Chapter Text
Fireworks light up the night sky, scattering in bright bursts of gold and red. Dean’s got his arm around Sammy, breathless and overjoyed. Sam turns under Dean’s embrace to wrap him in a hug.
“Dad would never let us do anything like this. Thanks, Dean. This is great.” Dean hugs his brother back, just a quick squeeze before pushing the kid away, ruffling his floppy hair with his fist.
“Light ‘em up, dweeb,” Dean says, and Sam runs off with the crate of fireworks. He lights them, yelling “Fire in the hole!” before darting back to Dean’s side. They watch the fireworks go off, hearts pounding and joy filling Dean all the way up. He laughs, giddy, and Sam runs closer to the fireworks, dancing in the shower of sparks. Dean knows it’s dangerous, but they do dangerous stuff every day. Why not let the kid live a little?
The fireworks keep going off. Sam pulls Dean under the sparks, and they laugh like little kids and for a minute, Dean is seventeen and Sam is thirteen and they’re stupid kids doing something dumb in the dark, and the haunting that’s keeping their dad half a state away doesn’t exist at all anymore.
“Dean,” a voice says. Not Sammy.
Dean stops dancing. The fireworks fade. A person is standing across the field, beside the Impala. The person is shaped like a man, but made of light. It has no face nor features, just a blue-gold glow.
Suddenly, Dean and the person are alone. Sammy and the Impala are gone.
“Where’s Sammy? Who are you?” Dean asks. His voice wavers. “What are you doing here?”
“I mean you no harm, Dean Winchester,” the person says. It takes a step toward Dean. Dean steps back. This thing took Sammy. Dean clenches his fist.
“Oh yeah?” he sneers. “Sorry if I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Why would a good guy steal my brother and my car, huh?” This thing has gotta be some kind of idiot. Why does it think Dean would trust it?
“I have done no harm to either. This is not real. None of what you are seeing is reality.”
“So your face isn’t really that jacked up?” If this thing hadn’t stolen Sammy, Dean would think maybe the person made of light was beautiful. Like a painting.
“My face is too terrible for your comprehension,” the person says. “I have created an approximation of a human form for your ease.”
“Huh?”
“Let me put it simply: I am an angel, and you are dead.”
“No way,” Dean says. “It’s the fourth of July. Sammy and I spent all day at the movie theater. Nothing coulda killed me, I didn’t do anything dangerous.” The only dangerous thing Dean’s done all week is shoplift fireworks.
“It is February fourth, 2005,” the person says. “You were killed on a hunt.”
“What?” Dean says. “No, that can’t be true.”
But as he says it, he remembers--that girl, his age--not his age, he’s not seventeen, he’s recently twenty-six--and the golden knife, and the case, and the librarian, and Lydia, looming over him in Baby’s backseat. He remembers the blood welling in his mouth and the Amazon’s tears, and her apologies as she put her hands over his neck frantically. He remembers everything going black.
Dean stumbles back. When he looks at the person again, he finds that he is taller than it, if only by a few inches. His hands are broad and callused, and his ratty converse have been replaced with his favorite hunting boots.
“Oh, fuck,” he says. He remembers everything. But--him being dead, okay. Sure. Not great, but. Well. But… “Angel?”
“Yes.” The person--the angel? No way--says.
“But you don’t have--wings. Or a halo.” The person looks like a glowing dude. Not an angel. No dress or harp.
“That is a human misconception,” the angel says.
“But angels aren’t real,” Dean says. “And if they are then why would they be in Hell?”
“Hell?” The creature tilts its head. It’s unsettling, talking to a guy with no face. Dean can’t tell what it’s thinking at all.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I mean, you said I was dead.”
“Why does that mean you are in Hell?”
“Uh, cause I’m me?”
For a long moment, the creature says nothing. Dean wonders if he broke it.
“Dean Winchester,” the creature says. “Age twenty-six and eleven days. A brother, a son, a father. A hunter. You dedicate your life to saving other people and give all of yourself to the cause. You sacrificed your childhood and your adulthood for your brother, and the only thing you asked in return is a warm meal. You sacrificed your life for your daughter. You, Dean Winchester, are not bad. You are Righteous. You do not think you deserve Heaven? Too bad .”
Dean isn’t sure how to answer that. But--
“Daughter?” he croaks. He’s pretty sure he would know if he had a daughter.
“Yes,” the creature says. “Where did you think the Amazon came from? Why did you think she had to kill you, specifically?”
Dean’s eyes widen. Emma, apologizing, tears in her eyes. Jerry’s trip to the Cobalt Room days before he was killed. Dean, following him there. Lydia.
Dean crumbles. He has a daughter. He has a daughter, and she’s a monster, and she killed him. Oh god, it’s a good thing he’s already dead, because Dad would kill him. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck.
Now he knows he’s in Hell.
“I apologize,” the creature says, stiff. “I did not realize--I thought you knew.”
“She’s my kid,” Dean says. “And she’s stuck with those fucking--how long before she has to go sleep with some schmuck and sire his murderer?”
“Now that she is old enough to kill her father, she ages at the human rate,” the creature says. “She will not be sent out to reproduce until she is twenty-one, or so.”
That’s like five years. Not very long at all. Dean wants to throw up. But--
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Dean asks, looking up at the creature. “How do I know this ain’t--some torture?”
“I am not a demon,” the creature says. “This is Heaven. What must I do to convince you?”
“I dunno,” Dean says. “Show me your wings?”
He’s joking, maybe, but suddenly the air grows dark and the creature grows bright. Great expanses of glowing white wings stretch out of its back, spreading wide and glorious, feathers fanning gracefully. A thin circle shines over the creature’s head, and somewhere beyond the trees, thunder cracks.
The wings fade, and light returns to the field, and Dean realizes that he doesn’t have a heartbeat, because he can’t feel it pounding in his chest.
He gets back to his feet. He’s not sure if he’s convinced. He’s never believed in Heaven or angels. But whatever this creature is--angel or not--it’s divine .
“Okay,” Dean says. “Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Which--jury’s out. But say I do. What’s your game, here? Does every poor murdered bastard get visited by an angel? Are you my guardian? Like ‘ever this day, be at my side’? Or more like Clarence?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the creature says. “Normally we leave humans to their Heavens, and let them live in their memories in peace. However, you are needed on Earth.”
Dean laughs. “Nobody needs me.”
“The angels need you,” the creature says.
“For what?”
“Right now that is not your concern. But you cannot remain in Heaven.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, Dean Winchester, that I have been sent to cast you from salvation.”
The angel extends a glowing hand. It reaches for Dean’s forehead. Its touch is cool and hot at the same time, somehow, and it barely puts pressure on his forehead before, once again, everything goes black.
Dean wakes up sweaty. He opens his eyes.
Nothing, just darkness. He’s laying down on something hard. When he wiggles, he finds that he’s trapped in a narrow space. There’s only a few inches on either side of him, and there’s some sort of lid over his head. He feels around the side. Wood. Corners. He’s in a box. A person-sized box. Fuck.
There’s enough room to punch. The coffin is made of pine. Thin and cheap. Who buried him, he wonders. The wood splinters under his fists and dirt sprays down on him. So much for the hope that maybe they hadn’t filled his grave yet.
The dirt is thick, suffocating. Dean’s fingers bleed, and he pulls himself out of his own grave, coughing and muddy. Gulping in fresh air. He rolls over onto his back, and looks up at the sky, pale with dawn or twilight.
Dean lets himself breathe for twenty seconds, then he gets up, looks around. He’s not in a graveyard. He’s in a thicket of trees. There’s a low building between them a while away. He thinks maybe he’s behind the motel. Nothing marks his grave.
Dean stands up. His legs are shaky. What the fuck even happened? He was dead. He was dead. Fuck, fuck.
His phone is still tucked safe in his pocket. Dean curls in on himself as he brings it to his ear. The phone rings.
“This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached. If it’s an emergency, call my son Dean. 785-555-0179. He can help.”
“Dad, please,” Dean cries into the phone. His voice is rusty with dirt or death. Dean tries calling again, then again. Maybe he can join his dad on his next hunt. He needs his dad--his dad will make everything make sense again. Daughters, angels, Heaven. It’s too much. It’s too much.
Dad doesn’t answer. Dean chucks his phone across the clearing; it hits an overgrown bush. Instead of falling through the branches, it bounces off. Dean wipes tears and mud across his face and crosses to it.
It’s not a bush, it’s Baby! Dean doesn’t have her keys, but the back door is unlocked. He crawls inside and curls up in the footwell, breathing her in. He’s alive. Oh, god, he’s alive.
Baby smells like home. Somewhere out there Dean has a daughter. Nobody in the world cares that he died.
But the angels need him.
Maybe. Maybe, if that was real. If that wasn’t a hallucination. But--he saw the divine energy, on the angel. He felt it. He knows, somehow, deep in his bones, that he talked to a fucking angel. An angel brought him back to life. He remembers what his mom would always say--what the very last thing she whispered to him was. He tries to laugh, but it sounds like a sob.
He doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know what day it is. He needs to figure out the rest of the case. But for now--for now--
For now he just wants a hug. Baby will have to do.
Dean doesn’t move for a long time. He can’t. And he probably would’ve laid there forever, rotting away for good this time, numb, but he hears someone unlock Baby’s driver door. Awareness snaps back in. The door creaks open, and someone slides in. Dean stays low. He reaches for a knife that’s tucked under the backseat. He wraps his hands around the handle and waits.
Whoever’s in the front doesn’t start driving. They don’t even turn Baby on. Dean hears an inhale, then an exhale. From back here, he can’t see what’s going on at all. He raises slowly, hoping that the person behind the wheel is distracted, somehow. Or at least unarmed.
He raises above the seat. Someone with long smooth brown-blonde hair is sitting there. She whips around to face him and screams. Dean yells, falling back on his ass, landing sort of on the backseat.
“You’re dead!” Emma cries, bringing her golden knife up.
“Why are you in my car?” Dean shouts.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“I--an angel brought me back?”
“Huh?” Emma stops screaming. Their knives are pointed at each other. “An angel?”
“I guess,” Dean says. “Why’s my car out here?”
“I brought it here after I buried you.” Dean supposes he can respect that. Laying to rest beside his Baby doesn’t sound so bad.
“Why aren’t you with the other Amazons? What are you doing here?”
“I, uh,” Emma says. She blushes. “I haven’t gone back there. Um, I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I’m your--um, when you slept with Lydia at the bar, a week ago--”
“Oh, yeah,” Dean says. “I knew that. You’re my daughter.”
Strangely, this makes Emma burst into tears. Maybe it’s stupid, but Dean lowers his knife. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“No it’s not! You’re my dad and I killed you!” Dean takes the knife from her hand and tosses it behind him. He reaches for her, and she lets him. He hugs her.
How can he explain? He doesn’t care that she killed him. Maybe he should, but she was just following orders. She just wanted to belong. Dean can understand that. Maybe more than he should. He squeezes her.
“It’s okay, kid,” he says.
“I promise--the second I did it I regretted it,” Emma wails. “I didn’t even cut your hands or feet off, I just buried you and then I ran away. T-the other Amazons probably think you killed me. And they d-don’t even care!”
“Hey, I’m sure that’s not true,” Dean lies.
Emma sobs into his worn, dirty flannel. He races to think of a plan. He’ll have to--have to finish the case here, and then get outta dodge. He’ll have to bring Emma with him. Can he hunt with her? He always said if he had kids he wouldn’t let them know about monsters, about hunting, but it’s too late. He’s only twenty-six, for god’s sake. What does he know about raising a kid?
He thinks of Sammy’s round, little-kid face.
Maybe he can go to California. Maybe Sam won’t be too mad if Dean shows up with Emma in tow. Sam knows about living a normal life. Maybe Dean can--can become a mechanic. In Palo Alto. Somewhere near Sam and Sam’s blonde girlfriend. Emma can--can go to school, and try to be normal. If normal is even possible.
But then again--Dad. Yellow Eyes. All the people who Dean needs to save. He holds Emma close, sheltering her with his body, letting his shoulder be the sponge for her tears. He doesn’t know what to do. If he helps Emma then she won’t kill people, with other Amazons. That’s saving people, right? And maybe--maybe they can find Yellow Eyes. Yes, they find Yellow Eyes, and then they kill him, and then Dean takes Emma to Palo Alto. Maybe Emma, as an Amazon, knows about creatures with yellow eyes and a penchant for setting things on fire. And maybe after Yellow Eyes is dead, Dad can come to Palo Alto, too.
They push Baby out of the woods together. Emma tells him where the Amazons are headquartered. Once they’re parked outside the warehouse where Emma apparently learned how to fight, Dean reaches for her hand, clenched tight on her lap.
“Em,” he says. “You don’t have to go in with me. In fact, you shouldn’t.” Emma had seemed willing to give up the Amazons’ location, but to ask her to go inside and help Dean kill them seems like maybe a step too far.
“But if you don’t, then who will be your backup?”
“I’ve done this without backup before, kiddo,” Dean says, smiling at her. She doesn’t look convinced, and when Dean gets out of the car she follows him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you,” she says. “I don’t want to be a monster. I want to be a hunter, like you. Hunters kill monsters, so that’s what I’ll do.”
“But they’re your people.”
“Not anymore,” Emma says, face grit, and she wraps her hand tight around her knife.
“Stay behind me,” Dean says. “If I tell you to run, run.”
“Fine,” Emma says. Dean grabs his gun and his knife--apparently a normal bullet can kill an Amazon--and heads for a side door. Emma follows close behind him. The warehouse is dilapidated and seems abandoned, covered in graffiti and moss. The door Dean finds is similarly overgrown, but there’re breaks in the moss between the door and wall. Someone uses this door, and regularly.
He mimes for Emma to be silent, and pushes open the door. They creep inside. Inside--where the lights are on. Red flag. It’s the middle of the night. They should be sleeping--shouldn’t they? He looks at Emma. She also looks confused.
Dean raises his hand. He motions for her to stay. Emma shakes her head. Dean shakes his harder. He points at the ground, then at her. Stay here. Emma growls and stomps her foot. Dean shushes her and breaks out the glare he used to use on Sammy. She pouts and stays. Dean keeps going.
The room he’s entered is a maze of boxes. He walks slow. In the dark this would be super creepy, but in the light it’s not so bad. Weird that it’s empty, though. There’s another section of the warehouse, blocked off by a wall that’s cut with a closed garage door. There’s a normal door beside it. Dean approaches. The electronic lock is fried, and the door swings right open.
Oh. There’s all the people.
This half of the warehouse is a giant training ground, with mats and punching bags and boxing rings. Targets line one wall and there are stations for guns, swords, and bows. This room looks like something straight from his dad’s dreams.
But strewn all about are women, all in varying states of death or injury. On the boxing ring is a man, and Dean walks in just in time to see him punch out a final woman--he recognizes her from the police office.
“Holy shit,” Dean says. The man turns and Dean points his gun at him, mostly out of reflex. “Who are you?”
“Jimmy Novak,” the man says. Damn, his voice is low. He must smoke like three packs a day or gargle rocks or something. Jimmy Novak has dark hair. He’s wearing a bloodstained suit with a fugly trenchcoat over top. Weird look for a hunter--assuming that’s what he is. “I’m a hunter.”
“Yeah right, pal,” Dean says. “I know hunters and they don’t dress like they lost their way to the accountant’s office. In fact, most of us don’t bother with taxes at all.”
Jimmy tilts his head. “I am aware of tax evasion,” he says. “And as for my attire…I like it. I promise I am a hunter.”
His hair looks like he stuck a fork in an electric socket. And he did kill all these Amazons. Dean looks around. There are mirrors lining one wall like a ballet studio. In Jimmy’s reflection, he looks completely normal. There are weirder things than hunters in suits, Dean guesses. Maybe he has a day job.
“Fine,” Dean says. “I’m Dean. Winchester. You may have heard of my old man.” Usually hunters have. Usually they don’t really like Dean too much after. Lee had liked him just fine until John came into the mix.
“No,” Jimmy says. “I have not heard about any old men, let alone ones belonging to you.”
“Oh,” Dean says, blinking and, despite himself, liking Jimmy a little bit. “Cool.”
A siren cuts through the air. Dean startles, remembers they’re surrounded by a bunch of dead bodies. Looks around and doesn’t see Lydia.
“We need to bail.”
“Yes, police are coming,” Jimmy says. But he doesn’t move.
“What are you doing? Go find your ride!”
“I do not have one.”
“What?! Did you walk here?”
“Yes,” Jimmy says. He sees Dean’s face. “No. That was a ‘joke’. I took a taxi.”
“You’re insane!” Dean says. He looks around. Technically Jimmy saved his skin, murdering all the Amazons and all. And turning on the lights, so that Dean would leave Emma behind, and so she wouldn’t have to see the carnage. Dean guesses he owes him one. “Fine! You can come with us. Come on!”
He runs out of the warehouse. Jimmy follows him. When Dean glances back, he sees Jimmy’s trenchcoat flaring like a cape. Maybe there’s merit to wearing it. All Dean wears is jeans, and sometimes blood and guts. Emma is still at the door, and she does a double take when she sees Jimmy.
“Who’s that?”
“Hunter!” Dean says. “No time, the fuzz are coming.”
Lydia--or someone--must have tipped them off. Dean leads the way back outside. They make it into Baby--Emma in shotgun, Jimmy in the back, Dean driving, duh--right before a squad of police cars roll up to the warehouse. Dean starts the car and creeps away.
That was a close one. Dean’s had closer, but still. He has to get out of Seattle.
“This is Emma,” he tells Jimmy, once they’re on the highway. “She’s, uh, my kid sister.” Emma shoots him a look, then turns around, holding out her hand over the bench seat.
“Nice to meet you,” she says. Jimmy looks at her hand, then takes it. He shakes, awkward.
“Yes,” he says.
“And you are?”
“Oh. Jimmy. Novak. Hunter. I also commit tax evasion, even though I dress like I do not.”
“Um, okay?” Emma says, taking her hand back. “Dean, where are we going?”
“Not sure,” Dean says. “Dude, you have any place to be? Should I drop you somewhere?”
“No,” Jimmy says. “I am…now that I have finished my hunt, I have no duties elsewhere.”
“Okay,” Dean says. “Well, why don’t I drive out of town a bit, and then stop for the night. And then you can go wherever you’re going, and we’ll go wherever we’re going.”
“Okay,” Jimmy says.
“Okay,” Emma says. And so Dean drives.
The motel is in some abandoned half-town off of I-90. Jimmy books his room, and then Dean purposefully books his on the other side of the motel. He doesn’t tell Jimmy where their room is. He let the guy into his car, but he doesn’t really trust him. Dean and Emma have two beds. Two queens, like whenever Dean and Dad do a hunt together. Exactly like him and Dad, Dean realizes. Emma is his daughter. His daughter.
“I’ve never slept in a real bed before,” Emma says, sitting on the motel bed almost eagerly. She has a backpack of belongings--a change of clothes, a toothbrush--but she doesn’t have pajamas. She’s borrowing one of Dean’s t-shirts and a pair of basketball shorts he found in the depth of his duffel--maybe leftover from high school PE?
“Where were you sleeping while I was dead?” Dean lays back on the bed and tries not to think about how weird that is. He was dead, a few hours ago.
“In the car,” Emma says. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Oh,” Dean says. Something in him twists.
When it’s him and Dad, doing a hunt, getting a motel room with two queen beds, Dad takes the bed by the door. When it was him and Sammy, back when Sammy was in high school, and they did the occasional case together, Dean took the bed by the door. Tonight he has the bed by the door. Emma curls under shitty motel blankets and Dean stares up at the ceiling. He has no idea what he’s doing. He never wanted his kids--if he ever got to have any--he never wanted them to hunt. But Emma--she already knows. She’s already in it. What’s he supposed to do? How’s he supposed to take her away from hunting? What kind of life can he give her? She’s not even human. Oh, god, she’s only a week old.
Dean reaches for his phone. He flips it open. There’s a single text, blinking on the tiny screen.
Dad: Status report.
Dean exhales. He types with fumbling fingers. Then he backspaces. He types out a new message.
Dean: Case closed. Amazons. All dead. LMK if you need anything.
He sends the message, then throws his phone on the nightstand and his arm over his eyes, and tries to go to sleep.