Okay this is what I get for promising to update during the holidays. I'm sorry I didn't post a chapter last week, but I had to find a gift for my sister and then I had to finish an essay and well RL got a little in the way. Longer chapter this time though.

I still don't own anything. If I did my favorite characters would not die. (Which means that pretty much everyone that has died on both shows would come back to live.)

When you take the time to think about it the only conclusion really is that it's all his fault.

Everyone else – from Emma, so alone, to Sam, so angry, to Dean, the idjit – would say it more than definitely wasn't. It was Azazal's fault, they'd say, because he was the demon; it was John's fault, because he'd sold his soul first and so planted the idea in Dean's head and it was Dean's fault because he'd been the one who sold his soul. But it was not, in any way, Bobby's fault. But Bobby knows, deep in his soul that no matter what everyone else thinks the truths is that it was his fault, in part if not in full. Emma, if she ever were to find out what it is he is thinking, would say that it was in no way his fault, that what he is feeling is normal and no more than what they're all feeling: grieve and survival's guilt. Even Sam, far away as he is – and Bobby would give anything to discover where it is he has run to – would say that it wasn't his fault. (Or maybe he does blame him, maybe a part of Sam thinks it is all Bobby's fault maybe that is the real reason he's run of. Or maybe it really all has to do with anger and revenge. )

No matter what everyone thinks the facts don't change.

And he was the one who left an obviously devastated Dean alone with his dead brother.

He should have stayed. If not inside with Dean, not after having been told to go, at least close enough to be able to stop him from doing something stupid. Admittedly he could not have foreseen that this would happen. In fact Bobby would go so far as to say that the idea of selling his soul, even for his little brother, was not something that had occurred to Dean before that moment. (And it might not have had he stayed, or if it had he would at least have been able to stop him.) He had been the one who left him there and had gone home, he could have sat outside in his car, he could have dragged Dean out of there, he could have done a million things but in the end what he did was the one thing he should not have done: he left.

And Dean, the idjit, went off and sold his soul.

And now here they were.

The good thing about being the one all hunters call when in trouble is that there is always somebody in need of help. Always some hunter that has done something stupid or needs some specific help and as such he didn't have that much time to sit down and think about it. The nights however are the worst, the nights drive him crazy with the possibilities of what could have, should have happened, had he stayed. He's the only suffers most at night, during the day Emma seems – at least after that first week – have a handle on her pain, even if he can sense it anything she does. (He thinks she's pretending for him, pretending it doesn't hurt so much and he wishes he could tell her that she shouldn't have to. That she shouldn't pay so much attention to what he's feeling, considering that she's the one who lost the man she loves and the father of her baby. He doesn't because he thinks that being strong for him is what's keeping her going, just like being strong for her keeps him going. That and the baby of course. It might not be healthy, or smart, but it works. And, at any rate, he suspects it's at least better than Sam's course of action, whatever that actually entails.)

But during the nights he hears her tossing and turning, crying, screaming for Dean sometimes.

He could go to her, he could comfort her, but he never does.

It's much easier this way.

(If she needs him she will talk to him, surely she knows that if she wants to she can.)

He's grateful when the phone rings – and, as always, he wishes it were Sam so he could try and convince him to come home, again but as usual it isn't. (He doesn't really think, not anymore anyway, that Sam will ever come home. He thinks this course of revenge he is on will consume him completely; just like once upon a time revenge consumed his father completely. And someday it will cost him his life and even if it does not, even if by some chance he manages to execute his revenge, when he's done he will have nothing left to live for, not really.)

"Bobby? Listen, it's Dean…"

He hangs up immediately, not even interested in hearing the last of it. It's some cruel joke, or a taunt by some demon, trying to harm them. And he's glad that at least Emma did not pick up the phone this time, for hearing someone so casually say he's Dean would surely have destroyed her. (And it was doing nothing good for him either. He's just glad that he didn't yell out because that would have made Emma come running and that would not have been a good thing for surely he would not have been able to come up with a convincing lie, shocked as he was.) For one second, just one, he let hope overwhelm him and considered the possibility that it could be Dean. But it isn't, it can't be, because Dean is dead – killed by hellhounds and dragged into hell for loving his brother way to much – and he can't come back, much less use the phone. Even if Dean would someday return to the earth it would no longer be as Dean but as some demon bound to service hell. (Perhaps someday he will come back; perhaps someday a demon that was once Dean Winchester will be put down by some hunter. Perhaps they won't even know who it is that they are killing, who he once was and what caused him to be thrown into hell. They might even assume that he did something horrible in a past life for surely the thought he sold his soul for his younger brother would never enter in any hunter's mind.)

Whoever the caller is, it is not Dean.

And if he ever finds out whom it is he will make sure that he, or she, never even considers the possibility of doing something like that again.

And he will find out who it was.

Preferably before they call back and Emma finds out someone is pretending to be Dean.

Long ago when Emma was a baby – before she ended up in the foster care system for the rest of her youth, back in the time when she still had all her future before her and everyone around her imagined someone would adopt her and give her a wonderful life – the social worker in charge of her case wondered how any parent could even think about leaving their child at the side of the road. Surely any parent – whether or not they had the money to take care of their child – would not consider doing anything that dangerous, surely, even if they did not wish to have the child, they would make sure the baby was at least safe. To leave a defenseless baby alone on the side of a busy road was terrible and whomever had done that was nothing but evil. (And it was really a stroke of luck that little boy found her, Clara – for that was her name, a fact that Emma only discovered when she went searching for the truth – shuddered to think what would have happened to the poor defenseless child if no-one had found her.)

Parents would never leave their child at the side of the road, never.

(As a mother herself Clara, and many others, would later attest to this fact.)

Especially not parents – or parent as the case may have been – who cared enough about their child to buy – or knit – a blanket with the name of their baby on it. Surely a parent going tough so much trouble would not leave their child to die? Clara could understand why a parent would give up their child, and – having been a social worker for many years – she knew that parents could do horrible things to children, but this seemed so strange that Clara had been sure something else was going on.

At least that is what she told Emma when the younger women went to see her.

Truthfully Emma had not expected to learn much from her conversation with Clara. She had already known – through newspapers mostly – what had happened. Still when she began her search it seemed prudent to at least try to find out what happened to her first social worker, the one who placed her when she was a baby, who found her first family for her and who might be able to tell her something about her parents. Even if it was only what she thought might have motivated them. The thing is, in truth, Emma had no real trouble believing her parents gave her up – though it hurt and broke her heart and mad her insecure – because she had done it too. And she had known, when she held Henry that though she loved him very much, she could never, ever, give him in the life he deserved. It was better for him, much better, if she let him go and allowed him to claim the best future out there for him, even though that was not with her. She could understand that choice, she had made it herself. What she could not understand, could not fathom, and were the reasons they – or just one of them, one would never be really sure – had left her at the side of the road, in the middle of the winter, to die basically. That didn't exactly sound like a parent that could not take care of their baby but wanted the best for them. It sounded like a parent that did not care and wanted rid of the child, but for the life of her she could not understand any parent's reasoning for leaving her there.

Neither, apparently, could Clara.

Clara told her that she, and everyone else involved in the case and the foster parents of the first home she was put in, assumed that it hadn't been her parents who had put her there. They thought that she had been kidnapped and that the kidnappers, for some reason, had decided to abandon her there were she was found. Perhaps they had discovered that the child they had taken didn't have wealthy parents and they could not get a big ransom and had decided that it wasn't worth the trouble but they had been unable, or unwilling, to actually kill a baby so they had left her to die. Perhaps they had never intended to get a ransom; perhaps she had been taken for different reasons all together. Or perhaps – another theory put forward by the police who spend some time on the case, at least that's what Clara told her – it wasn't the baby that was kidnapped but the mother, or even the parents, and the baby left behind.

In any case they fully expected to find her family. To discover where she had been taken from and reunite her with her worried parents. But to Clara's, and everyone else's, astonishment they never found them, never managed to connect her to any missing person's case. Perhaps, some said, she came from far away and that was the reason they could not find her parents. Or perhaps it had really been her parents who abandoned her; perhaps they had really meant her to die. Perhaps they had to accept the fact that there were people out there who would leave their newborn to freeze to death at the side of a busy road. Clara told her she preferred to think that her parents had been harmed or the baby kidnapped and the family simply never found. It was better than the alternative. (Emma would like to think that way; she would like to say that she too believed that it hadn't been her parents who abandoned her. But the truth, the truth is she had never truly considered that it might not have been her parents.)

In any case Clara was the one who gave her the surname Swan and found her a family to live with.

Clara had never seen Clara again because she only worked with babies.

Of her first family, who kept her for three years, Emma remembers nothing. (She has some pictures of them and some mementos, but nothing much.) All Emma really knows about them is that they had been kind and good people who had taken her in but had sent her back as soon as they had their own child. (For years Emma resented them for this fact but eventually she accepted it.) Clara could not tell her much about that family – she did manage to find their home address and though Emma considered, briefly, going and meeting them but she quickly decided against it. What was she supposed to say to them after all? Hello, I'm the baby you once fostered but send away because you finally had a child of your own? I'm the baby you didn't keep? It wasn't a conversation that would be comfortable and it would not help her search in anyway so she did not go.

What Clara could not tell her is what happened to the boy who found her.

And that was something Emma had really wanted to know. Because that boy, who had found her and brought her to the diner and who had also ended up in the foster care system, might have been of some help to her. Perhaps he knew something, perhaps he had even seen something but he had been too scared to tell the world what he had witnessed. Perhaps he didn't even know what he knew. And even if he knew nothing, even if he was just a lost child passing at the right moment, Emma would still like to meet him. If only thank him for helping her, for finding her and ultimately saving her life. But the one thing nobody was able to tell her is what happened to that boy. Not the social worker who had taken care of them at first, not the police, nobody. And nobody seemed to know where he came from either. Just like her he seemed to have come from nothing and then he seemed to have disappeared again.

Neither Clara, nor the police, nor anyone else, was even sure of his name.

(One police officer noted that the boy said his name was Pinochio. That police officer assumed that it was easier for the boy to imagine himself as a fairytale character – probably his favorite – than to think of the home he came from. Emma shuddered to think what that home was really like.)

When she discovered and accepted the reality of the supernatural world Emma considered, briefly, that the mysterious boy might be some kind of supernatural creature. Though Dean agreed with her, when she told him, that it was weird he could not figure out, nor did their research really point to anything, what it could have been. Not a demon, for surely it would not have saved a baby, perhaps a guardian angel of some kind. But then Dean didn't really believe in angels, and neither did – and she doesn't know either – Emma. (And if he was some kind of guardian angel than he must have given up on her quite quickly, for the boy never appeared in her life again; then again since he might have grown up she might have met him and never known.)Clara had apologized for not being able to tell her anything else. But Emma had already gotten more than she expected she would so she wasn't really disappointed.

Before she left Clara had asked her if she had children. Emma had told her that she didn't and left – but a part of her had wanted to say she had a boy. But since that would mean explaining everything she didn't. Besides her boy had another family somewhere, a mother with more right to call herself his mother and she had made the choice to give him up and so she did not think she was lying. Not many people asked if she had children, then again the only people she had really met regularly at that time where supernatural creatures and other hunters so they might not – and probably had not – cared to know.

Now – especially now that she is beginning to show – people look at her with questioning eyes. As if they're debating whether they should ask about the baby and it's father – especially since there seemed to be no father to speak of. Emma is kind of glad nobody ever asked – besides the doctor of course and even she didn't ask for details – because she doesn't think it's anyone's business and probably would have blown up at whoever asked the question. Still if they had asked she would have told them that the father was dead. And they would look at her with pity and said how sorry they were. (They would have offered her help, maybe, but she doesn't think any of them would have ever actually given her any.)

She has never wanted anyone's pity and she doesn't want it now.

Pity will not help her.

Thousands 'I'm sorry' will not help her in any way.

(Later, months, years, later when she thinks about it – after her baby is born – Emma is kind of glad that she never actually told anyone, only the doctor, which meant she needed a new one, that Dean was dead. Because later, he was alive again and it would have been rather awkward to try and explain that.)

When he and Sam were children, many years ago, once in a small town – the name of which he doesn't remember and truthfully he might have never known – Sam became convinced that their father would not return. Dean can't remember – it has been too long for that – if that was because their father had been gone on their hunt for much longer than he said he would, or because someone had said something or maybe because he had a nightmare. All Dean really remembers is that Sam became so scared that every time Dean left the motel room – even if it was just for five minutes – he became convinced that Dean would leave to and he'd be left all alone. Dean had sworn to him that he never would leave him, that no matter what happened in the future, no matter how much time passed, Dean would always be there for him, even when Sam could not see it.

Dean's not sure if Sam remembers that promise.

(Considering all that happened and the fact that Sam is now completely alone it might be better for him if he does not.)

He certainly did not seem to remember when he left for Stanford.

(But then it had been Dean who promised he would always be there for him, not Sam. And Sam had never promised that they would always keep in touch, or even see each other much. )

The point is that it was around the time of that promise that Dean – when he realized that despite his promise Sam still wasn't content and when he began to get worried himself because their father had been gone for a really long time. So long in fact that Dean was becoming convinced that something had happened to him and was already thinking of a way to get in touch with either Bobby or pastor Jim. (As it turned out something had happened to their father, though it hadn't been life threatening.) It was around that time that Dean went out and got Sam a pet – a hamster that Sam then called Brainy for no reason that Dean ever discovered – just to cheer him up.

And somehow, when their father came back, he had even managed to convince him that keeping the hamster would not be a big deal.

It didn't live for long, but then in retrospect it probably wouldn't have – at times they hardly had enough money to buy food for themselves, especially when their father's hunting trips went on longer than expected. In reality it's really a miracle that brainy lived as long as he – or she, they never did manage to find out if it was a boy or a girl – did. They buried him in a shoebox, in an abandoned lot right next to the motel they were staying in. (At times Dean wonders what they build there, if they build anything there at all. Perhaps someone is now living on top of the grave of Brainy, Sam's pet hamster.) They had prayed for him and given him an eulogy and even placed flowers on his grave. (Or hers as the case may have been.) To this day it is one of the most ridiculous things he has ever done, going through a funeral for a hamster, but Sammy had looked at him with those puppy dog eyes and he had not been able to say no.

It is that memory, of him and his brother standing over the grave of their pet hamster that is foremost on his mind when he wakes up in his own coffin.

As he digs himself out, desperate and completely freaked out, his brain keeps thinking about that. What if Brainy knew they were putting him in a box? What if the poor thing wasn't death and woke up in a box buried in the ground? Why was he even thinking any of these ridiculous things?

When he finally climbed out he sat on his knees trying to figure out what had happened.

Dozens of thoughts went through his mind. He thought of Brainy the pet hamster who had been buried in a box and his mother who had died in a fire and he thought of poor Sammy and how terrible his little brother must be feeling. There was Bobby – and he had to find a phone to call the older man because if anyone had any idea of what was going on and what to do next it would be him. He thought of poor Emma and all she must have gone through.

But what had gotten him out? What had saved him?

How long had he been gone?

(And then, the most terrible thought of all, what if there was nobody left? What if the same amount of time that had passed in hell had passed on earth? What if everyone he knew was dead or had forgotten him?)

What now?

He quickly realized that there was nothing in sight and that if he wanted to find Bobby – or at least to find out if there was anyone left to find – he had to start moving, for there was nothing in sight.

There was nothing else to it.