Emma ran inside while her father pumped gas. She bought coffee and food, or what passed for food at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Candy bars or bags of chips, frozen burritos hastily nuked in a microwave or foil-wrapped sandwiches retrieved from under a heat lamp. Unappetizing fare, but the taste didn't matter. It was simply fuel. Like the gas filling the tank of the Dodge Charger, it was necessary to keep them on the road.
Sitting up front in the seat usually occupied by her father's brother, Emma tended the radio while Dean drove. Whenever the station they were listening to began to fade out, she tuned in a new one, skipping over the channels that featured country-western or rap. A month on the road with the Winchesters had made her an expert in the kind of music her father liked. Dean signaled his favorite tunes by cranking up the volume or drumming on the dashboard, or sometimes even singing along, to Emma's secret amusement and Sam's obvious dismay.
Not that Dean was doing any of that now. They covered mile after mile in silence. Sam wasn't riding shotgun on this trip; he was locked in a psych ward in Indiana after too many sleepless nights and days of 'I'm okay' had unraveled into a life-threatening psychosis. If her father didn't find someone to help his brother, Sam was going to die.
"Tell me about ghouls."
The Charger never veered out of its lane. Dean never jerked himself awake, never jerked the wheel to bring the car back on course. Hour after hour, her father drove on, never seeming to tire. He didn't need her to talk to him to help him stay alert. She was the one who required conversation. Each time Emma felt herself dozing off, she prompted him: tell me about the time Sam and your dad hunted the banshee. Tell me about werewolves. Tell me about witches. Each time, her father answered, his voice as rough as gravel, as dark and rich as coffee.
"Go on, go to sleep," he told her as they crossed the border from Minnesota into North Dakota.
Emma shook her head in dull defiance, although her eyes felt as raw as a fresh brand. It was cozy in the old car, listening to her father's war stories as they rolled on through the dark. It felt like home. She shook her head again, suppressing a pang of guilt. She liked riding shotgun, found herself cherishing this time spent with Dean, but they wouldn't be on this road trip if not for Sam. Maybe her dad didn't need her to stay awake, Emma thought, but she would anyway. For Sam's sake.
Morning. Another convenience store. In the restroom, Emma splashed cold water on her face, then chugged half a cup of coffee, sweet with sugar and pale with powdered non-dairy creamer, on her way to the cashier's counter. Her father was waiting outside the car when she emerged with their breakfast. Stretching his legs, she thought. Emma handed him his coffee.
"Thanks." To her surprise, he put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side in a one-armed hug.
"Glad you came along," he began in his usual brusque way, but Emma stiffened and ducked out from under his arm. Hugs were for babies, left behind when Amazons began their initiations. She retreated to the passenger side of the Dodge, confused and more than a little embarrassed by her reaction. Part of her wanted to stay inside that warm half-circle of love and protection, even as a voice inside her head insisted with stubborn pride that she didn't need any such thing.
It was afternoon before they reached the cabin. She collapsed on the cot in the corner. Lying on the lumpy, musty-smelling mattress, her body felt as if it was still in motion, riding shotgun in the old Charger. They'd been on the road for twenty-four hours.
"I'm a friend of Bobby Singer's. I'm, uh, looking for some info. If you could call me back…"
It was dark again when she woke to her father's voice on the phone, words as familiar as the chorus of an old song on a classic rock station. His plea had woven itself into her dreams. She clenched her fists as a surge of emotion caught her up in its grasp, anger at the circumstances that had reduced this tough, independent hunter to begging for help from strangers.
Control, she reminded herself, and sat up, pushing off the quilt that Dean must have covered her with. Emma couldn't remember unfolding it, or taking off the boots that now sat side-by-side on the floor beside the cot. She rose and padded into the bathroom on stocking feet.
Her father had switched from coffee to beer, Emma noted after she'd washed up. It was impossible to tell if he'd gotten any sleep at all; the sagging couch in the center of the single room looked as if it had been slept on for a thousand and one Montana nights.
He was on the phone again, responding in monosyllables until something the caller said suddenly sparked his interest.
"We've got a lead," he informed Emma, closing the phone. "Some guy in Colorado."
Within minutes they were back on the road again.
"You know it won't always be this bad."
Emma had been half asleep, staring out the window at dried brown stalks of winter weeds and gritty, grey crusts of dirty snow. Dean's voice startled her out of her stupor. She turned to watch his profile as he drove.
"We'll get Sam fixed up, get a handle on Dick Roman and the Leviathans," he said. "Once things settle down, we'll get you enrolled in school-"
"I don't need to go to school," Emma protested, but her father cut her off.
"You're smart. You're going to school." Dean's tone was gruff, warning Emma not to try and argue. "I had Frank Deveraux working on the documents," he went on. "Birth certificate, social security card, report cards, shots, the whole permanent record thing."
"Yeah, but he's probably dead," she couldn't resist commenting. Her dad had made her wait in the pick-up truck outside the crazy hacker's beat-up old RV, but Emma knew what he and Sam had found inside: smashed computer equipment spattered with blood.
Dean scoffed, a short, dismissive snort.
"Frank's not the only forger I know. Look, you're doing great, handling all this. I just want you to know I've still got a plan. I haven't forgotten. It might take a while, but things'll get back to normal."
She felt buoyed by the praise, in spite of the sobering reminder of Sam's breakdown, Frank Deveraux's likely death. Bobby, Cas, John, Jess, Mary… Her father didn't talk much about it, but Emma had read enough cryptic notes in the margins of old journals, heard enough hints in snippets of conversation between Dean and his brother. This wasn't the first time the Winchesters had been at war. They'd fought demons and angels alike. Lost family and friends. Been to hell and back… Literally. She felt a sudden, entirely inappropriate urge to laugh, and gave in to it.
"Come on, was your life ever normal?" Dean laughed along with her.
"Nah, not really," he admitted. "I did okay, though. Got my G.E.D. You're smart," he repeated, "you'll like school. Sam always did."
"But you didn't?" Emma asked, puzzled. Her father was smart, too, she thought, but he spoke as if Sam was the only one who had succeeded in school. Dean scoffed again.
"I wasn't cut out to be a 'mathlete'. Not like Sam." The term was unfamiliar, but Emma seize on the athlete portion.
"But you must have been good at sports. You must have been popular-"
"Not team sports, no. And no, I wasn't popular. Never really fit in," Dean said matter-of-factly. "Kind of hard to find common ground with regular kids when your family hunts monsters for a living."
His mood was lighter, now that they had a lead, and the talk about school had left him relaxed, even smiling from time to time as they spoke. It was gratifying to be able to distract her dad from Sam's current desperate condition, but that satisfaction was offset by Emma's complete bafflement. Her father always seemed so cool and self-assured, but he made it sound as if he'd been a failure at just about every aspect of high school.
"Did you at least go to prom?" she asked plaintively, recalling a teen magazine she'd picked up in a motel lobby while waiting for Dean and Sam to solve a series of murders at some kiddie pizza arcade. Prom was apparently the pinnacle of the high school social scene, but her dad just snorted.
"No. What gave you the idea I would have wanted to go to prom?"
"I don't know! I've never been to school," Emma retorted. "You mean you didn't even date?"
This time her father's laugh sounded embarrassed.
"Um, yeah, you might say I uh, dated a few girls," he admitted slowly.
Emma sighed. At least he hadn't been a complete social outcast. After a moment she continued her inquisition.
"So you've had a girlfriend? You know, a serious girlfriend," she pressed. Obviously, her mom didn't count. She was thinking of someone like Sam's college girlfriend Jessica, but tactfully didn't say so.
"Traveling all the time, hunting things, keeping secrets… Not exactly conducive to settling down," Dean pointed out.
"No girlfriend? Ever? You're thirty-three," Emma protested.
"No girlfriend." Her father switched on the radio and turned the dial, ending the conversation. The effort yielded static, a local livestock report, country-western music, more static. Dean turned back to the country-western station, endured it for thirty seconds, then sighed and switched the radio off.
"Okay, I had a girlfriend. And yeah, it was serious. Even lived with her for about a year, when Sam was, um… Away. She had a kid." Her father's voice was harsh, as if the memory pained him. "He'd be a couple years younger than you."
Jealousy hit hard, swift as a punch to the stomach. Her father had had a son. A family that he'd lived a normal life with. A whole year, in one place. Just as quickly, the emotion dissipated, replaced by horrified remorse. The boy and his mother… They were dead, Emma thought. They must be. Hunters' families had a high mortality rate, worse even than hunters themselves, or so it seemed. Tragedy was a common thread binding all those worn, leather-bound journals.
"Oh! Oh, no. I'm so sorry for your loss."
"You don't need to be. They're not dead. They're alive and well. Living in Battle Creek, last I heard."
"But how? Why?" Emma sputtered. Dean hitched one shoulder up in a shrug.
"People break up, Emma. They move on."
"Because you're a hunter, is that why? She- Your girlfriend- What was her name? She didn't understand, did she."
"No, she knew. She understood, better than I had any right to expect," he rasped. Emma realized he still hadn't told her the woman's name. "Sometimes things just don't work out," Dean said. "People move on."
The explanation didn't make any sense to Emma. Ordinary people broke up and moved on. Hunters and their families, she thought, they ought to know better. They knew what was out there in the dark. Terrible, evil things normal people didn't even know existed. Ordinary people broke up over ordinary things. Money. Cheating. Trivial things. Her father had saved the world! He deserved so much better.
"She must have been a real bitch, then-" Emma began, angry now on his behalf, but Dean cut her off.
"Don't you say that! Subject closed. We're not going to talk about them, either of them, ever again."
Emma swallowed hard.
"I'm sorry. It's just not fair," she murmured after another mile. Her father exhaled heavily. He scrubbed a hand over his face, resigned.
"Look, none of it was their fault. I ended it. I made Cas- I had their memories wiped clean. Like I'd never existed."
"That's not fair either! Even if really bad things happened," Emma blurted.
She'd read more than enough to imagine any number of scenarios, things that would make her dad willing to give up this nameless woman and her son, to keep them safe. That, at least, made sense. She couldn't imagine her father bickering over unpaid bills, or sneaking out to have an affair.
"You should have let her make her own choice."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't matter," Dean said doggedly. "Nobody would choose to have me in their life."
Emma's heart ached for him. She twisted in her seat to face him.
"I did."
He was silent for a minute, staring out at the road. Then he scoffed.
"Yeah, but you're not normal."
Emma blinked. That was callous, even by Winchester standards. Then she saw the gleam in her dad's eye as he looked sidelong at her, the upward tilt at the corner of his mouth. Typical. She balled up her fist and punched his upper arm, lightly, mindful of her strength, but hard enough to make him wince. Emma grinned.
"Neither are you."