Emma's bruised ribs and thigh throbbed in time with her pulse, but the ache was nothing compared to the shame of the tears blurring her vision. Rubbing her knuckles across her eyelids, she tried to erase the evidence of weakness.
A sidelong glance at Sam as he scrambled to his feet confirmed that at least he was hurting, too. Cold comfort. She should never have lost control. But if she did have to lose it, Emma thought, she should have inflicted more than just a couple of bruises. Some monster she was.
Squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin, she turned back to her father. Even braced for it, Emma found it hard to meet his eyes. They were cold, as she'd expected, though for a moment when Sam had charged her, and her father had shouted at him, she'd been warmed by the heat of anger in his voice. There was no trace of that anger now as he watched her, just that icy calm that made the vaunted control the Amazons took such pride in seem a paltry, fragile thing. Emma blinked away a fresh welling of tears at the thought. As a monster, she was clearly a failure, but she would not allow herself to cry.
"You okay?" Her father's question caught her off guard. His eyes were on her, but when Sam answered it was clear whom the query had been directed to.
"I'm fine. Just got the wind knocked out of me is all."
"Well, you asked for it," Dean shot back.
"You had to see for yourself," Sam replied.
"All right. I saw." He was still watching Emma, still emotionless except for the brief flash of annoyance he'd directed at his brother.
"You okay? Not planning on any more Gozer moments tonight, are we?" She didn't get the reference, but his meaning was clear enough. Emma nodded, not trusting her voice.
"All right," Dean repeated. Let's get out of here. Now," he added in a harsh growl when Sam seemed about to protest.
Sam drove. Her father leaned back in the passenger seat, eyes closed. Emma was too keyed up to even consider sleep, but as the featureless dark blurred past she dozed off, lulled by the endless unrolling of worn asphalt beneath the old car's tires. When the motion stopped, she woke.
"Salt Lake already?" her father asked, yawning and stretching.
"Dean, we have to talk about this-"
"Now, Sammy? Seriously? It's the middle of the night," Dean groaned. "It's the middle of nowhere."
Which made sense, Emma thought. The middle of nowhere seemed like a good place to bury a body. She was wide awake now, her stomach a hard knot, higher in her abdomen than she thought a stomach had any right to be.
"If you're going to gank me I'd just as soon get it over with," she piped up from the back seat. Two faces turned to stare at her.
"Gank you? Nobody's going to gank you!" Dean turned to Sam, his tone accusing. "Did you tell her that?"
"No!" Sam protested.
"B-but I attacked him," Emma pointed out. Her heart was racing, but her voice was reasonably steady, all things considered. If only she could stop shaking.
"He asked for it!" Dean's tone was brusque. He closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath, visibly struggling for calm. The sight left Emma with a wild urge to laugh. He'd seemed far more in control back in the gym, when, she'd been almost certain, he'd been planning on killing her.
"I don't understand," she said, forcing the words out through teeth clenched to stop them from chattering. The air inside the Buick was cooling fast now that the engine was turned off, but her body wasn't reacting to the cold. This was emotion. Fear, and a faint, stubborn hope that was somehow worse than fear. Emma was sure that without that hope her fear wouldn't be nearly as bad.
"He asked for it. You pushed him. It happens." To demonstrate, Dean reached over abruptly and shoved Sam's head into the steering wheel.
"Hey!" Sam punched his older brother's arm hard.
"Ow. See? No harm done," Dean concluded. He shifted his body to face Emma fully.
"These are the ground rules: you're not allowed to slam anybody through any walls. No crushed skulls. No ritual mutilations. No killing, period, got that? Now, you lose your temper-"
"She could easily kill someone," Sam finished Dean's sentence for him. Dean glared at his brother.
"So she learns to control her temper."
"Okay. Say she does. What are you going to do, Dean? Drag her around the country like Dad did with us when we were kids? Oh, wait," Sam's voice rose, laced with sarcasm. "Except instead of us hunting demons, now it's Leviathans hunting us. What about any of that sounds normal, or safe, or fair to a kid?"
Dean started to speak, but Emma broke in.
"My mom sent me off to learn how to kill my own father," she told Sam. "It's not like I've ever had normal." Sam nodded at that, but immediately turned back to Dean.
"Remember Osiris? It wasn't that long ago that he targeted you-"
"Osiris was a batshit crazy old Egyptian god," Dean interrupted, but Sam cut him off.
"Who targeted you because you were wracked with guilt over your influence on Jo and me. And now you're honestly telling me you'd be okay with raising Emma as a hunter?"
"She said it; the Amazons weren't exactly dishing out picket fences and apple pies," Dean replied. "Life with me might suck, but it's still a life. Beats the alternative. And who says Emma's got to be a hunter?" he added defiantly. "She's almost eighteen. In a couple of years she can go off to college and take a stab at normal."
Sam gave his brother an exasperated look.
"If we're even alive in a couple of years."
Dean opened the passenger side door abruptly and got out, letting a gust of freezing air into the Buick.
"Yeah, speaking of, switch off. You get some sleep, and in the morning we'll call Frank, see if he's got any intel on the Leviathans. Because we're hunting those sons of bitches!"
A couple of weeks later they'd switched cars yet again. The brothers had solved a case or two that had come up, nothing more. In spite of Dean's bravado, they'd made no progress as far as the Leviathans were concerned. Sam was exhausted from their latest hunt, but it was impossible to sleep. Not with Lucifer as his roommate.
Dean and Emma shared the room next door. Some nights, paranoia, whether his, Dean's, or both, had them all crammed into one room, if they even risked a motel stay. Some nights found the Winchesters squatting in an abandoned building. Some nights they just pulled off on the side of some back road and slept in the car. Emma's arrival hadn't changed their reality. They were still on the run, hiding out, avoiding detection by the Leviathans.
Having a teenage girl tagging along hadn't been as difficult as Sam had feared. Emma's time with the other Amazon initiates had left her unfamiliar with the concepts of either comfort or privacy. Of course, growing up on the road with John, the brothers hadn't had much privacy either. Their routine hadn't changed all that much since adding Emma to the mix. Naturally, they were careful the teen didn't see them undressed, but then, Sam reflected with a snort, they hadn't exactly been in the habit of lounging around naked to begin with. If nothing else, his macho big brother had a streak of homophobia. In spite of all his lack of inhibition where women were concerned, Dean had no trouble being modest when the situation called for it. Even so, Emma's addition made things awkward, and it wasn't just the logistics of sharing cramped living quarters. She was still essentially a stranger, and one neither Winchester brother could bring themselves to fully trust.
On the virtually nonexistent bright side, Emma provided a distraction when Sam emerged from his room, blinking blearily in the wan winter sunlight and not at all refreshed by a hot shower that Lucifer had livened up with a vivid hallucination of blood gushing from the shower head and flowing through his hair, down his body, sticky and reeking of decay. The girl was slouched in one of the plastic lawn chairs arranged in pairs on the sidewalk that ran along the front of the motel, sipping from a can of root beer and idly poking with one booted toe at some dried remnants of weeds that lined a crack in the worn cement.
Sam couldn't imagine sitting around like that, just waiting, killing time. Given a similar opportunity, he would have taken off for the afternoon, to loiter in a diner or an arcade or just to walk around and explore whatever town John's latest hunt had landed them in. But then, Sam thought, by Emma's age he'd been accustomed to fending for himself for days at a time.
She looked up warily when he sprawled into the chair next to her.
"Nothing going on at the shopping center? he asked, indicating the strip mall across the street with a jerk of his head.
"Dad said not to leave the motel grounds."
Sam's brow furrowed as he scanned the horseshoe-shaped arc of the weedy parking lot. Emma's current world was bounded by an overhang housing a couple of vending machines and an ice dispenser on one side, and the dreary motel office on the other. He knew the Amazons had drilled obedience into the girl, but this seemed unhealthy. Extreme. What did Emma imagine the consequences would be if she stepped across the street for a magazine or a bite to eat?
He felt a swift pang of pity for the girl. A typical teenager would rebel against such unreasonable restrictions. It was normal, healthy even, to test parental boundaries. But Emma wasn't a normal teen, any more than Dean was a normal dad. Not that long ago she'd been convinced Dean would kill her. Sam suppressed a sigh. Father and daughter would just have to work it out for themselves. Still…
"It won't always be this bad," he promised. "It's just that we're kind of at war right now."
"I know," Emma said matter-of-factly. "The Leviathans." Sam nodded.
"Yeah. That, and Dean-your dad-he won't talk about it, but we lost a good friend just recently-"
"The beat-up old guy with the flask. I heard him telling Mom they were close," Emma elaborated at Sam's quizzical look.
"His name was Bobby. He was like a father to us, after our own dad died."
"I'm sorry for your loss." Sam resisted the urge to chuckle. The words were so stilted, and yet, he thought, sincere. The loss of a parent was something he supposed Emma could understand.
"Thank you," he said solemnly, ignoring Lucifer's sarcastic comment. He averted his eyes, but the hallucination was still there, leaning against the motel wall just beyond Emma's chair. Sam could see him in his peripheral vision, making obscene gestures and leering at the girl.
"Dean'll wake up in time for supper," he assured her, forcing a smile, and heaved himself to his feet. Alcohol, Sam thought. He needed to get his hands on some alcohol. If he got good and drunk first, he might be able to get some sleep.