By the time they got to Bobby's, Emily had fallen asleep. Dean parked the car and opened his door, though he stayed in his seat watching her. He debated whether to wake her up or carry her into the house. He was at a loss. She looked like a little kid when she was asleep, and he felt waking her would be cruel, but he had no idea whether it was okay to carry her. Would that be crossing some line he was not aware of? Sam would know what to do but he was already disappearing into the house carrying the two suitcases from the trunk of the Continental. Bobby who already had the guitar bag slung over his back and the laptop bag on his shoulder was tugging a black and white damask patterned duffle out of the car. He noticed Dean's dilemma and chuckled.

"Tell you what, open her door, if she wakes, let her walk, if she doesn't, carry her in!"

Dean had no snarky reply to that, so he rolled his eyes and got out of the car and sauntered over to the passenger side. Emily did not wake when he opened the door so he scooped her up, and had to brace himself. She wasn't heavy, but she wasn't as light as he had thought she would be. For a brief moment, she snuggled into him, then she woke up, frowned at him and declared she could walk. Dean did not say a word as he set her on the ground. She muttered her thanks then walked to her car. The only thing left in the trunk was the box and Dean got to it first.

"I've got this," he said.

Emily looked like she was going to argue, but let him take it. She checked the passenger side and on finding both the laptop and guitar gone, preceded Dean into the house.

Once inside, she did not know where to go, and Bobby was nowhere in sight. She had only been in the house twice, and both times she had not gone beyond the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom, and Bobby had not shown her around or anything. She moved slightly to the side so Dean could go past her. He took the box to the study and placed it on the desk. Turning he found her standing stock still, her questioning eyes locked on him.

"I take it Bobby never gave you the grand tour, come on!" he bounded up the stairs and she followed him. He pointed out his and Sam's room, Bobby's, the bathroom and then as he walked into the room assigned to her, he collided with Sam who was moving things out.

"Sorry, the room ain't quite ready." Bobby said sheepishly.

"That's okay. Anything I can help with?" Emily asked.

"Not with those stitches you can't."

"I can help with the smaller pieces!"

"These are the smallest things in here!" Sam huffed under the weight of a metal trunk whose contents he didn't even want to know. He disappeared up the attic.

"Oh!" Emily hated being useless and currently having no task to perform made her feel like a dead loss.

Dean laughed as he bent to pick up the box Bobby was pointing out for him to carry. "Relax She-Hulk, you'll have plenty of things to do. We're just the muscle. When we're done moving things out and rearranging the furniture, you'll be responsible for the rest, cos I don't do decor!"

Emily did not want to laugh, as that would defeat the resolution of detachment that she had made to herself during the drive, but she could not help the smile that cracked her face. Dean was hilarious!

"Jesus, Bobby, what the hell is in here?" Dean's panted his grumbles as he left the room.

"Quit yer bitching and put yer back in it." Bobby was investigating the contents of the wardrobe.

"Maybe, I can go start dinner or something!" Emily offered.

"Go on! Just try to make a lot of noise so your brothers know you're alive down there." he answered distractedly.

"Okay!" she shot out the door.

"Let Rumsfeld in, so he can keep you company."

"Sure!"

"And keep those dressings dry!" he yelled after her.

"I know, Bobby!" she thundered downstairs already making the noise he had asked her to.

Sam returned to the room to get more things out. "Where's Emily?"

"Kitchen. Making Dinner. She offered."

"Alone?" Sam sounded horrified, like he couldn't believe Bobby could be so careless with something so precious.

"Making dinner don't need team effort!"

Sam glared at him.

"Relax, Sam. She'll be fine. She's got the ring and I asked her to make as much noise as she can." Bobby smiled. Sam and Dean being the protective brothers they were, were going to attempt to cocoon and coddle Emily. Having learnt that Emily was fiercely independent, Bobby knew she was going to hate it and was going to let them know in no uncertain terms. Living in this house was sure going to be interesting in the next days.

"Damn, this big brother gig is not easy. I wonder how Dean didn't keel over with a heart attack when I was out of his sight!" Sam grumbled. Who knew separation anxiety hit older siblings harder?

Bobby chuckled.

Whether Emily was good at following instructions, or was just adept at being loud, it was hard to tell. When she wasn't banging saucepans and spoons, she was talking to Rumsfeld or hollering a medley of songs. Damn, the girl could sing. Maybe she was just as competent with that guitar of hers. Sam and Dean looked at each other as together they moved the bed to the middle of the room.

"She sure didn't get that from dad!" they both smiled as they thought about their own nonexistent singing skills.

Nearly an hour later, they trudged downstairs.

"That smells good." Bobby complimented Emily's cooking.

"It's nothing fancy, just pot-roast!" She did not add that it was one of only five dishes she could cook really well. "So, I'll go do my room's decor! Whenever you guys are ready to eat, you can start without me." she smiled as she left.

An hour later, she still hadn't returned, so Sam was sent up to check up on her. She was asleep on top of her bed, tinny sounds coming from the earphones of her iPod, her guitar lying next to her on the bed. For a tall girl, she sure curled into a small ball. Her face was hidden by her still uncombed hair.

The room was neat, not in the extreme military precise anal neat way their father demanded and got from Sam but not Dean, who despite being daddy's good little soldier just couldn't do neat. No, this room was neat in a subtle, relaxed way. On the vanity that had belonged to Karen, sat assorted hair and skin products and accessories, not arranged in any discernible way. There were two laptops, a bunch of books, and a binder notebook on the battered reading desk that she had asked them to leave in the room. The empty guitar case was propped up against the desk. The bed was made with the blue and lilac comforter he had carried in from her car. On the nightstand stood the brown paper bag containing her medicine, an old lamp they had found in the attic, and three framed photos which drew Sam's attention. One was of a beaming couple, the height difference between the two was staggering, the woman was tiny and the man was a giant, which coming from Sam, meant the man really was big. Another picture had Emily with the same couple, so Sam concluded they were her parents. Emily towered over her mom and her dad in turn towered over Emily; they were quite the trio. In the third picture, Emily had purple streaks in her straightened out hair, an arm around the shoulder of a much shorter pink haired girl and another arm round the waist of a brown haired boy. Another boy stood to the left of the pink girl and a third boy stood next to him. All five were grinning, so carefree and young. Sam smiled fondly at the brief snapshots of his sister's life. The closet was closed but Sam imagined that she, unlike Dean, had hang and folded her clothes neatly away, but probably not as fastidiously as Sam would have. He looked at her fondly for a moment, thinking how her presence would most likely change everything. Then he stepped out the door and went back downstairs.

"She's out," he reported.

The three men had their dinner and went to the study with their beers. Bobby settled down with a book, Dean turned on the TV, and snorted as he watched Sam opening Emily's box like a child opening a Christmas present. Sam ignored his brother's derision. Their sister was currently an enigma, and something had tried to kill her, maybe this box had some answers. The sooner they figured out what was after her, the sooner she'd return to her life. From Bobby's intel, Sam had already known that Emily was moneyed, and after seeing her car, the things she carried with her in it, the quality of those things and the way she talked and carried herself, he wasn't in doubt that she was privileged, and no way would she want to give that life up. In fact, convincing her to stay so they could help her would probably be their first battle.

The stuff in the box was amazing but Sam immediately realised he needed a system. He quickly decided to use the letters as reference points for the odds and bits in the box. It took him a while to figure that the letters were in the manila envelopes. It only clicked for him when he realised there were exactly seventeen of those envelopes. He grabbed the one marked one and pulled out the sheaf of papers. It was evident that they had been folded and sent in smaller probably individual envelopes but after they had been read, by Emily's parents no doubt, they had been left unfolded then bundled and clipped together in chronological order. One of her parents must have been a cataloguing freak. "Well, this makes my life so much easier!" Sam thought gratefully. He began to read.

'I am Celeste and I am your birth mother ...' the first letter began. Short of actually writing cooing sounds, Celeste wrote like she was speaking to a baby. It was a short sweet non-consequential letter. Using it as reference, Sam set aside the garish pink teddy bear in the box.

He went on to the next letter which was really in the same vein as the first only without the formal introduction. He dismissed the purple plastic heart shaped locket. And so it went, he read the letters and set aside objects as they were mentioned. He laughed at the sparkly fairy wings, that accompanied one of the letters from the sixth year. From the letter Bobby had given them earlier, Sam knew that was the year Celeste had finally found Emily.

The length of the letters increased and the language changed over the years as Emily grew, but Celeste consistently wrote like a mother, a mother who clearly loved her child. Knowing that Emily had been adopted without her mother's consent broke Sam's heart, as he thought how the poor woman had been robbed of the chance to raise her own daughter and Emily had been robbed of the chance to know her mother.

Hours later, he wiped his face with a heavy hand and glanced at Dean who had fallen asleep, having been bored by the TV. Sam sighed. The letters were sweet but they were inconsequential. The only thing they were achieving was making him miss having never had a mother. He knew his brother would not have read this far. He would have packed it in after the first two lines of the first letter. Dean didn't do mushy and he certainly didn't commit to anything that reminded him of his mother. Sam also had to admit he hadn't made much ground in figuring out his sister or what it was about her that had made her a target for the supernatural. Maybe it had nothing to do with her biological parentage and all to do with her inheritance from her adoptive parents. Maybe someone wanted her money and wanted her out of the way. It was one possibility.

He successfully fought a yawn. He was beat! Time for him to call it a night. There was no need for him to kill himself, especially when the protection ring meant Emily was safe for now. He popped his shoulders and kicked Dean's foot to wake him.

"What?" Dean glared.

"Go to bed! You're drooling!"

"Bitch, I do not drool!" Dean complained as he stood up.

"Yes you do, Jerkass!"

Dean mumbled goodnight to Bobby and walked out of the room. "G'nite Bobby," Sam said as he got up to follow his stumbling brother out of the room.

"You want me to take over?" Bobby asked indicating the box.

"If you're up to it, sure. I got as far as the first letter in the tenth envelope. There's nothing in there, Bobby. Just these mushy letters written by a mother to her kid." Sam was sure Dean would call them corny. Their mother's death and their father's subsequent quest had really done a number on the eldest Winchester son; he didn't trust sentimentality at all.

"Sorry, meant to tell you that when we talked in the hospital, she said the letters started getting freaky after her thirteenth birthday." Bobby told him.

That would have saved him a lot of trouble, but well, what was done was done. "You can have a crack at it."

He went to the kitchen, warmed some of the pot roast and carried it to Emily's room. At some point in the evening, she had woken up, turned off the iPod and placed it on the nightstand, returned the guitar to its bag and gotten herself into bed. The covers were drawn up over her head. He had to ease them back to feel her forehead. She seemed to be sleeping too much, and he was concerned. When he was reassured she was not running too high a fever, he shook her gently.

"Hey, you need to eat, get down your pills and apply the antibiotic cream on your arms."

"Mmmm," she said groggily, coming awake slowly. She looked at the plate on the nightstand. "Thanks. I'll take the plate back down when I'm done. You don't have to wait on me."

Sam knew when he was being dismissed.

"Okay. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."