"We're going to have to fight our way through to the portal."

Sam nodded grimly. The exit from Purgatory glowed enticingly just up the slope from where the Winchesters hid behind a tumble of rocks and a few stunted pine trees, but the way was blocked by a businessman and woman, looking utterly out of place in their immaculate black suits. Leviathan. Thanks to the monsters' hive mind, as soon as the hunters broke cover every Bigmouth in Purgatory would rush to defend the portal. "Cas, if you were planning on making an appearance, now would be a good time," he said dryly, offering up a prayer with no real expectation of a response.

"He'd better get his feathered butt up here," Dean growled. Sam glanced over, seeing the familiar, stubborn set to his brother's jaw, and sure enough, Dean went on, "I'm not leaving without him."

"I am here, Dean." With a muted rustle of feathers, the angel joined them, crouching behind a boulder and peering up the hill at the blue-white glow of the portal.

"Cas. Glad you could make it." Dean gestured to Emma, who scrambled closer. "All right, let's get this show on the road. Ready, Candy Crush?"

The teen nodded, handing over her weapon, which Dean slid into his belt. Sam heard his brother begin the incantation, but his attention quickly shifted to Castiel as the angel drew his sword and murmured, "Incoming."

A moment later Sam's ears picked up the high-pitched whine of the twin Leviathan meteors streaking over their heads. They appeared in the cloudy sky, trailing black smoke and shooting toward the hilltop. The ground shook as they impacted, columns of tarry goo rising up and taking shape. Sam and Cas leapt to their feet and ran to meet them, cutting them down even before they finished taking shape.

The pair guarding the portal hurtled down the hillside to join the fight. The female launched herself at Sam, striking him hard enough to knock the air from his lungs and, worse, his machete from his hand. The Leviathan grabbed him, its human-looking face rolling back to reveal a gaping maw lined with fangs and twin tongues that wriggled less than an inch from Sam's face. Then Dean was there, shoving the monster back and hacking her head from her shoulders with his crude Purgatory-forged blade.

There was no time for Sam to process his close call.

"Go!" Castiel shouted as he kicked the severed head of the male Leviathan down the hill. That high, keening whine sounded again and more comets appeared in the sky.

"Where's Emma?"

"I've got her!" Dean pushed Sam toward the light. "Come on!" he bellowed to Castiel.

The ground shook, loose stones dislodging and rolling down the hillside as the Leviathans struck. Sam squinted against the brilliant, gaslight glow of the portal, an unearthly wind kicking up as he approached, whipping his hair back from his face. He paused at the edge, looking back to see Dean just a step or two behind him. His brother had turned back as well and was reaching for Castiel. For a long moment the angel stood there, eyes darting between the humans and the approaching Leviathan. Finally, he clasped Dean's hand.

"I got you! Hold on!"

Sam shut his eyes and shouldered his way through the rift. Behind him, he could hear Castiel calling Dean's name.

"Hold on!" he heard his brother shout again, a note of pleading in his gruff baritone, and then the familiar gravel of the angel's voice answered.

"Go!"

Dean tumbled through the portal and the light winked out. "Sam!" he yelled, frantic.

"I'm here." Sam reached out in the sudden blackness, fingers closing on the sleeve of Dean's jacket. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the scent of evergreens, the softness of pine needles under his body, the dim outline of tree trunks towering all around as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Dean groaned and pushed Sam's hand away, gingerly drawing back the fabric from his forearm. A light radiated, shifting restlessly beneath his skin. Emma's soul, Sam realized.

"I couldn't hold him." Dean's voice was raw. "It was like he just gave up and let go."


"It wasn't your fault," Sam tried, once again, to break through his brother's silent self-recriminations, but Dean just closed his eyes and leaned back, pretending to sleep. Or maybe, Sam thought, he really had dozed off, giving in to exhaustion after hours on the road.

They'd emerged from Purgatory in the backwoods of Maine, and now were making the long drive across the country, back to Rufus Turner's cabin in Montana, at top speed. It seemed that Emma's soul was impatient to be reunited with her body.


"I'm sorry, Dean. It's not going to be pretty." Sam grimaced involuntarily as Dean opened the door to the cellar and the smell of putrefaction wafted up from the small, enclosed space below.

"You think?" His brother's sarcasm cut off in a hiss of pain. Dean's forearm was swollen, the light beneath the skin pulsing, making the distended flesh shift and contort grotesquely.

It looked, Sam thought, as if it hurt like hell. "Dude, you're about to pop," he told Dean, covering his sympathy-and his discomfort with the entire situation-with a smirk. Brotherly love. "Of all the weird stuff we've been through, this has got to be the weirdest... Watching you give birth."

"Oh, you're hilarious." Dean's boots clumped hollowly on the rickety wooden steps.

Sam followed Dean into the cellar, forcing himself to look dispassionately at Emma's corpse slumped over on the blue tarp, looking small and pathetic. Days had passed and the body had started to decompose. Flies buzzed and a beetle scuttled away across the floor as Dean stepped closer.

"Anima," Dean chanted, drawing a knife across the tight-stretched skin of his forearm. It split beneath the blade with a trickle of blood and a thick, bright, molten-looking strand of light oozed from the wound. "Corpori," Dean went on, the strain in his voice betraying just how much the ritual must hurt. The light-Emma's soul-continued to slide down Dean's arm and splash onto her corpse. "Fuerit corpus... Totem resurgent!"

Staring down at the motionless, pitiful remains of his niece, Sam's mind flashed back to the long moments after he'd killed her, the wave of guilt and horror, the howl of grief and madness rising up in his chest before he'd been yanked away to Purgatory, riding the slipstream of Emma's soul. Several tortured seconds ticked by as he stood there in growing dread. What if the ritual to bring her back to life failed to work?

Dean's attention shifted from the body to the foot of the stairs. "Wow. That was fast," he breathed.

Sam turned to see Emma standing there, whole and alive and dressed in her usual faded jeans, t-shirt, and one of Dean's old button-up shirts. Sam bent down and surreptitiously pulled the tarp over the teenager's corpse, sparing Emma the sight of it as she hurled herself at Dean, her usual reticence forgotten in the excitement.

"Dad!"

"Emma!" The lines of grief and fatigue etching Dean's face relaxed into a grin as he picked her up and spun her around, a grin his brother couldn't help but echo even as he wrapped the tarp around the grisly remnants of their adventure and contemplated the unwelcome task of digging a grave. But none of that really mattered now, Sam thought. He had his family back.


"What's the word, Sammy?" Dean asked sharply when Sam stepped in off the cabin's front porch. "You get in touch with Kevin?"

It had taken a while, Sam thought, for him to start to feel normal again. To sleep, to eat, to scrub off the grime of Purgatory. Finally, he'd felt halfway human again, normal enough to call Amelia. Sam shook his head at his brother's query. "No," he said now, and would have left it at that, but Emma and Dean were both looking at him with uncannily similar curious expressions. "Amelia," he said, before father or daughter could comment. Easier, he thought, to just get it over with. "Her husband, Don, was in the service in Afghanistan. Missing in action. Presumed dead," Sam recited the details. He shrugged, keeping his face expressionless with an effort. "Turns out, he's alive."


Sam dozed, woke, stared out the window of the Impala at the woods crowding either side of the rural two-lane road, the wan pre-dawn light robbing the landscape of color. The grey expanse of forest brought back unwanted memories of Purgatory. In the weeks since their return, he still hadn't shaken the place off, and his time there had been measured in days. Dean had been there for months, fighting for his life. It felt right, somehow, his brother had told him. Pure.

The lingering aftermath of Purgatory was probably why they'd spent nearly all their time since on the road in search of jobs. Cases to solve while they waited for Kevin Tran to finish translating the demon tablet. That's right, Sam thought dryly, blame it all on Purgatory. He dozed off again, lulled to sleep by the purr of the big V-8 engine, Dean in the driver's seat, Emma curled up asleep in the back.

A loud thud woke him just after sunrise.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean cursed.

The car had come to a stop. Emma sat up, murmuring sleepily. Sam shook his head, feeling groggy.

"He just came out of nowhere," Dean said helplessly.

Emma opened the car door and leapt out, running back to the body sprawled on the narrow shoulder of the road. Always eager to prove herself, the teen was calmly checking the bearded man's pulse when the brothers reached her side. "He's dead," she reported, a fact that was already painfully obvious to the adults.

"I swear, he just came out of nowhere," Dean repeated.

"Maybe you fell asleep at the wheel," Sam began, but Dean cut him off.

"No, man, I was alert. The sun was up. No way I dozed off," he insisted.

His brother had ganked hundreds of monsters without a single qualm, but the accidental killing of a civilian had clearly left Dean distraught. "Okay," Sam soothed, crouching down to examine the body more closely. "Huh," he grunted in surprise as he drew back the dead man's jacket. "You don't get a wound like that by being hit by a car."

"It looks like a werewolf went after him," Emma offered.

Sam shook his head. During her brief time in Purgatory Emma had seen monsters aplenty, but when it came to hunting, she was still inexperienced. "More like some wild animal. Are you sure he was on his feet when you hit him," he asked Dean, "and not already lying dead in the road?" No wallet, Sam noted as he patted the corpse down expertly. No ID of any kind.

"I thought he was on his feet," Dean's expression was baffled as he looked down at the gaping wound in the man's torso, "but he wouldn't get far with that. It looks like something ripped out his guts."

"Yeah, look at those claw marks," Emma said. "Maybe it was a grizzly bear?"

"Maybe. Come on." Sam didn't like the way she stared at the corpse without pity or disgust, just simple curiosity. The Amazon's influence, he thought, combined with her experiences in Purgatory. He urged his niece and brother away from the body, back toward the Impala. "Dude, he'd have been dead within an hour even if you hadn't hit him," he reassured Dean. "We'll put in an anonymous call to the police, once we reach the next town."

"I guess so. Poor bastard." Dean let himself be steered toward the passenger side of the Impala.

They all piled into the car and Sam started up the motor. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw Emma turn to look out the back window. "Don't-" he began, but she'd already whirled around, her eyes wide.

"Sam? Dad? He's gone!"


Author's note: first off, sincere thanks to 'Guest', Quindecim, Star Trail, EmilyAnnMcGarrett-Winchester, CatastrophicCarnival, Nyx Ro, RHatch89, and hopelessromantic92 for the reviews!

To Nyx Ro: I agree with you about Purgatory!

Annnnd, you probably noticed I skipped ahead a lot in this chapter. I feel like I owe you guys an explanation. Originally I was going to follow along with the events of Season 8 and integrate Emma into the story, but I just couldn't do it. It was boring-you all already know what happens-and I felt trying to cram Emma into a storyline that she had no business being in crossed the line way too far into Mary Sue territory. Finally I decided to go off on a tangent and just play around with the episodes that contribute to the story I want to tell. (For starters, you may recognize a bit of episode 16 from Season 8, 'Remember the Titans', at the end of this chapter.) I hope you'll find this approach entertaining.

Thanks again to all who have followed, favorited, and reviewed! I appreciate your support.