Dean stuffed crumpled t-shirts and button-downs and jeans into the washing machine. Sam, moving more sluggishly, loaded similar clothing items into the next machine in the row. He took the box of cheap powdered detergent his brother passed to him and dumped some over his laundry before passing the box on to Emma. Laundry was a new concept for the teen. During her brief infancy and childhood she'd outgrown her clothes before they'd even had a chance to get dirty. Had someone taken them away to be washed and reused by some other new daughter of the tribe, or had her mother simply discarded them? Emma didn't know. Following Sam's lead, she sifted a portion of powdered soap over her own garments, shut the lid, and loaded the quarters her father had given her into the mechanism.
He was already gone when Emma turned away from the washing machine, off to buy liquor or to gas up the car they were using this week, or to scan the local papers for news of Dick Roman's far-flung business dealings. His brother slumped in a chair, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands. He was fine, Emma reminded herself. An obvious lie, but even the youngest member of her mother's tribe knew better than to acknowledge suffering or pain. Her father's side of the family clearly followed the same code.
The scattering of out-of-date magazines on the small table beside Sam Winchester barely rated a glance. Emma had become familiar with the titles, staples of every gas station and motel office and coffee shop of every town they passed through. There was little within the glossy pages to hold her interest.
The small, staticky television set behind the counter was equally unappealing. The tribe had kept pace with the times, making full use of modern technology to educate their young initiates. During their short, intense period of rapid growth, Emma and her Amazon sisters had been exposed to hours of educational programming. Their developing minds had absorbed and retained it all. But it had been nothing but images on a screen, Emma thought now. Vivid, memorable, but not real. She'd known, on an intellectual level, what winter was. But until her lips had chapped and her body had shivered in the icy wind blowing forty miles an hour across a Wyoming truck stop parking lot, she hadn't really understood.
Emma seated herself next to Sam and drew a worn notebook from inside her jacket. The flimsy cover was so old and had been creased so many times that the decaying fibers felt soft, almost like suede. The pages, when she opened it, were yellowed and brittle around the edges. Emma turned them gently, caution that slowed the pace of her reading, but necessary to preserve the notes scribbled in the fragile margins.
The knowledge collected in the Winchesters' stash of heavy, musty old volumes and tattered notebooks was real, vital in a way that no one who wasn't a hunter-or a monster-could understand. Emma devoured it, reading as much as she could. Some of the books were written in foreign languages, or in alphabets of strange symbols that didn't belong to any country on earth. The handwriting in some of the notebooks was so spidery and faded that she couldn't make out more than a word here and there.
In the first few days after fleeing from the tribe, Emma had felt numb. Dully, she'd worried that the apathy would last, that the plodding pace of her thoughts was the best her brain could manage now that her growth had slowed to normal. What was wrong with her? The matrons had boasted, not only of the Amazons' superior strength, but of their superior intellect as well. Was she the first stupid Amazon in the history of the tribe?
Whether her malaise had been caused by exhaustion or shock or simply the adjustment period after three days of supernaturally rapid development, it was over now. She had no trouble understanding the lore. She had no difficulty doing her own laundry, or getting her own breakfast from a vending machine, or keeping herself entertained while her father and his brother were busy with a hunt. She didn't get in the way, didn't have to be coddled or looked after.
"Banshee, eh?" Dean's voice startled Emma. "Dad and Sam hunted a banshee in Florida, back in ninety-eight," her father reminisced, leaning over her to read the page. She looked up with a tentative smile, eager for more details, but he'd already shifted his focus to Sam, dozing in the seat next to her.
He jerked upright as they watched, eyes wild, batting at something on his shirt front. Flames, Emma wondered, or maybe bugs? In a moment he'd recovered, scrubbing a hand tiredly over his face.
"You okay, Sam?"
"Yeah."
Sam wasn't okay at all, but the brothers had found another case to work on. Cursed objects were causing deaths in Portland, Oregon. Emma rode along with Sam when he rented a trailer to haul away the collection of boxes. It was kind of pathetic, she thought critically, how excited she was at the prospect of helping to load the trailer. At least she would be doing something useful, instead of just keeping out of the way. But they were at war, Emma reminded herself. War was a concept she understood well, thanks to the Amazons, but this wasn't history, some Ancient Greek battle. The Winchesters were fighting a war, right here and now. They had enough to deal with, she knew, without a kid tagging along, getting in the way, and so Emma endured the boredom, the loneliness, the waiting.
"So, tell me about the Amazons," Sam spoke up from the driver's seat. Emma tensed.
"What do you want to know?" she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Sam sighed, a quiet, weary gust of breath.
"Look, I know everything I need to know to hunt them. I wouldn't just-" Another sigh. "That's not what I meant, Emma. I'm curious about you. Your upbringing," he clarified. He chuckled ruefully.
"Just talk to me. Help me stay alert."
"Oh. Well, um, Mom used to read to me. Picture books," Emma said slowly, casting about for something that sounded relatively normal, but that still might interest her father's brother.
"Then when I was a little older, she taught me to read. But she still read to me, sometimes, even after I'd learned how." She huddled deeper into her coat. The cab of the pick-up was cold. Sam hadn't turned on the heat. Intentionally, Emma assumed, to help him stay awake.
"Dean said you were, like, five or so when they took you for your training," he prompted after a minute of silence. "Did your mother visit you?"
"No. It wasn't allowed." Emma controlled her voice as she explained. "None of the mothers, the birth mothers, I mean, were involved in the initiations. So they wouldn't be tempted to be lenient with their own daughters."
"That's sad, that they took you from her so young," Sam said vaguely. His voice sounded distant. "Dean was only four when our mother died. He doesn't have a whole lot of memories of her, either."
"Why not?" Emma didn't understand.
"He was too young." There was a pause, and then Sam spoke again, sounding more alert.
"Wait, what do you remember about Lydia?"
"Mom? Everything. Well, I mean, obviously I don't remember when I was a newborn." Emma resisted the urge to giggle. Imagine being able to remember being born. Gross.
"I remember her taking me home. Rocking me to sleep. Teaching me my first words."
Sam chuckled, and she gave him a quizzical look.
"Emma, that's incredible. Ordinary humans don't remember infancy at all. Dean said you sounded more mature than a normal toddler, but I didn't realize..." his voice trailed off.
"So you don't remember your mother? Not at all?" The pick-up truck swung wide as they turned a corner, then jerked as he brought it back on course.
"Huh? No. I was just a baby when she died," he replied without emotion, his voice drowsy.
"That's terrible," Emma blurted. Sam let out a quiet exhale through his nose, a light scoff.
"That's just how it is."
Emma fell silent, not knowing what else to say. Sam's lack of memories made Mary Winchester's murder seem even more unjust. It was as if he'd never had a mother at all. Absorbed in her thoughts, she didn't notice the pick-up's gradual lane change until the headlights of a tractor trailer bore down on them.
"Sam!" Between Emma's startled yelp and the deep blast of the eighteen-wheeler's horn, her uncle awoke with a gasp and yanked the truck back into the right lane just in time.
They stopped for coffee, and when they continued on Sam blasted the radio, sparing Emma the effort of making further conversation. She was grateful when his phone rang. Her father should have better luck at keeping his younger brother alert. Emma couldn't make out Dean's side of the conversation, but she could hear the low, reassuring rumble of his voice.
"Leviathans? Here? You're sure?" Sam asked sharply. "All right, I'll meet you at Out With The Old." He hung up and drove on, seemingly more focused now, and parked in front of the antique shop a few minutes later.
"It'd be best for you to wait here," he told Emma. "Apparently Scott set off another cursed item. This shouldn't take long."
She watched as Sam approached the store front. Dean joined him-her father must have been waiting for the truck to pull up-and both disappeared inside. The moment the door closed behind them, Emma was sliding down out of the cab, easing the door shut behind her. It closed with a muffled thud and she tiptoed up to the plate glass display window.
Sam had said it would be best for her to wait. It was a suggestion, she reasoned, not an order. She crouched down and peered inside, trusting the big red SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! signs covering half the glass to conceal her from those inside. The Winchesters were talking to two other adults. Real estate agents, judging by their matching red jackets. What were they doing there, so late at night? And where was Scott, the hapless shop owner?
Emma caught sight of him duct-taped to a chair just as the female agent lunged toward her dad. Springing up from her hiding place, Emma ran to the door and wrenched it open. Whatever was going on inside the shop, it wasn't good.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sam struggling with the male agent, but the sight didn't really register. In the few seconds it had taken her to rush inside, the female agent had thrown her father across the room.
"Dad!" Emma cried out, but her attention was diverted by the female agent. Her face was utterly inhuman, eyeless. Nothing but a gaping maw full of fangs and... Tongues? Emma shook her head. Her brain wasn't processing what her eyes were seeing.
"I wouldn't mind a little snack before dinner," the Leviathan remarked casually, tossing her hair out of her eyes. Her face had reverted to normal while she spoke, but now she advanced on Emma, her human features retracting to reveal that hideous mouth. Twin tongues waggled obscenely as she reached for the teen.
"Aaaah!" With a shout that was far more scream of terror than Amazon battle cry, Emma charged in to meet her, gripping the red lapels of her jacket and hurling the Leviathan away from her, a move that would have sent a normal human crashing into the far wall. Emma realized her mistake an instant later. The Leviathan was more than her equal in strength. She grabbed Emma's shoulder with one hand, using the teen to steady herself and recover her balance. The backhanded blow she dealt out was almost an afterthought-she was already turning away to finish off Dean-but it was strong enough to snap Emma's head back and fling her twenty feet.
Sam beheaded the female Leviathan with an antique sword, ending the brief fight.
"Emma! You okay there? Emma!" Her father's voice was brusque, but the hand brushing her hair back from her forehead was surprisingly gentle. She squinted up at him, muttering a few incoherent syllables of protest as he produced a flashlight and shone it directly into her eyes. Checking her pupils for sign of a concussion, she realized, her head clearing.
"I'm okay." Her cheek burned where the Leviathan's hand had made contact, and there was a corresponding drumbeat of pain where the back of her head had hit the floor, but Emma quickly scrambled to her feet, batting away her father's steadying hands.
"The hell did you think you were doing?" Concern turned to exasperation as soon as he saw that she was relatively unharmed. Dean jabbed a finger in Sam's direction.
"Either one of us tells you to stay put, you stay put," he growled. "You got it? That's the only way this is going to work. I don't have time to babysit you, not during a fight."
The bruises hadn't drawn tears, but the scolding did. A rush of shame turned the rest of her face as red as the imprint of the Leviathan's knuckles on her cheekbone. Fortunately, her father had turned to join Sam's discussion with the remaining Leviathan. Emma stared hard at the female's decapitated body, the stump of her neck oozing black goo onto the floorboards. They were at war, she reminded herself. The thought helped her regain control. Surreptitiously, she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her coat.
Later, after the shopkeeper had been sent away and the male Leviathan carried off the body of the female, her father brought her a makeshift ice pack. She held it against her swollen cheek, as directed, while he and his brother loaded the U-Haul. Emma knew better than to argue, until it was time for Dean and Sam to move the warded safe holding the worst of the cursed items. Seeing them struggling to wrestle it onto a dolly, Emma walked hesitantly into Dean's line of sight, wordlessly asking permission.
"Sure. Knock yourself out."
The safe wasn't too heavy, not with Emma's Amazon strength, but it was too wide to wrap her arms around, making for an awkward burden. She lugged it out to the trailer, having to set it down several times and adjust her grip. By the time it was safely stowed inside, Emma felt as if she'd redeemed herself, at least a little bit.
They crowded into the cab of the pick-up truck. Emma stared out through the windshield, watching the headlights illuminate mile after mile of dull gray asphalt. Eventually, she closed her eyes, only to drift into a dream of the Leviathan closing in on her, its hideous fanged mouth gaping wide. She jerked awake, realizing with a start of embarrassment that she'd dozed off, leaning on her father's shoulder. On the other side of her, Sam woke with a stifled gasp, troubled by dreams of his own.
"Hey." Dean's voice was low, barely more than a whisper. "Get some sleep. At least one of us ought to." Walled in on either side by solid muscle, lulled by the hum of the engine, Emma was finally able to obey.