Sam could hear shots in the distance as he scrolled through a news site on his computer. Dean and Emma were back in the woods behind Rufus Turner's cabin, shooting tin cans off fence posts. The brothers had tacitly divided up Emma's training, with Sam taking charge of hand-to-hand combat. It didn't take a genius, Sam thought, to come to the conclusion that assigning Dean as Emma's sparring partner would be a bad idea. The Amazons trained their initiates in the rudiments of combat so they could murder their fathers. No need for the girl to have to revisit those memories.
Returning from a grocery run later in the day, he found his brother presiding over what looked like half the Winchesters' firearms arsenal spread out on the kitchen table. Emma was busy cleaning a pistol under her dad's watchful eye. Dean was working on another weapon with the casual ease of a lifetime of practice, callused hands moving deftly, barely sparing the gun a glance. Sam frowned as he searched for an alternate place to unpack the grocery bags in the cluttered kitchen. Their father had approached his boys' training with the intensity of a Marine drill sergeant. He could see Dean following that same path with Emma. Well, not while he was around.
"I'm a werewolf!" he announced loudly, brandishing a freezer bag of pizza rolls.
Dean and Emma glanced up, her expression bemused, his brother's skeptical.
"Well, you could use a shave," Dean suggested dryly.
"I'm a werewolf. I'm going to kill you. It's a game," he added for Emma's benefit. "The object is for you to remember the lore. You win, you get chocolate," he added, pulling out a bag of bite-size candy bars.
"What if I lose? Do you kill me?" Emma asked, impassive. Sam blinked. Sometimes it was hard to tell when she was joking.
"I might," he said, his delivery equally deadpan. "Come on. Werewolf..."
"Silver," Emma said promptly.
"Show me what you got," he challenged. It was a hunter's cabin, after all. There ought to be some silver lying around. Emma jumped up and ran to the counter, finally getting into the spirit of the game. She opened a jumbled cutlery drawer.
"I win." She made a playful stabbing motion with the knife she'd found.
Sam snorted.
"With a butter knife? I don't think so."
"Hey, she can bench press three-fifty. She can jam a butter knife through a werewolf's sternum, easy," Dean put in his two cent's worth.
"Ew, gross." Emma was rummaging in the drawer again.
"And a werewolf can turn a person with one bite. Too risky," Sam countered his brother's argument.
"Salad fork?" Emma advanced, jabbing the item in question toward his chest. "Come on, Sam, it's pointy, and I've got super-strength," she wheedled.
"All right, all right." He tore open the bag of candy and tossed one to her.
"Me too," Dean demanded.
Overall, Sam thought the decision to let the teenager train as a hunter was a good one. Emma seemed more engaged with something to occupy her time. Happier. The added attention from Dean probably couldn't hurt, either, as long as his brother didn't follow in their father's footsteps too closely.
The next afternoon he paused in the middle of practicing kicks and blocks with Emma on the overgrown lawn in front of the cabin.
"I'm a wendigo!"
"Um, fire!"
The teen patted her pockets, eyes widening as she realized she didn't have a lighter. Sam stretched out his arms, fingers curled like talons, doing his best to look menacing. With a shriek of laughter, Emma took off running. Grinning, Sam pelted down the dirt road after her. After a few seconds he consciously slowed his longer strides to match her pace so he wouldn't catch up too soon.
After all, running was another good skill for a hunter to have.
When they got back to the cabin, Dean was loading a duffel bag into their latest ride, a faux wood paneled station wagon.
"Garth called. Needs our help in some little burg in Kansas," he announced. "You can come too," he added before Emma had to ask. Sam pulled his brother aside as the teen ran inside to pack her few belongings for the trip
"How are you planning to explain Emma to Garth?"
"No problem, I'll just tell him she's my daughter. Say her mom went nuts, went full-on homicidal maniac or something," Dean grinned. "It's basically the truth."
"You realize Garth's going to think you fathered a kid when you were like, seventeen."
"Huh." Dean's grin only widened as he pondered this. "Beats him thinking she's an Amazon. It'll be fine. Just more proof that I'm a stud," he smirked. Sam looked disgusted.
"Dude. Gross."
Dean suggested a celebratory round of drinks after they'd managed to kill the Shojo. Sam was reluctant, but Garth, already tipsy, embraced the plan with enthusiasm. Naturally, the lanky hunter got completely bombed within the next half hour. Sam poured him into a taxi cab. Dean flirted with a cocktail waitress while knocking back shots of whiskey. The brothers finally called a cab of their own, rolling in around three o'clock in the morning. Dean fumbled with the keys, dropping them once with a metallic clatter before wrestling the motel door open. Sam tripped over the threshold and narrowly avoided knocking over a lamp.
"Shh," Dean warned in a stage whisper. "You'll wake up the kid."
"Emma?" Sam blinked, belatedly remembering his niece, and the fact that he'd rented a separate room next door.
"No, Miley Cyrus," Dean shot back. "Who d'ya think?"
Sam ignored the sarcasm.
"She's not here," he said. The neon motel sign outside illuminated enough to see that the Winchester brothers were currently the only occupants of the room
"Huh?" Dean flipped the light switch. More blinking ensued.
"She's not here." Dean accused. He glowered at Sam, then stumbled to the bathroom. He pulled the shower curtain aside and peered blearily into the bathtub.
"'The hell is she?"
Sam dutifully searched the closet, but the sight of his brother-now down on hands and knees trying to look under the twin platform beds-was enough to quell the drunken impulse to check inside the mini fridge.
"She prob'ly just went out for a walk," he suggested, trying to apply some logic to the situation.
"At three in the morning? I told her to stay put!" Dean rose from between the beds with some difficulty, his expression a mix of anger and concern.
"It's okay. I'm right here," Emma spoke up from the doorway. "I couldn't sleep, so I-"
"Decided to go out wandering around in the middle of the night?" Dean cut off her explanation. "What, are you stupid? What if somebody... Some thing…"
"You're worried I'll get mugged?" Emma scoffed, incredulous. "I'm not human, remember? Somebody tries to mug me, they're in for the shock of their lives. And I'm not stupid," she added with a frown.
"Well, you're not bulletproof, either." Dean's voice rose. "And that, that Shojo was a nasty piece of work. Super strong. Invisible. You'd never see it coming-"
"Unless I was drunk, like you!" Emma fired back. She was trembling, Sam noted, his own drunken haze receding as the conflict escalated. His body had tensed, too, hands unconsciously balling into fists. The confrontation was all too familiar, reminding him of the many times he'd squared off against his own father. He felt a flash of sympathy for Dean. This was what his brother must have felt like, witnessing those long-ago shouting matches. But now he'd taken on their father's role.
"Dean," he began, but his brother wasn't listening.
"That Shojo was going after peoples' kids!"
"Some random beer brewer's kids, not just any kids," Emma protested. "Not me!"
"Dean," Sam tried to interject.
"That's not the point," Dean blustered. "There's demons out there, we got Leviathans gunning for us-"
"I know. I know! We're at war! 'Stay in the car'," Emma mimicked her father's gruff tone, "'Stay in the room!' While you go out and get drunk-" She stopped herself, looking surprised at her outburst, the words that she'd blurted out.
Dean flinched as if she'd struck him.
"Yeah, I drink," he admitted after a moment, "but you don't get to judge me." He'd lowered his voice, but there was a hard undercurrent of self-righteous anger in it that made Sam's hackles rise. It was eerily similar to John Winchester's tone whenever he and his youngest son had clashed.
"You got no right to judge, not until you've seen half of what I've seen, you hear me? I'm bustin' my ass out there, saving people, hunting down those bastard Levis, trying to save the damn world again-"
"Dean!" Sam shouted, grabbing his brother by the arms. "Just shut up!"
He opened his mouth to argue, but something stopped him. Probably the look on his face, Sam thought. With his normal inhibitions lowered by alcohol, the minor domestic disturbance had left his eyes, well, not wet, precisely, but the potential was clearly there. Dean's shoulders slumped as the fight went out of him. He shrugged out of his brother's grip, but only so he could place a reassuring hand on Sam's shoulder. Dean turned back to Emma, but the teenager drew herself up to her full height, calling on that rigid self-control the Amazons had instilled in her.
"Look, we're all tired. I'm going to go next door and get some sleep," she said with all the dignity she could muster. She turned away.
Sam didn't have to give his brother a look this time. Dean squeezed his shoulder, apology in the gesture, and followed Emma out the door. When he got to the room next door she was sitting on one of the beds unlacing her boots. Her hair fell over her face, concealing her expression.
"Hey," he said gently, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Emma said tonelessly. Boots off, she curled up on the bed, her back to him. Dean went over and sat on the edge of the mattress.
"No. It's not." He sighed heavily and ran a hand over his face. "I sounded just like my dad used to. You didn't deserve any of that."
"Your dad was a hero. I thought you liked being like him." Her voice was small, but there was a hint of curiosity in it.
He scoffed, an almost silent exhale.
"Not when he was drunk." Hesitantly, he rested his hand on her back. Emma flinched momentarily, but didn't move away, so he left it there, lightly rubbing circles between her shoulder blades.
"'S'okay," she repeated in a drowsy murmur, relaxing by slow increments.
The old digital alarm clock on the bedside table ticked over the minutes and the neon lights outside the window cast an orange-pink glow over the room. Dean sat beside her until she fell asleep.
Emma slipped out as quietly as she could the next morning, but her father was awake and working on his computer when she returned with a cardboard take-out tray of coffee.
"Thanks." He grabbed a cup and took a drink, grimacing when he realized his mistake.
"Ugh. This one must be yours," Dean said, exchanging Emma's heavily sweetened brew for the other cup in the tray. Fortified with a few bitter, caffeinated sips, he pushed back from the table and reached for his old leather jacket.
"Come on. Need your help with something."
Emma followed him outside, where Dean groaned at the sunlight that assaulted his eyes. He led the teen around to the side of the motel, pointing out a bare patch of white-painted wall.
"There. That'll work. Stand there, against the wall. Good. Hold still."
"Why? What's that for?" she asked as he pulled out a phone and snapped her picture.
"You'll see. Go bang on Sam's door, why don't you? He ought to be awake to enjoy the sunshine, too," he groused, already walking back to the relative dimness of the motel room.
Not long after, Emma looked over her father's shoulder, her lips pursing into a frown of disapproval at the photograph he'd taken of her.
"That's not a very good picture."
"It's not supposed to be." He turned to smirk up at her. "Everybody hates their driver's license photo, trust me."
"Driver's license?" Emma did her best to sound casual, but her interest was definitely piqued.
"Yeah, figured it was about time. What's your middle name?" Dean asked, fingers tapping on the keyboard.
"Uh, I don't have one. Mother Madeline just gave us each the one name. Everything else is just a pseudonym, you know, like when you and Sam pose as FBI agents."
"Your mom didn't even get to name you?"
"No. The Matriarch gets that privilege. I think Mother Madeline had some kind of alphabet theme going on," Emma reminisced with a wry smile. "My sister initiates were Carla, Daphne, Frances, and Georgia."
Dean gave an exaggerated wince.
"Frances, huh? You lucked out. But anyway, you ought to have a middle name. I mean, all the government forms have a space for one," he rationalized. "You got a preference?"
"Um…" Emma frowned, feeling as though she'd been put on the spot. "Do you?" she asked with some trepidation. It didn't seem entirely wise to offer him free rein, though the idea of him picking out a name for her had a certain appeal. But knowing her dad, she might end up with something like Queensryche or Chevrolet.
"Jo," he replied without hesitation.
"Joe is a boy's name," Emma pointed out, skeptical.
"Well, this one was a girl. A hunter, and a damn good one," her dad said gruffly.
"Okay," she nodded slowly, considering. "Yeah. I like it."
A short while later as Sam and Emma were packing the station wagon for the trip back to Montana, Dean pressed the finished forgery into her hand, still warm from the laminator.
"My little girl's first fake ID," he quipped to Sam. "This is such a proud moment."
"This is awesome!" Emma enthused, admiring her dad's handiwork. Emma Jo Winchester. Seeing the name in print warmed her, and she beamed. Then she looked closer.
"Wait. This is only a learner's permit."
Dean's eyebrows arched.
"You saying you know how to drive?"
"Well, no, but if it's fake anyway, what does it matter?"
"No fake license until you learn to drive. That's the rule," Dean said firmly, as if such a rule was really on the books somewhere. "Don't worry, I'll teach you." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "'Soon as I'm not so hungover."