Emma was a monster. Normal-looking, makeup-applying, quiet Emma was a monster.
Damon remembered well what his mother had always said: "Monsters kill, so we kill them. No exceptions."
When the police officer had delivered the news along with her belongings at his father's doorstep, he'd given them his "sincere condolences". Damon wanted to tell him to shove it.
When his father thanked the officer and expressed his sadness over his "mentally-ill ex-wife", Damon had told him to shove it.
He flipped through her journal now, alone in his dorm room with only his desk light on. She had every monster indexed alphabetically, with separate sections for weapons and hunters. Out of habit, Damon turned to the L section for monsters: Leviathan, she had scribbled at the top of the page. "Black goo", "eat humans with huge mouths", "dismember body and bury pieces separately", "don't eat corn syrup" – the last one was doubly underlined. Her last sentence in the entry read: "No weaknesses, no way to"
Kill, she had meant to write. But that was when Damon guessed the Leviathan had gotten her. All that it had left behind was a fragment of her head, enough for a DNA sample; enough for the coroner to pronounce her dead. "No one could survive with that much of their skull missing," the officer had also said.
Damon took a swig from his water bottle. It was a trick he'd picked up from his mother: hide the alcohol where people wouldn't guess it. The metal made the alcohol sharper, more bitter, and Damon had grown used to it like that.
College was a waste of time. A waste of money, too. Damon could be working a real part-time job, not the shitty shifts at the pizza place, and hunt too. He could use the rest of the cash from that college fund his parents had set up so long ago. He could buy silver bullets, machetes, any and all of the weapons his mother had described. He could get an old car and learn how to fix it up to hide knives and guns and holy water.
But he wasn't. He was going to college, and you couldn't hunt if you were in college. That was why his father made him go.
Damon finished off his alcohol, and his thoughts turned back to Emma. Maybe he wasn't as restricted as he thought.
The doctor diagnosed Emma with a radial arm fracture and a couple compressed nerves. He gave her Percocet for the pain and showed her some arm exercises to do to prevent her arm from going stiff. In all, it took maybe two hours.
Sam drove her to the street closest to her dorm and parked the car. She swung the door open but he said, "Hold on a sec."
She scowled and kept the door open. "What."
"Did you really mean what you said before? Do you really wish I'd killed you?"
Emma shut her eyes and thought about it. "Look. I'm glad you didn't leave me high and dry after not killing me. But…" She sighed. "I wasn't lying, y'know, about the growing pains or the mark. I've gotten the urge to kill guys under control, but this this…it's not a fun life."
Sam was quiet for a while; Emma closed her door and stared out the window at her dorm. The light was on; her roommates were home.
"Do you want to leave here?" Sam finally asked. She turned and looked at him. "I mean, you don't have to stay. I know we couldn't look after you before, but the Leviathans are gone and we have the bunker now. You could go there."
She wasn't expecting that. Or maybe she was. "I…I'm-"
"Look, I know you don't like Dean," her uncle barreled on, "And he doesn't ever mention you, even when I do. But you're his kid, and you're family, and you have just as much right to the bunker as we do."
Sam was rambling. Emma watched him peter off. "So…yeah," he finished.
They sat there in silence. Emma didn't know how to respond. Finally she settled on: "I think I found an angel."
Damon stood in the shadow caused by the streetlamp light being cut off by a corner of the dorm that Emma lived in. He wasn't drunk enough to let himself be seen.
He watched a car – an older-model, maybe stolen, definitely the car Emma had gotten into earlier in the evening – pull up to the curb and park. The person riding shotgun opened the door, but closed it a couple minutes later.
It had to be Emma and her monster friend.
After what felt like forever to slightly-drunk Damon (but according to his watch was only fifteen minutes), Emma reopened the shotgun door and stepped out. A moment later, the driver got out too. Even with the few streetlamps illuminating the area, Damon could see his face.
He finally recognized him.
Emma and the man talked for a minute, then she walked off toward the dorm building, and he drove off in his stolen car. Damon crouched down in the shadows to hide himself as she passed. He heard her swipe her ID card and open the door.
Now only if Damon could remember who that man was.
Emma pulled Damon up from where he laid in the shadows, half asleep.
His first drunk thought was that he was dreaming.
Then he realized how cold he was.
"Why are you following me?" demanded Emma. "Why are you here?"
"I dunno why – you're a – how'd'ja-" he slurred.
Emma punched him in the gut to sober him up.
"You think I didn't notice you outside the food court? And when I got back here, you were hiding behind the corner!"
"You're a – punch – monster-"
He collapsed, unconscious.
Sam drove slowly back to the oddly-shaped building with the food court; he wanted to go faster, but he was convinced that he'd end up speeding and get pulled over. Dealing with cops outside of cases was a bad idea.
He parked the car in the same spot he had before, and walked across the street. The temperature outside had plummeted and by the time he entered the building his hands were freezing.
Sam walked into the 7-11 and wove through the aisles, stalling for time. Nobody was at the checkout counter. He blew hot air into his hands, and rubbed them on his pants.
He picked up some granola bars and poured himself a large cup of coffee, enough to keep him going till he got back to Kansas. He stopped in front of the industrial refrigerators and contemplated buying some juice.
After a couple minutes, Sam heard a door open and shut twice. He glanced toward the noise, then looked again. The lone employee had returned, and he was carrying crates into the store.
Crap.
Emma returned to her dorm room half-an-hour later and dumped her stuff on the floor. Her roommates might complain the next day but she didn't care.
Her phone buzzed loudly. She took it out and checked her messages. The screen glowed too brightly in her dark room.
"You were right," it said.
A moment later, it buzzed again:
"Keep tabs on him. Don't say anything. Don't tell Dean."