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Dean wraps Emma’s body in a sheet carefully. He still can’t believe he has a daughter.
Had.
He pushes a lock of her hair away from her face and stares, trying to commit her features into memory. He owes her that much. He’s her dad. He should have been able to protect her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, too loud in the silence of the night.
The void in his chest is growing again. Cas, walking in that reservoir. Bobby, connected to machines and finally letting go. And now... that. Emma.
He feels like he’s going to fall at any moment now. The ground is crumbling under his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he tells again, though it won’t change a thing.
Sam was annoyed when Dean insisted to give her the respects due to hunters. He tried to change his mind and, when Dean refused, started muttering against the time waste.
Dean had to build the pyre and carry his daughter alone. Now he’s here, with his daughter half-wrapped, telling her goodbye without having the chance of knowing her first.
He truly is poison.
Dean covers his daughter’s face and lights the pyre.
If only Sam barged in a couple of minutes later... Dean could have convinced her to drop her knife. He could have saved her.
It’s adding up to the long and perpetually growing list of his failures.
Dean forces himself to walk away of the burning pyre, because he has a job. When he and Sam reach the docks, the Amazons boat is already disappearing at the horizon.
They’re too late.
Sam jumps to his throat as soon as they’re sitting back in the car, reminding him Amy, calling him a hypocrite and a bad hunter, blaming him for all evils.
Then he says something Dean can’t overlook.
“Look, man, she was not yours. Not really.”
“Actually, she– she was, really. She just also happened to be a crazy man-killing monster.”
But, even then, she was his daughter.
Sam gets mad again, saying he doesn’t care about how he feels as long as it won’t have consequences, and Dean snaps back. He’s doing what he can. Can’t he cut him some slack?
Dean can hardly look at him. Sam may be his brother, the person he sacrificied everything he has for time and time again... but now, he’s his daughter’s killer. He killed her in cold blood. She wasn’t a threat. What could have done a lone kid with a knife against two grown-up hunters aiming guns at her?
Dean wonders if he’ll be able to put that behind.
He forces himself to watch the road, right ahead of him. He thinks about Emma again, before pushing this memory as far as he can and locking it away, like so many other things—the blurred days of his childhood, his time in Hell, all the people he lost.
He has to focus on his job.
They have Leviathan to kill, people to save.
There’s nothing left for him here.
Dean thinks it every time he’s walking in the too-empty hallways of the bunker, every time he glances at the table, where are engraved the names of the last people they lost. Mary. Cas. Jack.
Jack isn’t dead, but they’ll never see him again.
And there are others. So many others. Charlie. Bobby. Benny. Ellen and Jo. Pamela. John.
His mind is a graveyard.
Some people are still alive, but it’s not enough for him to feel like he belongs. All those who make him feel home are missing.
At least, Sam has Eileen.
Dean has no one.
Guilt stabs him whenever he gets a text from Donna or Jody, he hears about Claire and Kaia, Alex and Patience, he has news from Garth and his family. It never lasts long. Right after, he remembers how much he lost and how little he has left.
He has no one to talk to. Cas was the one he turned to. He talked about his worries, about the way John raised them and treated him as a weapon, about Hell, about free will, about his worry when Mary walked away. He’s the only one with whom Dean felt safe enough to share everything he felt and feared and worried over. In turn, Cas told him how he felt about Heaven and God, his regrets about Jimmy, Amelia and Claire. He asked him about humanity. They had disagreements, but Dean has always known he could trust him for this and he couldn’t have dreamed for a better friend. A better family.
And now he’s gone.
Dean is tired and he can’t tell to anyone.
Dean is tired of everything, but he’s still hunting.
Sam insists. He thinks hunting is a panacea. As if they’ll forget about everyone they lost if they kill enough monsters.
Maybe it works for him. Dean doesn’t know. He never understood how his brother grieves. He doesn’t act like he’s grieving, moving forward as if nothing happened. Once the body is burnt, the person doesn’t exist anymore. They only belong to the past and talking about them is useless. Sam raised his drink to Jack, to celebrate their win, and Dean started listing some of the people they lost. Sam did too, but he hasn’t talked about it after. He keeps hunting.
It doesn’t work for Dean. The people he lost are etched in his mind. He doesn’t bother talking about it to Sam. He knows how he’ll react. He doesn’t want to hear he has to move on. So he shuts up and goes hunting as if nothing changed. They lost too much for beating Chuck to be a big win. What’s the point in reaching for a new life now?
Dean has to be extra-careful during hunts because he’s just so tired and it’d be easy to let go... He’d just have to be a little slower, a little less precise, and he wouldn’t have to endure any of that anymore.
It’d be so easy.
For now, he’s in the bunker’s library, skimming over the books from Greek lore. They’re filling many shelves of the library. He picks a couple of them, readying himself for research, and his eyes fall on a thin volume about Amazons. Something tears at his heart.
Emma.
He hasn’t allowed himself to think about her often over the course of the years, but she has always been at the edge of his mind.
It’s something else he told Cas about. It’s not like he could tell Sam about her.
Dean piles the other books on the shelves to pick this one. He shuffles through the pages, not knowing why. There’ll be nothing about Emma here.
His mind wanders to her. He told Cas about having a daughter who was killed right before his eyes without having been able to protect her, about not having known her, about wondering how she would have been like had she lived—what type of music, shows, food she would like? what would make her happy?
“What are you doing?”
Dean startles. He puts the book back on its shelf, feeling like he did something forbidden—and not in the fun way. “Picking books, like you asked me too.”
Sam walks closer and eyerolls when he says the book’s title. “Amazons, really? We know it’s not that.”
Dean feels stunned.
The word doesn’t evoke him anything else?
Sam is already brushing past him to choose other books.
“Be serious. We have a job. Lives are at stake.”
What about Emma?
Dean keeps the question to himself. He’s used of not telling anything about her outloud, especially when Sam is around. He hasn’t been able to protect her when she was alive, but he can make sure that no one would dismiss her now. Even if it means never talking about her.
Dean casts a last glance to the book before grabbing the books he chose earlier and dropping them on the table.
Dean keeps thinking about Emma.
It’s not the first time Dean is about to spiral down thinking about his daughter. It hit him from time to time, over the years. Some things remind him her painfully. Purgatory. His mom telling she didn’t wish for them to hunt—he wouldn’t have wished Emma to hunt. Jack.
It’s a phantom pain most of the time. But now, he’s mourning everyone, so he can mourn her too.
“Do you regret some of the things you did?” he asks Sam on their way to the bunker, after yet another hunt.
Sam looks at him in surprise. “What it’s about?”
“The people.”
“Oh. You mean Mom and Dad, and Jess, and those we lost.”
I mean Emma. I wonder if you regret killing her.
Dean knows the answer.
He tones it out when Sam starts dissecting his own feelings like something foreign from him. It’s his coping mechanism.
Sam doesn’t mention Cas or Jack. He doesn’t talk about Charlie or Kevin, or even Bobby. He removes himself as fast as he can from the dead, talking about their job and their duty as hunters.
Dean can’t pretend that well nothing happened.
Emma has been sent in Purgatory. Dean didn’t spot her there. He didn’t search for her. He has burnt her body and couldn’t bring her back with him and Cas. Drawing a target on her back is the only way he could have failed her more.
Dean wonders if she’s still there, or if she suffered her second death already, that death that prompted Cas to ask metaphysical questions.
He wonders and he has no answer.
There are spells to open portals to Purgatory.
Dean wrestles with himself, knowing he shouldn’t. He should stay here, keep hunting with Sam, help Jody or Donna—or Garth—when they call. That’s what he should do.
He pictures himself hunting until his last breath, dying at the claws of monsters like he expected since he knew about hunting.
He feels the walls close on him, the bunker trying to trap him here, underground. It’s not a home anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. It’s a grave waiting for his death, as if has been Kevin’s and Cas’ grave. As it’s metaphorically Mary’s and Jack’s—and Sam’s, with their names engraved in the wood.
Dean can’t stay here.
He has nowhere else to go.
They won against Chuck. There’s no one to pull the strings and causing disasters for the sake of a good story anymore. And yet... Dean never feels like they won. He’s still in the story Chuck imagined, hunting monsters with no one else than Sam at his side.
Dean has hoped so often to be more than that.
Too bad he doesn’t wish for anything anymore.
Dean reads the spells. If they are impossible to achieve, he’ll be able to focus on his job.
They’re impossible, requiring ingredients he can’t find.
His heart starts dropping.
He thought he could move on knowing he can do nothing for his daughter. He was wrong. He can’t give up. He feels like he has a purpose for the first time in months. Chuck is gone, there are many other hunters able to do his job, Sam has Eileen. He isn’t needed here anymore. He has no reason to move on from Emma. She can be his priority now. She deserves to be—she deserves more.
Dean starts reading the spellbooks, only when Sam isn’t around, until he finds an easier spell. It’s not to open a portal to Purgatory... but it doesn’t rule it out either. This spell offers you a one-way ticket to anyone you’re blood-related to.
The ingredients are easy to find. Most of them are already in the bunker.
Dean reads the spell a second, then a third time, to be sure there wouldn’t be any consequences on someone else than him.
There aren’t. It doesn’t open a portal anyone—or anything—can cross. The portal closes as soon as it’s crossed by the spell caster.
Dean doesn’t try to convince himself it’s a bad idea anymore. He stops telling himself he can’t be sure if Emma is still... in Purgatory and there are living people who might need his help.
He notes down the spell and hides the ingredients he needs in a box in his closet. He’s going to do it.
He only has to find something to represent Emma first.
Dean racks his brain but he doesn’t find anything to represent Emma for the spell.
He doesn’t have anything left from her. He hardly had the time to see her and speak with her before she was snatched away from him. No one else knows about her—except Sam.
It’s like she never existed.
Dean bites back an anguished sound. He has no right to complain. He just stood there while she got killed. He didn’t protect her.
But he has everything else he needs for the spell. How can he fail so close to the goal?
(Because he can’t protect anyone.)
The problem clings to his mind the following days.
He’s so close. He can’t fail now. Having hope dangled in front of them just for it to be snatched away from them at the last minute happened to them so often over the years.
An idea startles him awake, one night.
What if the thing representing Emma doesn’t need to have belonged to her? What if it only needs to represent her for him?
Dean rereads the spell. Nothing says it has to be an object from the person.
What represents Emma for me?
The question chases him all day long. It’s a song in the back of his mind when he’s dealing with the chores, taking care of Miracle or hunting with Sam.
What could represent Emma?
Emma is his daughter. She has been raised by a cult of crazy men-killing monsters, but she hadn’t killed anyone yet. She was a baby in a crib at Lydia’s home, a little girl entrusted to dangerous monsters, a teenager talking to him in his motel room, trying to trick him, but who could have been talked out of it.
Please, don’t let him hurt me.
What could represent Emma for him?
Dean looks in his belongings. He has pictures of Mary—who, according to Cas, is in Heaven and happier than she has been with them. He has the jacket with Cas’ blood—he can’t reach for Cas, the spell is only for blood relatives.
He has nothing from Emma. No picture, no trinket.
Dean retrieves the book about Amazons and browses through it. Emma isn’t only that. Actually, she’s nothing like they wrote. She never passed the last trial. She never grew into a cold, calculating monster. She never hid into the society, watching for preys. She was just... a kid. A unlucky kid.
It isn’t helping.
Dean is about to close the book when his eyes are drawn by the mark of Amazons, carved into a man’s chest. He remembers it being burnt on her wrist, as she showed it to him, saying they hurt her. She did so to lower his guard but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been true. The world is much more complicated than that.
Dean would like to find something else. It’s unfair toward Emma... but everything she went through was unfair, so it fits.
He draws the symbol on a piece of paper. It’s about successful killings, about Amazons being monsters, also about them being turned into monsters. About having or not a choice. A kid branded like cattle, shaped into a monster—but who haven’t done anything yet, who could have make the right choice, given the chance.
Dean returns the book to its place.
In addition to the spell ingredients, Dean gathers a couple of weapons.
Dean waits for Sam to leave the bunker to hunt with Eileen. It doesn’t happen often enough. Sam prefers to drag him to hunts, as if by pretending everything is normal, everything will be.
It won’t. Dean doesn’t understand how Sam can refuse to see it.
He leaves a note, without telling where he’s going—maybe Sam would try to bring him back this time. He only writes that he has something to do and he won’t come back. He asks his brother to take care of Miracle.
A hysterical laugh bubbles in his chest. He’s going to lock himself in Purgatory after entrusting a dog to Sam, hoping he’ll settle with his girl. His life is absurd.
When he calms down, he adds he’s proud of Sam and wishes him happiness.
His pen shakes on the last word.
He hesitates to write something for Eileen, or the others, before giving up. Farewell tours are sick and selfish. They did enough for him, suffered enough because of him. He doesn’t intend to burden them more.
Dean decides to cast the spell in his room. He puts the herbs in a bowl then cuts his palm and writes three Latin—obviously—words with his blood over the Amazons symbol. He burns the herbs and holds the paper in the smoke, whispering the spell a first time. He drops it in the bowl and, as it burns, whispers the spell a second time.
With a knife, he engraves a sentence over the door, checking the spelling several times—no one wants to cast a wrong spell—then another one at the foot of the door. He stands up, his knees protesting, and stares at the door. It doesn’t feel any different.
Dean picks up the bowl, his heart beating too loudly. He waves the smoke to the door, inhales some of it and tries to not choke while chanting the words.
Witchcraft is dumb.
He drops the bowl on his desk and faces the door again. The moment of truth arrived. Dean feels overwhelmed when he reaches out for the handle. If it doesn’t work– He doesn’t allow himself to worry longer and opens the door. He holds back his breath. Purgatory is here, on the other side. It worked. It means– It means Emma is still there. He can find her.
He abandoned her for too long.
Dean grabs his machete and steps into Purgatory. A weight lifts from his shoulders. This place is still... so pure.
The portal closes behind him. Dean doesn’t cast a glance back. What would be the point? He doesn’t intend to return.
He looks around him. The place is dim, as if a grey toner has been applied to it. Plants are darker than the sky, the ground darker than the plants.
Dean assumes the portal didn’t open too far away from Emma, but there are so many directions he could follow—so many wrong directions.
Dean chooses one randomly. Staying here all day long won’t provide him an answer. He moves forward, the machete in his hand, his eyes wandering on his surroundings, searching for Emma and wary of predators.
It doesn’t take long before he spots a monster. The monster gapes at him.
“I’m back.”
The monster knows about him. The human who got stuck in Purgatory and left.
“The human.”
Dean didn’t miss the way they look at him and talk about him, but being on Earth isn’t better in that respect.
“Good timing. I’ve got a question.”
The monster startles. He doesn’t get why Dean is talking instead of running away. He’s one of those naive souls who thinks he’s harmless because he’s human.
Or maybe he doesn’t get why he wants to ask him something. Dean let none of the others go after questioning them. He can’t know about his quest.
It doesn’t matter. He has another objective now. The angel is out of reach, but his daughter isn’t.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where the Amazons are living, do you?”
“You don’t need to know.”
Predictably, the monster pounces on him. Dean dodges him, cuts his back and, once he’s on the ground, impales his arm with the machete.
“So?”
“They don’t mix with us. Their camp is there,” the monster says, nodding toward his left. “About three days away.”
Dean promptly cuts the monster’s head and stands. A three days journey sounds quite far. He’s sure the spell he cast is more precise than that.
Emma didn’t kill him. The Amazons wouldn’t welcome her.
Dean turns his back to that direction and walks in the opposite way.
Maybe Emma isn’t there either, but it’s as a good place to start as any.
Dean forgot what a beacon he is in Purgatory.
If Benny were here, he’d have something to say about it. He’d also have something to say about Dean searching again for someone. Maybe he’d ask him how he keeps losing people in Purgatory.
Another person in the graveyard of his mind.
Dean misses him.
Dean keeps walking and fighting. Purgatory was easier with a back-up. Monsters are chasing him and attacking him, driven by their hunger for human flesh and blood. Dean greets them with blades. He asks them if they ever heard about a straying Amazon—none of them did—and kills them, before straying farther away from the Amazons’ camp.
Dean decides to circle the Amazons’ camp. Even if Emma can’t or doesn’t want to live with them, she had no one else. It’d be comforting for her to be able to reach them.
Dean keeps searching. He tracks down unaware monsters. He defends himself from those who think they are tracking him down.
Dean spots a figure through the trees. He holds his machete tighter and pads silently to them. He halts, his eyes rounding, when he recognizes her, wearing a flaring purple and black gown.
“Rowena?”
The witch—Queen of Hell—turns around and smiles in relief.
“Dean. Samuel is searching you everywhere.”
Dean blinks. He doesn’t feel like he has been gone for so long.
“He called you?”
“I’d like to pride myself by believing I was his first choice alas I know he was only desesperate.”
“Well... nice to see you but I’ve somewhere else to be.”
Dean nods and walks away but Rowena appears on his path. He stops again.
“He isn’t here.”
Dean’s throat tightens. “I know.” Cas isn’t anywhere he can reach him. The same goes for Jack, and everyone else. Everyone but Emma. “It’s not for him. It’s someone else.”
“Who could be needing you here? Your family is on Earth. You have to go back. I can help you.”
She holds out a hand to him and Dean scrambles back.
“Don’t.”
“Dean.”
Dean doesn’t want to talk about it, especially if his words are going to end up in Sam’s ears, but only the truth could convince Rowena to not bring him back against his will. She’d understand.
“I’m searching for my daughter. She’s alone here. You’d prevent me to search her?”
It resonates with Rowena. Despite their reluctant affection for each other, they don’t understand each other well. But that... Doing everything you could for a child you failed—your child—she has to understand.
“Your daughter?”
Dean nods.
There are thousands of questions in her eyes. She only asks one.
“How can you be sure she’s still–”
“She is. The spell wouldn’t have worked otherwise.”
Rowena nods and whispers the spell’s name.
“How will you come back?”
“I won’t. There’s nothing left of her up there.”
Had he known, he wouldn’t have burned her body. He thought he protected her, but he only failed her again.
“I can’t bring her back, and I won’t leave without her.”
“So you’ll stay.”
Dean shrugs slowly. “There are worst places to be.”
Like a bunker that is nothing but a reminder of everyone he lost.
“Maybe there is a way.”
Dean smiles wryly.
“I didn’t take you for an optimist.”
“There are many things you do not know about me,” she recites slowly.
“Even the spell you create to bring Mom back needed something.”
“I was different then. Maybe the Queen of Hell can find another way.”
Rowena vanishes. Dean shakes his head and continues his journey. Soon, his encounter with Rowena slips out of his mind. Down here, the only thing that matters is your own survival. You don’t have to care about the future. No one asks you what you intend to do in a day, a week, a month. You don’t have to think about the too many days ahead of you, so hollow, so empty. You have no time to worry about all the people you failed or all the people you’ll never see again.
All you have to do is last one more day.
Dean kills another monster and is about to resume his journey when he hears a rustle. He stills, on his guard. There’s a footstep. He swirls around...
...and she’s here.
Fight bleeds from his body. Emma freezes too, staring at him with huge eyes. Dean feels like his heart is clawed out of his chest. She’s exactly the way he remembers her. He sees her eyes widening, the sad turn of her mouth becoming more pronounced, the way she’s recoiling. It makes him sick. His own child is afraid of him, and she’s right to be. Dean is no good for no one.
But he can try.
Her eyes fall on his machete and her fear turns into terror. She isn’t holding any weapon. Dean sets down the machete on the ground.
“Emma?”
His voice breaks on the name.
She looks at his face, wary, but not looking like she’s about to flee anymore.
She hasn’t wanted to run away that day either.
“Emma?” he repeats, his voice softer. “Emma. I’m so sorry.”
Her expression clouds in confusion.
“For what?”
Please don’t let him hurt me.
“For letting him hurt you.”
She flinches.
“For not protecting you. For letting you die. For... everything.”
Emma doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t walk away either. Dean doesn’t know what to do. He hasn’t thought things that far. All he wanted was to see if she was– if she was still here and to find her.
He’s prevented to ponder more by a move on his right. He picks up his machete, swirls around and sees a monster moving toward him.
“The human.”
Dean holds back an annoyed sigh. The next words will certainly be about tearing him apart and devouring him, so Dean doesn’t feel the need to hear it. He rushes toward the monster, catching him off guard—they’re always surprised when he does more than defending himself—and promptly cuts his head.
When he turns around, Emma is staring with round eyes. Yeah, killing something in front of her isn’t the best way to show himself in the best light.
But the truth is always better than a lie.
“I’m a hunter, as you know.”
Dean refrains from adding he told her, once ago, he was no good, Cas’ words ringing into his mind.
“It was you? The human?”
“Yeah.”
“It was long ago. You didn’t search me.”
There’s hurt in her voice, and Dean wonders if it’s because she trusts him enough to show him or because she doesn’t know how to hide it.
“I had to leave, and I’m a beacon here,” he adds, pointing the dead monster with his machete. “I didn’t want...” He hesitates. He doesn’t want to make excuses but he has to answer Emma’s question. “I couldn’t bring you back. It’d have put you at risk for nothing.”
“You can take me with you, now?”
Dean’s heart crumbles. “I can’t. I... burnt down your body, like for hunters funerals.”
Emma nods, lowering her eyes but not looking upset. Maybe her body is a foreign concept for her. She only has it for three days, and she spent years down here.
“What happens now?” she asks, trying to sound casual and failing miles away. “When are you going to leave?”
“I won’t. I’m not abandoning you again.”
Emma raises her head quickly, her eyes full of shock and something else—something frail, and hopeful, and fearing to break.
“You won’t?”
“I’ll stay, if you want me around.”
Emma lets her eyes travel around her. She shrugs as casually as she can. Dean sees right through it. He has been that careless kid long ago. Claire still is.
“I’m kinda lonely. You can stay.”
It’s not easy. They move constantly, monsters trying to attack them—attack him. Emma doesn’t comment about the attack frequency. She doesn’t fight much. Dean doesn’t give her the chance to. He does his best to get rid of their attackers by himself. Once, there are too many of them and Emma has to defend herself. She uses the knife she had that day. When Dean stares at it in surprise, she shrugs.
“I had it when I appeared here. It’s useful.”
Dean nods. She wouldn’t have lasted that long here weaponless.
She hides it back in her sleeve.
“I thought I was going to die. My first day here,” Emma confesses one evening. “I was a failure for the Amazons. They looked down at me because I wasn’t strong and fierce enough. Ruthless enough. It looked easier for the others.”
Dean is quite surprised to hear that, because it means it’s because of him she isn’t a ruthless killer, that him being him shut up her Amazon killer instincts. It means... so many things. He doesn’t know how to detangle all his thoughts.
“I wanted to be like them, but also not. It would have been easier... but I found them scary.” Emma tracks the brand on her wrist. “And here... I don’t belong with them. I failed.”
“They threw you away?”
Emma shakes her head. “I didn’t dare to go to them. I knew where they are settled because of some of the others. They’re surprised when they see an Amazon alone. A werewolf ran away from me because he thought I was a scout.”
“You don’t miss them?”
Emma doesn’t answer right away.
“I miss my mom,” she whispers finally, as if she’s fearing Dean’s reaction.
“Lydia cared about you.”
Emma startles. She looks up at him, her eyes sad and begging. “You think so?” Her face darkens before Dean can answer. “It’s been years. She forgot about me. Or only remembers my failure.”
“You’re her kid. She has to remember you.”
She looks at him with haunted eyes. “How long I’ve been here?”
“Eight years.”
Emma lifts her eyes up to the canopy. “It means she had four other daughters. I’m sure they were good Amazons. They didn’t disappoint her and they fit among their sisters.”
What Dean can answer to that? He doesn’t know a thing about Lydia, and generalities wouldn’t comfort her.
They walk without exchanging a word for a bit.
“You don’t mind we’re going so far from the Amazons camp?”
“Why would I?”
“You settled close to them.”
“For safety. The others are wary about them. They don’t get close,” she gives him a sideway look, “except when they have a motivation.”
“So, with me around, it’s useless?”
“It is.”
Emma doesn’t sound like she regrets it.
Dean tells her stories, mainly shows and movies he watched. He sings Hey Jude and other songs to her. His musical skills can’t compare to the originals, but it’s better than not knowing those songs at all.
Emma wants to learn the lyrics, so Dean teaches her. Soon, there are songs they can sing together.
She asks him things about the world and he answers. He tells her everything he remembers, things he only heard about or saw on TV. He explains how different it is from Purgatory.
“The world above is huge,” she comments, awe lacing her tone. “Purgatory is vast too, but everything is the same.”
Dean can only agree. Purgatory is looking endless. He walked around it for a year, and never reached a shore or a wall or anything marking its end. He never heard about someone reaching its borders either, but there aren’t as many landscapes here as there are on Earth. It’s a land of forests and rivers, of eternal dusk. Weather doesn’t change, the sky has always the same color, seasons don’t go by. As if someone pressed the pause button.
Wistfulness pierces his chest.
Emma will never know anything else.
Emma quickly runs out of stories. She only lived three days, after all.
A red spot appears between the trees. Emma stills and frowns, wondering what it belongs to. Dean gestures her it’s okay and keeps walking. She hardly hesitates before following him, and Dean hopes he’ll deserve that trust, that he won’t fail her—again. Rowena in standing in a small clearing, too bright for Purgatory with her fiery hair and her scarlet gown. Or the problem is that she’s the Queen of Hell. Purgatory dislikes anything not monstery.
“Hi Rowena.”
“You have to come back.”
“I’m sure Sam's doing well without me.”
Rowena pursues her lips. She glances at Emma who tries to not stare at her, wanting to look unfazed but unable to conceal her curiosity. Dean can only imagine the impression Rowena conveys to someone who has experienced nothing but this grey, sad forest.
Rowena smiles. She loves being admired.
“You could stand watch while your dad and me talk?”
The command, despite being disguised in a question, startles Emma out of her awe.
“If you want to talk alone, you can tell me, you know.”
Rowena raises her eyebrow. “I’d like to talk alone with your dad.”
Emma glances at Dean, nods and walks away.
“Don’t go too far.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Dean is used of mouthing teenagers—he did raise Sam and Claire crushes the entire teenagehood at snarkiness—and Emma doesn’t walk far away.
He turns back toward Rowena.
“What do you want?”
“She’s an Amazon.”
“Yeah, and?”
“It’s dangerous for you to stay here.”
“It’s Purgatory. I didn’t expect anything else.”
“You know what they do to their fathers? Not that I judge them for it. Fathers! Who needs them?”
“You wanna sign an Amazon membership?”
Dean’s mouth lifts in a smirk. Rowena shakes her head slowly.
“All that motherhood, and sisterhood, is not for me. And the hierarchy... I’m good where I am. And you’d be safer away from her. What if she kills you to be accepted by her kind?”
“She had plenty of occasions to try. She didn’t.”
“What if...”
Rowena cuts herself.
“What?”
“What if she killed you to go back to life?”
“Would it work?”
Rowena narrows her eyes at him, her mouth pinching in annoyance. “Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the Amazons belief in parricide. I do not blame them on the principle, Dean, but I started to care about you,” she adds, singsonging.
Dean rolls his eyes. Rowena isn’t happy when she can’t stage a little.
“Well, color me warned.”
He turns his back to her and walks away.
“Dean...”
“I can’t give up on her again,” he whispers over his shoulder. “I’m tired of failing people.”
“Aren’t you failing Sam?”
It’s Rowena’s last card, Dean understands it in the way she’s saying it and looking at him, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t compel him to go back.
“Sam has a good life ahead of him. He doesn’t need me anymore. No one there needs me. Emma does. I’m staying.” He gives her a small smile. “Bye, Rowena.”
She doesn’t answer. She hates goodbyes even more than him.
Dean walks back to Emma.
“What did she want?”
“Convincing me to leave.”
Emma peers above Dean’s shoulder, toward Rowena.
“Shouldn’t you go?”
“I told you I’d stay, didn’t I?”
Relief makes Emma’s expression softer. She notices it and squares her shoulders.
“We should move again?”
“Yeah.”
They keep going. Dean can give nothing to Emma except his company. He hopes it’s enough, and compensating all the downsides there are travelling with a human in Purgatory.
He understands better Cas’ actions in Purgatory, so long ago. Part of him itches to get away to protect Emma from the monsters tracking him.
“Rowena believes you’re going to kill me to be accepted by the Amazons.”
Emma doesn’t answer right away, and when she does, she doesn’t meet his eyes, looking stubbornly at the ground.
“I think about it sometimes,” she confesses. “I don’t want to, but...”
But everyone keeps thinking about different paths.
Dean thought about staying at Sonny, about walking away when he was tired of Sam and their dad fighting, about disappearing where no one would find him.
He never did.
“Why not?”
Emma looks down at the mark on her wrist. She does so often, as if it was holding answers.
“They never answered my questions—we weren’t meant to have questions. They didn’t teach me songs or tell me stories that aren’t about them and our legacy. You’re my Dad, and it shouldn’t mean anything for me, but it does. I–” She bites her lips then adds, after a pause, “It’s almost nice here, now you’re here too.”
Another pause. Dean loves those quiet moments, when monsters aren’t attacking them and he could almost believe they’re strolling in a forest.
“Rowena thinks you’re going to kill me to go back on Earth.”
Emma frowns in confusion. Dean is quite surprised by her expression. He knows he displays the same when he tries to solve a puzzle. He knows Emma is his daughter, but it’s weird to see evidences of it.
“How would that work?”
Dean shrugs. He doesn’t know.
Emma ponders more. She shakes her head. “I don’t care. I don’t know anything there. I have nowhere to come back to.”
“Same kiddo.”
For the first time, Emma offers him a tentative smile.
Dean would like to do more for her but, somehow, he thinks they’re going to be okay.