how you are doing,” she said with a pointed look. He couldn’t understand why she was asking or why she’d care, and some of that must have shown on his face because she explained. “Bobby didn’t say your names or anything, but sometimes he’d talk about these other kids that were raised in the life. He told me about the Winchester brothers later, and I put the pieces together. Bobby cares about you two, and I care about Bobby. So I’m being decent and checking in on your current mental health, in these trying times.”

“Bobby said you two got into a fight, years ago. Haven’t seen each other since. Is that because of your extracurricular activities?” The words fell out of Sam, words that he didn’t mean to ask because it was really none of his business, and he watched Emma’s expression shift. From gentle curiosity (soft edge of the mouth and open eyes), enraged indifference (flat line of the mouth with a tense jaw and narrowed eyes), and ending with resignation (parted lips with brows pulled slightly down).

“Yeah, we disagreed over my life choices and maybe someday you’ll hear that story. Probably not from me. You can tell me to fuck-off, Sam, and I won’t take offense. Just wanted to see how you’re doing, ‘s all,” she finished with a shrug.

“I’m fine,” he said after a moment. Emma made a quiet sound, between a laugh and a sigh, and she dropped one hand onto the table and started to tap her fingers. Then he couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking, “How’s your current mental health?”

“I’ve got less than two weeks before being dragged down into Hell. So, yeah, I’m fine,” she said with a small smile. Less than two weeks? He knew she said when her time was up when they met her, but he couldn’t remember how much longer she’d had. Less than two weeks though? That was soon.

“Only two weeks, and you’re still hunting?” He thought it was the wrong thing to ask as soon as the question was out of his mouth, her decisions were none of his business, but she didn’t look offended or upset. She just kept looking at him with that same open expression. Too open, too honest. He turned away from her to pick up the gold dagger, and he slid it over to her side of the very small table.

“I’ve been hunting since I was eighteen, and I’ve been damned since I was twenty-one. Why change things up at the last hour? Besides, I wanna see how many monsters I can take out before I go,” she said and then reached for the dagger. She didn’t just grab it and go, like he expected. She picked it up and looked at it, tilted it to see the light hit the edges, and then grinned over at him. She kind of reminded him of Dean. Wasn’t that what Dean had done? Gone after as many monsters as he could?

“A monster do that to your hair?” he asked. Her dark hair was in a low ponytail, and she grabbed a chunk between her thumb and forefinger so that the light could show on her hair better. Most of her hair was still dark, the kind of black that didn’t shine any other color, but there were thin threads of silver showing.

“Funnily enough, yes. The consequences of dealing with old gods. Maybe I should have gotten a better day job,” she mused as she continued to look at her hair. For a moment, he thought of his dad. It was just a flash, of them standing nose-to-nose on an old back road. The moonlight had highlighted the new patches of gray in his dad’s hair, showing that even John Winchester wasn’t completely unchangeable, and Sam pushed that memory away. John was an old ghost, one that was at peace now. Emma would never be a ghost.

“What kind of job would you have?” Sam decided to ask. He liked talking to Emma. She seemed open and honest, genuine, and she was easy to talk to.

“You askin’ what I wanted to be when I grew up?” Her voice was quieter now, slower and with the same drawl he’d noticed in the cemetery at times, and she had dropped her hair to slowly twist the gold dagger between her fingers.

“Yeah, I, uh, guess I am?” He was good at talking to people, wasn’t he? Dean always threw him at victims on cases because Sam was better at talking to people. Maybe he was just tired? They’d been running themselves ragged, more so than usual.

“I always wanted to be a superhero. This was as close as I could get,” she answered with another grin. When she smiled that wide, it crinkled the corners of her eyes. Even the bruised one. Her answer caused him to laugh, just a little and quickly cut off, and he watched her brows raise in surprise.

“When we were kids, Dean wanted to be Batman,” he explained.

“Man’s got good taste,” she said and laughed when he groaned. He wanted her to stay longer, to maybe ask for her help in finding a way to track down Adam, but it was getting late. If she was hunting a banshee, she’d need to leave soon to make it back by nightfall. She had her own hunts and not a lot of time left, and Sam knew it was for the best for them to part ways. “Hey, before I take off, mind if I use the bathroom?”

“No, ‘course not.”

She left the dagger on the table as she stood up, and he heard the bathroom door click a moment later. Maybe, if things had been different, she could have helped them. Since the first time Bobby had talked to them about Emma, he’d told them that he had thought about asking for her help. He’d decided not to because of her clock winding down, and he’d clearly been holding something back but neither of them had pushed him for answers. It was too bad. Most hunters hated the Winchesters. The hunters they saw after Emma had actually killed them, shot them in their motel room, and he was sure there were other hunters that wouldn’t mind doing the same. Most hunters weren’t exactly friendly, just not in their nature, but Emma seemed to be. She was nice, and he hated thinking about her going to Hell. He couldn’t exactly judge the decision though. (If given a choice, he knew he’d do the same for Dean. Just like Dean had done for him.) By the time she came out of the bathroom, he had talked himself out of asking her if she wanted some help putting the hellhounds off. She was a hunter and knew what was coming, and she’d had ten years to come to terms with the end.

“Thanks for this, Sam, really. This banshee’s already got six bodies that I know of, but I’ll get her tonight. Thanks to you,” Emma said as she grabbed the dagger. She stayed standing, and he could tell by the way she was standing that she’d taken a hit to her left side. If she hadn’t been injured in a hunt, then what happened to her?

“We have an extra, so it’s no problem. Really,” he said quickly and stood up.

“Yeah, well, I’m still saying thank you. If you need anything in the next two weeks, give me a call,” she said as he walked her to the door. Two weeks. In two weeks, she was going to be dead. He just hoped the rest of the world didn’t follow after her.

“If you need anything—”

“I won’t.”

“—call anyway.”

Emma turned around to face him after stepping out of the door, and she had to tip her head back a good bit to smile up at him. She looked like she was going to protest but then stopped herself, her mouth even opened and closed, and she took a step closer to him. Then another step closer. Up close, she looked even smaller. Not just short, thin. Thinner than the last time he saw her. The roundness in her cheeks had faded, the angle of her jaw looked too sharp, and her clothes looked even bigger on her small frame than before. He stopped noticing the weight loss as her hand raised up towards his face, and he held perfectly still as one of her fingers tapped under his left eye. Her hand dropped as she told him, “You need to take better care of yourself. The Apocalypse can wait until after a power nap.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” he said and looked away from her eyes. Looking at the ground was easier, and the toes of his socks were just barely touching the sidewalk outside the motel door.

“You gotta relax, Sam. I know that you and Dean are going to win this.” She said it with so much easy confidence, like it was a simple fact, and his head snapped up to look at her again.

“How do you know that?” Because at this point, it seemed impossible. He and Dean kept telling each other that they’d find a way, that they had to find a way, but he didn’t know what they could do at this point.

“Because you have to. Because the good guys always win,” she said and shrugged.

“I think you’re confusing reality with superhero movies,” he said with a tired laugh. He wouldn’t call himself a hero and maybe not even a good guy at this point, but she was right about one thing. He could use a nap.

“Yeah, maybe, but I’ve got faith in you two,” she said and turned around. He watched her walk over to the bike and thought about the giant bus she had driven off in after that night in the cemetery. Did she rent a motorcycle or something? It had to be faster than the large bus. He didn’t call out to ask her though, because he knew that she had something important to do. She slung a leg over the bike and settled onto the seat, and he took a step backwards into the motel room. “Hey, Sam!”

“Yeah?” he asked and looked across the parking lot at her. She was holding her helmet against her stomach, both feet pressed flat against the ground, and he could just make out the wide smile on her face.

“I wanted to be a florist, or maybe a landscaper! Something with flowers!” Emma called out. Sam thought he could picture that. Emma inside of a little flower shop, surrounded by pretty flowers with a smile for every customer. (Up close, she smelled like a hunter. Like graveyard dirt and leather and metal.)

“I wanted to be a lawyer!” he returned. Her laugh seemed to echo in the empty parking lot, a bright sound, and he watched as she pulled on her helmet. She waved before starting the bike, and he watched her pull out of the lot before going back inside the motel room.

An hour later, the words he was reading were starting to blur and he leaned back in his chair with his eyes clenched shut. He’d been reading on a spell that was impossible without an eclipse, which led to him thinking about the recent lunar cycle. The next full moon was a little over a week away; should they look for recent werewolf sightings, or would Emma be hunting down a werewolf at this time next week? His eyes started to burn, a clear sign that he needed to stop reading and take a nap, and he pressed his fingers against his eyes as he stumbled into the bathroom. He’d made the decision to splash some water on his face and then go pass out, and he could pick up the research when he woke up. He walked into the bathroom practically blind and managed to turn the water on, and he braced one hand against the sink while using the other to splash some water on his face.

After he dried his face off with the bottom of his tee shirt, he quickly looked around the bathroom. The toilet lid was down, and there was a stack of money on the top of the toilet tank. Under the stack of what had to a lot of money, was a piece of paper. He grabbed the paper with two fingers and slid it out from under the hefty stack held together with three rubberbands, and he could see quickly scrawled writing. It had to be from Emma, but there definitely wasn’t any paper or pens in the bathroom. She must have written the note beforehand and planned on leaving it, and he lifted it up to see it better. It was scrawled messily, in a hurry, and the small print covered the index card it had been written on.

You’re a nice guy so you probably won’t even mention a payment, so this is for you and your brother. I probably won’t have time to bring the dagger back. Hope this helps fill that void. (Don’t worry, the money itself is completely legal and safe to spend.) It’s not like I can take it where I’m going. Save the world and go buy yourself something pretty. Buy some chocolate in my memory. Thanks, Sam.

As soon as the hunt was over, Emma collapsed onto her bed with a pained groan. Normally after a hunt, she’d drive as far as she could before needing to collapse somewhere. Unless she was actively bleeding. Then she’d usually patch herself up first before taking off, but she rarely just dropped into sleep directly after a hunt. The problem? She had stumbled out of the crumbling house and walked smack into the middle of a storm, and she had actually stopped in front of the house to wonder if it was some kind of biblical storm. The thing had come out of nowhere; the sky had been a beautiful blue when she first arrived at the isolated haunted house, isolated now that the former owners were all dead and buried, but lightning had streaked across the dark sky as she stumbled out into the heated air while thunder had caused the air around her to shake. She had made the run to her bus nearly blind, and she had known that driving would be impossible. So she had stripped out of her wet clothes, pulled on a single dry tee shirt, and let her aching body fall onto her bed.

Sleep claimed her instantly. As her muscles slowly tightened into knots and bruises bloomed across her skin, she fell into a deep sleep that left her completely deaf to the storm that was still raging. Darkness shifted into watercolors, looming brown structures that warped the inside of the house that she had just spent hours running inside of while being chased by a very pissed off ghost, but her body never moved as she dreamed. Her dream self stopped running at the sight of a bright light, and her body on the mattress tensed and rolled until she was flat on her back. A voice came from behind her to whisper sweetly in her ear, and the light in front of her was so bright that she was blind to anything else. As the light grew brighter and the voice turned into a roar, her body shifted restlessly on top of her mattress and her dream self said a single word as that light drowned the world. Emma exhaled that same word before finally falling still, and the absence of the voice left her ears ringing and the light faded as it burrowed under her skin. Bright and sharp and gold and burning.

Dean tapped the phone in his hand against the steering wheel, because he had just talked to Bobby, and he debated over what he was going to do. He still had a few hours before reaching Chicago, Crowley had fucked off to who-cares, and he’d had too much time to think while driving alone. They were getting closer to the end, and he could feel it. Knew that it wouldn’t be long before it was all over, however it played out, but his thoughts had strayed. To before the current mission and back about a month. Before Gabriel was killed, before Adam, the whore of Babylon, and even before his and Sam’s unplanned trip to Heaven. The night before getting shot in their motel room, they bumped into another hunter. Emma Motley. He had thought about her on this too quiet ride, not for the first time since the night they met, and he remembered every moment of that meeting. Before he could talk himself out of it, he punched in the number that Bobby had just given him and brought the phone up to his ear.

“Emma Motley, at your service! How can I help?” She sounded chipper for a call at two in the morning. She sounded especially chipper for someone getting ready to punch their ticket.

“It’s Dean. Dean Winchester?” His tongue suddenly felt too thick, his name had basically tripped out of his mouth, and he would have knocked his head against something if he wasn’t driving.

“Hey, Deano! How’s it going?” Emma asked easily. So he hadn’t been imagining that, she really had been carefree about everything. Had talked about her impending death and the Apocalypse like it was just a simple fact of life.

“The world’s ending, kid. How do y’think it’s going?” He hadn’t been able to stop himself from snapping the words out, and he didn’t exactly regret the hard tone but hadn’t meant to come off like a dick. Not for this conversation.

“Shit, the world’s ending? Maybe I can sell my soul to stop it. Oh, wait.” There was the sound of a quiet snap, and he could picture her making an exaggerated aw-shucks kind of face to go along with that quiet snap. Despite everything, he heard himself laugh just a little.

“You’re a smartass, you know that?” he asked her.

“So I’ve been told,” she answered with a quiet laugh of her own. “Alright, why’re you calling me? Because I’ve only got a few days left, and that’s not really enough time to help with anything.”

“Would you have helped us? If you weren’t dying?” Dean asked as he got a little more comfortable. He’d been tense at the start of the conversation, but Emma really was exactly as he remembered. Kinda light.

“Thought about helping you anyway, when Bobby told me what was happening. You guys got enough to worry about though, and I didn’t want to drag my problems along with me. Now, as much as I would love to talk to help pass the time while driving across the country, I know this isn’t a social call. Tell me why you called, Dean.” Her tone was soft, even though she was clearly giving an order and no longer just asking, and his fingers drummed against the steering wheel as he decided that just laying it out might be the best idea.

“Straight up honesty?” he asked instead. The question caused her to laugh, loud and carefree, and he couldn’t remember laughing like that in the last days leading up to his trip downstairs.

“Straight up, always,” she answered after she finished laughing.

“Do you know how demons are made?” He was tense again, holding onto the wheel a little too tight, and he forced himself to relax some. Now wasn’t the time to get himself all worked up.

“I’m assuming in Hell. You gonna give me some Hell survival tips?” There wasn’t any kind of shift in her tone, but he thought she might have been tense too. A little on edge while they talked about what was waiting for her.

“All demons start with a deal.” There was the sound of quiet muffled cursing, like she had turned her head away, and he waited a beat before continuing. “Not every soul in Hell turns to smoke, just the dealmakers.”

“I knew it was a possibility. Any way of putting that off?” she asked. He lasted thirty years, and he didn’t know how long she would make it before giving in.

“When the demons tell you that you can make it stop, tell them no. When you forget everything else, keep saying no.” It was the only advice he had, because there wasn’t going to be an out for her. She’d be in Hell until she turned to smoke, and even then there was no guarantee that she’d be able to crawl topside.

“Yeah, I think I can do that.” Her voice was quieter now, a little thick, and maybe this had been a bad idea. Why the fuck had he called her? Just to tell her something that she’d find out for herself soon enough? “Why are you telling me this now? What changed?”

“I walked into a motel room and found my brother cuddling with twenty thousand dollars. You rob a bank or something?” he asked. He could hear Emma laughing again, another carefree sound, and it helped him to relax some.

“Or something. I didn’t lie in the note. The money is safe to spend, all legal,” she rushed out. That pinged the suspicion radar, and his thumb tapped against the wheel as he decided on whether or not to ask. In the end, he didn’t see the harm in just asking a question.

“That something with the money, that got anything to do with you and Bobby falling out?” Bobby mostly refused to talk about her, but it was clear in the older hunter’s voice when he did talk about her that she was someone he cared about. They even still talked regularly, even though Bobby said they hadn’t seen each other in eight years.

“We didn’t have a falling out. We had a disagreement over my life choices, which may or may not have something to do with the money.” Before he could try to question her more to find out just how she could get her hands on that kind of cash, she laughed and picked up talking again. “How I made the money isn’t important, let me keep some sins to myself. The important thing is, it’s safe to spend and all yours.”

“Why give it to us?” he asked her. He’d asked Sam the same thing, but he had just shrugged. He just couldn’t get over the image of walking into that little motel room to see Sam fast asleep, clutching a fat stack of money. He’d had to shake Sam awake to get an answer, and he’d had to read Emma’s note a few times before believing it was real.

“Why not? Which reminds me, let Bobby know that I stashed some cash and primo liquor in his bedroom. Under the floorboards at the head of the bed. Along with some books that I borrowed forever ago,” she said quickly. Bobby had explicitly said they hadn’t seen each other since he learned about her deal, eight years ago, so how had she hidden stuff in his house? In his bedroom?

“When’d you do that? How?” They had been in and out of Bobby’s house for years now, and Bobby had never mentioned a break-in of any kind.

“Off and on, for about three years? After we started talking again. I don’t think either of us were ready for a face-to-face, so I’ve just let myself in when he wasn’t around. I lived with him for a year and dropped in all the time between hunts, y’know, before. You’ll tell him for me?” Emma asked again. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t told him herself since they did still talk, but he thought he might know. She was probably trying to avoid having her own chick flick moment.

“Yeah, I’ll tell him. No problem,” he promised. He could do that much, especially if it would help Bobby. (Assuming they survived this.) It felt like the conversation was ending, and he was surprised that he wanted to keep talking. Sam had mentioned that talking to her was easy, and it was. It was too bad they hadn’t had the chance to really get to know her.

“Alright, Deano, I’ve got one question for you. Ready?” Her tone sounded lighter, but he sat up a little straighter anyway.

“Hit me,” he answered automatically.

“What’s the coolest monster you’ve ever ganked?” The question caught him so off-guard that he started laughing, so much so that he had to use his knee to hold the wheel steady as he reached up to wipe under his eyes.

He settled into his seat as he started talking, and the drive went a little faster after that. They talked about their more outrageous cases, and he was surprised to hear that she had faced off against more than just the usual. He thought him and Sam were the only ones with luck that bad, and she had just laughed when he told her that. They stayed away from the heavier topics, didn’t talk about Hell or the Apocalypse, and it was easy. They talked and they laughed, and Dean was shocked when he saw the sun rising because it hadn’t felt like several hours had passed. He was nearly in Chicago now, and he wondered what Emma would say if he told her that he was on his way to meet Death. He didn’t tell her, there was no point in it, but he had a feeling that her response would be something that would make him laugh.

“Alright, Ems, I got shit to handle,” he said as the sun started to blind him a little.

“That’s some really gross imagery, dude. Pick your words a little more carefully,” she laughed. He could hear the sounds of traffic on the other end of the phone, but he had no idea where she was. “You do have the right idea though.”

“I always do,” he joked.

“Hey, Dean?” She sounded a little more serious now, and he slowed down the fast pace he had been maintaining for the past few hours.

“Yeah, Emma?” he asked when she stayed quiet.

“Thanks for the call. I appreciate it.” Her voice was quiet and small, and he thought about lifting her out of the grave. She wasn’t uncommonly small or anything like that, but she had seemed small standing in front of him. Especially in her baggy clothes and covered in dirt.

“Don’t get sappy on me now.” The words sounded weak even to him, but Emma still laughed.

“Go save the world, Winchester. I’m gonna go conquer Hell,” she said while still laughing. He knew he wouldn’t talk to her again before she died, there were too many other things that had to be done, but he had liked talking to her. When was the last time he liked talking to anyone?

“Bye, Emma.”

“Goodbye, Dean.”

The call cut off as soon as she said the words, and he slowly lowered the phone until he could push it into a pocket. He had smiled and laughed more in the past few hours than he had in the past year combined, and he thought it was probably a good thing that Emma hadn’t offered to help them after hunters realized that the Apocalypse had started. If he’d had a chance to get to know her, he would’ve missed her. She seemed like the type of person that was easy to get attached to, and there was no way out of a demon deal. In a few days, Emma was going to Hell. Hopefully, the rest of the world wouldn’t follow after her.

“Hey, Bobby.” Fuck, was that her voice? Emma barely recognized the wrecked sound squeezing out of her voice box, and she coughed a bit to try and smooth the words out before slowly massaging the sides of her throat. She slumped down in the driver’s seat of her bus, clenched her eyes tightly shut, and tried to focus on the sound of Bobby breathing on the other end of the line.

“How ya holdin’ up, Em?” Bobby was trying to keep his tone light, but she could hear the worry underneath the words.

“Hallucinations are getting worse, so I’m guessing it’s almost time.” As if being summoned, the sound of a faraway howl cut through the tense air of the bus. It wouldn’t be long now, which was why she had finally stopped.

“Fun last day?” The strain in the older hunter’s voice was clear, and Emma tried to picture his face. It had been almost eight years since she’d actually seen him, phone calls just didn’t pack the same punch as a face-to-face, and she had missed Bobby. Had missed breezing into his house while calling out: Uncle, I’m home!

“Been driving, but I went to see Violet. Can you believe she’s fifteen now? She’s shot up like a weed, taller than me and our mom now, but she looks like Mom. The same hair, the same smile. You’ll check up on her, yeah?” The words poured out of her, more to give her something to focus on, and she realized that the hand holding the phone to her ear was shaking.

“’Course I will.”

He won’t, not any time soon at least. The world was getting ready to end; the Apocalypse was banging on the front door while Lucifer pilfered through the kitchen, and everyone in the know was yelling about End Times. Bobby didn’t have time to check up on some kid living a perfectly normal life, but he owed her a lie since it was her last day. There were bigger baddies out there, but Emma thought Bobby might drop a call to the Rays if the world didn’t end. A call to her sister’s adoptive parents, maybe once or twice a year, but it would be enough. Even if Bobby was lying and never checked in on her little sister, it didn’t matter. Emma didn’t expect Bobby to do her any favors after she was dead and gone. Bobby was the only other person alive that knew Violet’s name though, and she felt better holding on to the thought that Bobby would look out for the girl in her absence.

Wet eyes opened to stare at the top of the bus, and she listened to Bobby just breathing on the other end of the phone to stop herself from crying. If she concentrated hard enough, she could picture the way that Violet had looked yesterday afternoon. Her long hair was such a light brown that it looked nearly blonde in the sunlight, like their mom’s hair. It was even perfectly straight and refused to curl, also like their mom’s. Violet had been playing softball with her adopted sister, Sasha. The two girls were the same age, just as close as any other siblings and proving that family wasn’t all about blood, and both girls had looked so vibrant and alive. In the end, that was all Emma cared about.

“Where are you?” Bobby’s voice popped her back into the present, and she leaned up in her seat to look out the bus window next to her. She told Bobby what road she was on and the mile marker she was next to, and she was sure that he knew exactly where she was. “That’s only a half hour away from here. Just come on to the house, Emma.”

“There’s only ten minutes to midnight. It’s a deserted stretch of road, and I think I’ll take a little walk in the woods. Out of sight, just in case someone drives by,” she decided. She had never intended on going to Bobby’s house, because she wasn’t going to bring a hellhound along with her. She wouldn’t do that to Bobby, but she had wanted to be close.

“You can hold ‘em off long enough to get here.” She probably could. She had plenty of herbs on the bus, chalk and paint, and she was sure that she could hold the hellhounds off long enough to get herself to Bobby’s house.

“I’m not going to do that. My time is up, and I’m not going to put it off,” she told him. She leaned up against the steering wheel so that she wouldn’t be able to see her reflection in the side mirrors, and she swallowed down the lump building in her throat. “If I attempt to go back on the deal, they could kill Violet. Maybe Sasha too, I’m not sure. There’s no way I’m going to do anything that could cause either of those girls to die, and don’t even think about giving me that way-it’s-supposed-to-be speech. They’re normal kids, and they’re going to live normal lives.”

“Alright, Em, I’m hearin’ ya. Just wish there was some other way,” Bobby said with a tired sigh.

“Another way for a hunter is just letting some other baddie get in the killing swing. At least I got to choose how I go,” she tried to joke. Bobby huffed, which was close enough to a laugh in her current situation, and she looked out at the dark road in front of her.

“Emma,” Bobby started quietly. She could only imagine what he wanted to say, and she was already trying not to cry.

“I know you’re busy, with the end of the world and everything, but do you think you could come bury me? We both know I’m not coming back as a spirit, so I think we can skip the burning. You can even make it a shallow grave, here in the woods,” she said quickly. A proper hunter’s farewell took time, and that was something that Bobby was short on.

“I’m not going to bury you in the middle of the woods, Emma. I’m going to bring you home.” Bobby’s tone was bordering on harsh, and her tears felt hot against her cheeks as she smiled.

“Didn’t know I could still call it that,” she roughed out. She’d had homes before; the small house where she had grown up and then the lovely house where Violet had been welcomed into the family, and her bus became her traveling home over the years. Bobby’s house had been home, even after she stopped living there fulltime.

“Emma, that stuff I said, I didn’t—”

“You meant every word, and you were right,” she quickly cut off. That fight was still clear in her mind, Bobby’s voice filling the house and the hot burn of shame in her throat, and she’d done a lot of growing up in the years since that day. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things that my dead would never forgive, and I’ve more than earned my spot in Hell. I’m sorry, Bobby, for letting you down. I should have done better, been better.”

“Everything you did, you did to save people. I’m proud of you for that. Hear me, girl? I’m damn proud of you.” Bobby’s voice was thick, and Emma was crying outright now. With sobs rattling in her chest and her nose starting to run. She’d had ten years and known what was coming, and she had still found a way to waste the time. She should have apologized sooner, tried harder to mend fences, before now. Before the end.

“Thank you, Bobby, for everything. I don’t think I ever said it before, so what better time to say it? Thank you.” She snapped the phone shut before he could reply and drew in a shuddering breath.

Emma kept the phone clutched in her hand as she kicked her hightops off into the floorboard, used one hand to peel her socks off and stuff them into the shoes, and she slowly stood up to look behind her. There was a small couch behind the installed passenger seat, and she shook off her old green jacket and folded it before laying it on the center of the single cushion with more reverence than a bundle of fabric bought in a secondhand store had ever been handled. Then she turned her back on the old jacket and used the backs of her hands to wipe harshly at her cheeks. Behind the driver’s seat, there was a small dinette with open trunks sitting on the bench seats settled on either side of the small table. The furthest trunk was a mixture of weapons and lore books, and she reached over to slam the lid shut and secure the lock.

The second trunk, on the bench directly behind the driver’s seat, she kept open as she dropped her phone onto the books at the top of the trunk. No, not books. Her journals. She dropped the phone on top of the first journal she had kept, right next to the note she had left for Bobby because she assumed he would be the one to take her bus like they had lightly talked around over the years. Her keys were dropped onto the driver’s seat before reaching up, and she carefully pulled off her necklace. The gold chain and pendant were old, a gift from her mother when she was eight, and she held the necklace up so that she could watch the St. Christopher medallion sway for a moment. Her mother had worked at St. Christopher, a small hospital in their hometown of Fortune, and she had told Emma that he was the saint who protected travelers. Emma was done traveling now, so she grabbed her childhood jewelry box from the open trunk and carefully lifted the lid. She placed the necklace inside, grabbed some stationery from the trunk and an old slightly bent pen to quickly scribble a note, and she tucked the note under the length of chain. The iron ring on her right middle finger took some wiggling, but she eventually managed to drop it into the jewelry box as well.

That was her, all stripped down and ready for the final show.

The air was cool as she popped the door open and stepped outside, and she took in a deep breath as she closed the unlocked door behind her. South Dakota had been a change from California, but it had still been home. She didn’t mind dying here. She reached up and back so that she could pull on the tie holding her hair up, and she let out a quiet relieved sigh as her hair fell down. She might only be moments away from being torn to shreds, but she wasn’t going to die with a headache because she left her hair up. There was faint moonlight shining as she tipped her face up, and she could smell trees and new blooming flowers as she took a moment to just breathe. Then she rolled out the tension in her shoulders and started walking forward.

Her bare feet touched against the cool and wet grass, and she felt herself smiling at the feeling. She broke through the tree line in a few steps, and her arm stretched out so that her fingertips could brush against the rough bark of the trees and sometimes dipped down to feel soft petals. When she was a little girl, she wanted to be a gardener. Her mother had fully supported her, even after Emma got older and still wanted to work with plants. She’d just finished her last year of high school when her mother died, and she hadn’t fully decided what she had wanted to do with her life. Landscaping, possibly. She’d dreamed of owning a flower shop, only a couple dozen times. She never got the chance to do any of that, but she was at least going to die surrounded by nature. That was something, wasn’t it?

“Emma! You’re going to get dirty!”

How many times had her mother yelled at her for playing in the dirt? More specifically, how many times had she been yelled at for tracking dirt into the house and ruining her clothes? She stopped walking after reaching a small somewhat clearing, she didn’t want Bobby to have to trek a mile to find her, and her head fell forwards so that she could look down. Grass nearly covered her feet, and she rocked back on her heels to get a quick look at her toes. Little bit of dirt. Probably just enough to leave a few footprints against tiles. The sound of a not-so-distant howl made her choke out a laugh that sounded like a sob, and she kept her eyes locked on her toes peeking out of the grass. Violet had been wearing a red baseball bat, and she and Sasha had their jersey numbers painted on their cheeks. They had been laughing in the sunshine, and Violet really did look like their mother when she smiled. Another howl, and it wouldn’t be long now.

Definitely a nice place to die.

“After midnight,” Dean said as he joined Sam at Bobby’s kitchen table. Sam looked away from the book he’d been reading and across the table, and Dean’s face twisted like he was trying not to smile.

“So?” he asked when Dean just kept staring at him.

“It’s your birthday,” Dean said slowly.

“So?” he asked again. They were preparing to go against Lucifer, so there was a chance that he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy being twenty-seven. Dean looked like he was gearing up for some kind of speech, but he was interrupted by Bobby walking into the kitchen and stopping next to the table. Bobby usually didn’t hesitate before speaking, but he was just staring down at the table. It also, possibly, looked like he’d been crying. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were a little ruddy, and Sam didn’t think it was from drinking.

“What happened?” Dean asked with a quiet sigh.

“Emma’s about thirty minutes out.” Bobby’s voice was quiet, reddened eyes a little vacant, and Sam remembered the hunter smiling at him inside a packed bar. Remembered her wide grin inside of a small motel room. It’d be nice to see her again and— “I’m gonna go get the body.”

“It was today?” Sam asked and was a little surprised when Bobby turned to meet his eyes.

“She called, told me where she was. I’m gonna go get her, bury her here,” Bobby said slowly. Sam thought he looked like he was in shock, but he had never seen Bobby in shock so it was hard to tell for sure. “Can one of you drive her bus back?”

“Yeah, I’ll drive it,” Sam decided when Dean remained quiet.

“I’ll get started on the grave,” Dean added after a beat. Sam and Bobby both turned to look at him, but Dean just looked calmly up at Bobby.

“Behind the garden.” Bobby knocked his knuckles against the top of the table and the smiled for about a half second. “Emma planted the garden. Said buying herbs was a waste of time and money when we could just grow ‘em. Planted the beans and tomatoes just because I told her I liked ‘em one time. Girl had a green thumb and could grow anything.”

“Behind the garden, you got it,” Dean said quietly.

“I’ll go get the shovel, mark the spot. Sam?” Bobby was looking down at him now, and Sam quickly nodded and sat up straighter in his chair.

“I’ll meet you at the truck,” Sam promised. Bobby dipped his head and then walked out of the kitchen, and Sam looked across the table at Dean. He was surprised to see his brother looking down at the table with his expression twisted, almost like he was upset at the news of a stranger dying. “Dean? You okay?”

“I talked to her,” Dean said while looking at the table.

“Yeah, we both did. In the cemetery.” He hadn’t thought of Emma since that day at the motel room, there hadn’t been time to think of anything except for the end of the world, but he could still remember the night that they properly met clearly. Remember how easily Emma had smiled and talked with them.

“No, uh, when I was driving to Chicago. I got her number from Bobby and called her,” Dean clarified. Sam leaned back in his chair again, because Dean hadn’t mentioned talking to anyone while he was gone. Just told them about meeting Death.

“Why?” he asked after a moment. Dean slumped back in his chair and looked across the table to meet his eyes, and Sam raised a brow when Dean just continued to stare at him.

“I don’t know, man. To give her some Hell survival tips, to thank her for the stack of money she left in the bathroom.” Dean pushed out a quiet laugh and drummed his fingers against the table, but Sam still felt confused. Dean never talked about Hell, with anyone, but he must have realized that Emma only had a few days left. She wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone or to hound him. “We kept talking, about old hunts, and it was easy. She was nice.”

“Yeah, I think Bobby really cared about her,” Sam said quietly. Dean nodded and then pushed up to his feet, and Sam followed up after him. They didn’t really have time to run any extra errands, but he didn’t like the thought of Emma rotting in the middle of the woods. She deserved something a little better, and they could take some time to bury her.

Sam and Dean parted ways outside; Dean moved towards the back of the house, where the garden was, while Sam walked to the front of the house where Bobby kept his truck parked. Bobby was already sitting inside, waiting on him, and Sam slid into the passenger side. Bobby didn’t say anything as the truck started up or as the truck pulled away from the house, and Sam forced himself to relax in his seat and looked out the window as Bobby drove. It was pitch dark outside, nothing to see except dark trees, and he thought back to that night in the cemetery. Emma had laughed and smiled, had joked with Dean and grinned up at him, and she hadn’t batted an eye after realizing who they were. There hadn’t been time to get to know her, but Sam thought she was a good person. It was obvious that Bobby was going to mourn for her despite calling her complicated, and even Dean had admitted to just simply talking to her. That day in the motel room, she had asked him how he was. Nothing about the end of the world. Just him.

“Emma, she seemed like a sweet girl,” Sam said into the quiet of the truck. Bobby huffed out a rough sound that might have been a laugh, but it looked like he was more present at least.

“Then you didn’t really know Emma.” Bobby’s tone was fond and mournful as he pulled off onto the side of the road, right in front of a large bus that looked vaguely familiar, and he cut the lights and switched the truck off. Sam reached into the floorboard for the large sheet next to his left foot that he had been ignoring and gathered the thick material into his arms, and the two of them slipped out of the truck.

“I didn’t really talk to her much, but she seemed like a good person,” Sam said once they had walked past the treeline. Two meetings, maybe an hour altogether, but he had liked her.

“Emma was all heart, the damned fool,” Bobby grunted as they walked. Something other than the usual idjit, and Sam hadn’t heard Bobby sound like this since Dean had—left.

They didn’t have to go far before Sam could see the grooves in the dirt, from where grass had been ripped up, and he knew that Bobby had seen the trail too when the older hunter huffed and adjusted to follow the trail. The marks were from hellhounds, he was sure of that, and there was no other evidence of someone else running through the woods. That meant Emma hadn’t run from the hellhounds. The trail led a little deeper into the woods, and Sam and Bobby were quiet as they walked. It didn’t take them long to find Emma, because she hadn’t walked too deep into the woods. Hadn’t strayed far from the beaten path. He could see the faint shape of her body in the darkness as they stepped into a very small clearing, she was laid out on her back, but his steps didn’t falter even when Bobby slowed some.

They stopped on either side of her body, and Sam had to take a steadying breath. For a moment, all he could see was Dean lying dead in front of him with his body ripped to shreds. This wasn’t Dean though. This was Emma Motley, a hunter who had traded her soul for her little sister’s life. So, not Dean but definitely cut from the same cloth. She was barefoot, but a quick scan of the area didn’t reveal any discarded shoes. Her jeans were ripped and streaked with blood. The dark tee she was wearing had been completely torn open, and Sam really didn’t like seeing her insides on the outside. Her dark hair was haloed around her head, and her eyes were open to stare unseeing up at the dark sky. He couldn’t see the color now, wasn’t sure he could recall ever noticing her eye color, and Sam knelt down to that he could close her eyes without checking for the color. It didn’t matter. Brown, blue, green. It didn’t matter, because Emma was gone now.

“Let’s wrap ‘er up.” Bobby’s voice was quiet, a rough and painful sound in the quiet darkness, and Sam nodded to agree without saying anything. They worked together to get the sheet wrapped around her body, tied it carefully to make sure it wouldn’t come open, and Sam slowly lifted the body. It hadn’t been long since she had died, less than an hour, so the body still curved in his arms.

Sam was careful as he placed the body in the back of Bobby’s truck, and he could feel his heart beating in his throat as his hand pressed against the top of her head. Emma was dead, someone that he didn’t even really know, so why did he feel like he had lost someone? He pulled back and took a step away from the truck, and he felt himself nodding as Bobby told him that the bus keys would be waiting on the bus. He turned to walk away, heard the creak of Bobby opening the driver door of his truck, and he stopped on the passenger side of the bus. It looked like a school bus that had been painted, dark blue, and he took a moment to just blink at the obviously modified door. Because that wasn’t the typical school bus door, that slid on a track. It opened like an RV door, and there was light on inside the bus because he could see a couple of steps. He stepped up, pulled the door closed behind him, and then finished climbing up into the bus.

“Wow,” slipped out as he looked down the bus. It was bright and clearly lived in, and it looked like an expanded RV. There was a little counter space, a sink next to a small fridge, a small couch behind the passenger’s seat and across from the small dinette behind the driver’s seat, and a bed at the very back behind a pushed aside curtain.

Sam found the keys on the driver’s seat and scooped them up before sitting down, and he had to reach down to adjust the seat and let it back to give his legs room to fit under the wheel. He found an old pair of chucks in the floorboard and picked them up after dropping the keys onto his lap, and he spent a few moments cradling the slightly dirty flower-embroidered vintage black chucks in his hands. He hadn’t thought to look down that night, but had she been wearing these that night in the bar? When they knocked into each other in the crowded bar, and she took the time to thank him from stopping her fall? There were socks stuffed into the shoes as well, so she must have chosen to die barefoot. Did she want to feel the grass under her feet before dying? He hoped that maybe, just maybe, she’d felt a small measure of peace before dying.

He twisted around to drop the chucks onto the bench seat behind the driver’s seat, and he noticed the large open trunk that took up most of the bench seat. It was impossible not to notice it. It looked more like an old army footlocker, cleaned up and painted the same dark blue as the bus, and it was covered in stickers and drawings in what looked like sharpie. Mostly postcards from the different states and flowers, but he noticed the symbols and sigils seamlessly mixed in with everything else decorating the open footlocker. On the opposite bench seat, there was a closed dark wooden chest. Closed and locked, with a heavy duty combination lock. It looked handmade, large enough that it hung over the end of the bench seat a little, with a round top lid. Nailed to the lid were more sigils, some type of metal, and Sam looked away from it and back at the open footlocker. He could see a cell phone on top of an old journal, and there was an envelope with Bobby’s name on it next to the small phone. Next to the small stack of books, there was a small open box. Going by the size and hand painted flowers against the old white paint, he thought it might be a little girl’s jewelry box. Something Emma might have kept from her childhood. Since it was open, he could see a painted message that had faded with time.

In nature
Nothing exists alone
Love Always, Mom

Emma had been able to keep things from her life before she became a hunter, and Sam felt a heavy weight in his chest as he touched the edges of the old wood. The only thing he could see was a silver ring and gold necklace, with a piece of folded paper under the two pieces of jewelry. It was clear there was more in the box, the paper was scrunched in some places and uneven, and he picked up the ring first. It was small, iron instead of silver, and heavy despite the small size. Inside the band, there was a small inscription that he had to squint to read. VALHALLA I AM COMING. Zeppelin? Dean would certainly improve. He returned the ring and carefully lifted the necklace by the thin chain. He held the necklace up to watch the pendant swing, and he thought he could remember seeing a thin chain around Emma’s neck. After looking a little closer, he recognized the pendant and felt his brows pulling down as he turned to look at the paper that had been sitting under the necklace and ring.

My wandering days are over, so this is yours now. Safe travels.

Emma had left it for whoever found it, and Sam looked at the St. Christopher pendant just long enough to note the few marks of age before laying it back down inside the box. He covered the necklace and ring with the note, along with the other assorted jewelry that he could see, and he moved the phone into the jewelry box as well before closing the lid. His fingers drifted across the envelope with Bobby’s name, before he decided to pick it up and tuck it into his jacket pocket. He’d give it to Bobby back at the house. His fingertips touched against the old leather of the journal the envelope had been sitting on, a light cream brown color, and the whole thing was tied together with dark pink shoestrings. There wasn’t time for this, but he lifted the journal out of the footlocker anyway. Colorful slips of paper stuck out from all sides, and he thought he could see bits of newspaper pages pressed between some of the pages. A hunter’s journal, soft and bright. Rough fingers deftly undid the laces, flipped open the front cover, and he quickly read the single line on the first page.

Emma Motley’s Guide To Baddies & Exorcism 101

Sam laughed. It was wrong, because Emma was dead and was now suffering in Hell, but he couldn’t help it. Not for the first time, he wished they had met the other hunter sooner. That her and Bobby had repaired their relationship so that Bobby would have introduced them before the end, because he would’ve liked to have known her. That conversation in the motel room seemed like a dream now, he’d been running on no sleep for days at the time and she had clearly been wearing herself thin on hunts, and he wished they had talked for a little longer. He looked back down at the journal and rubbed a thumb over the only words on the front page before carefully tying it closed again. He placed the journal back into the footlocker, closed the lid, and knocked his knuckles against the top as he took in a slow breath. He grabbed the keys from his lap, noted the Welcome to Vegas and large sunflower keychains, and started the bus up. Bobby had clearly been waiting on him, surprisingly patiently, and Sam pulled onto the road behind him. His time-out to learn a little more about Emma Motley was over now.

There were more pressing things to worry about than a hunter who had said a final farewell, like the looming Apocalypse.