Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Dude." Emma pulls up short in the motel room doorway, her duffel slung over one shoulder, Claire's over the other, and her laptop bag in her arms. "Tell me you're not sitting there reading fic while I'm unloading all our crap from the car."

"We're only here for one night," Claire says from where she's sprawled on one of the beds with her Kindle propped up in front of her. "It's not like you need to bring all our crap in."

"I'm sorry, have you not noticed how sketchy this place is?" Emma dumps her bag onto her bed. "The window two rooms down is made out of duct tape."

"I trust you to keep us safe," Claire says, still without looking up from her Kindle, and Emma makes a face, throws Claire's duffel at her. It falls short of the bed and lands on the floor instead, skidding to a stop against the nightstand. Claire doesn't snicker, but the side of her mouth ticks up.

 "Stooooop," Emma says, half desperate and half a whine. "You were supposed to wait so we could read the sequel at the same time."

"I would've gotten ahead of you anyways," Claire says, swiping her screen to turn the page. "I read faster."

Emma gives her another dirty look. "I'm gonna steal your Kindle," she says as she yanks open the zipper of her bag and takes out her own Kindle. "I'm gonna steal it and unlock the password and leave it somewhere your friends will find it and see all your Bagginshield A/B/O porn."

"I've already told you you're never going to figure out my password," Claire says, swiping another page. "Now shut up, I'm at a good part."

"They're all good parts," Emma mutters petulantly and flops down onto her belly to unlock her Kindle. The fic is the sequel to one Claire found their second-to-last night staying with Claire's grandparents for their yearly summer visit. They stayed up all night reading it, Emma kicking Claire every time she heard Claire's grandpa getting up to go to the bathroom so Claire could hastily turn off the lamp and they could hunker down in their sleeping bags and pretend to be sleeping. It was good enough that Emma almost wished they still had to take the Greyhound to Arizona, because then they could read and/or conk out after a night of reading on the bus. Now, instead, they had to be awake and alert enough for a day of driving.

When Emma's phone starts buzzing with Cas and Dean's nightly phone call, Emma kicks Claire to make her answer it. When Claire gives her a glare, she retorts, "You're ahead of me."

Claire gives a long-suffering sigh. But she rolls over to the edge of the bed to where both their phones are plugged into the wall charger. "You've reached someone cooler than you," she says into Emma's phone.

"There is no one cooler than me," Emma can hear Dean's voice say.

"On opposite day, maybe." Claire rolls back over idly on the bed, sticking her socked feet into Emma's face, on top of her Kindle. Emma growls at her. "We're checked into the motel, the door is locked, and the salt lines are down. You and Cas can go back to making heart eyes at each other now, bye."

"We're not making heart eyes." Dean sounds disgruntled. "Cas is at some work thing."

"Aw, baby Dean wasn't invited?"

Emma gives Claire a down, girl look. Claire's always a little sharper with Dean and Cas after they've left her grandparents, like she has to settle back into being Claire Novak-Winchester and not Claire Novak, like the sharp edges she's been rubbed into have to be roughened smooth again.

Claire doesn't make any overt sign that she notices the look, but she says, a little less acerbically, "What're you doing, then? You want me and Emma to send you a link to the fic we're reading?"

Emma shoots a look of horror at her. NO, she mouths.

Claire rolls her eyes at her.

There's another moment of silence; then Dean says, "Is it Kirk/Spock?"

Claire toes Emma's nose. "Why do you keep asking us if we're reading Kirk/Spock when you know we don't like Star Trek?"

"Because someday you two will develop some taste."

"Today is not that day," Claire intones, Aragorn-style. "Good night, Dean."

She puts down the phone. Emma twists backward, halfway onto her back, to peer over her shoulder at her.

"I wasn't really going to send him a link," Claire says. "You know how freaked out he gets when we read Edlund fic."

Emma doesn't blame him. She can't imagine what it would be like to read a book about yourself, even if the Dean they read about in the books and fic are completely separate to her from her dad, the same way the Clare in her gym class is completely separate from her Claire. It's only in weird, bone-jarring moments that thrum like a blow to the jaw that she reads something, some tiny detail like the way Dean scrubs his hand down his face when he's thinking, that she remembers the two Deans are one and the same. When that does happen, she quickly thinks about something else.

"Stop thinking so hard," Claire says, toeing her in the nose again. Emma growls at her and pushes her foot away. Claire's feet are warm and bony through her thin sock. "Do we have any Doritos left?"

"Dude," Emma says around midnight. "Did you read the Oz part yet?"

"Duh," Claire says.

"Fuck you, too," Emma says. "Did anything in there seem familiar to you?"

"You mean the loud father figure trying to tell Charlie and Dorothy what to do?"

"No, the key." Emma rolls over to sit up Indian-style. "I swear I saw something like that in the armory when we snuck in there at Christmas, remember?"

"Not really," Claire says. "I was a little preoccupied trying to keep that pixie from picking my eyes out."

"I told you not to open that cabinet."

Claire ignores her. There's a shrewd look in her eyes. "So you're saying," she says slowly, "that the key in a fic which is based on a book of Dean and Cas's actual lives is based on something in our actual bunker."

"You've understood me correctly, yes."

Claire looks at Emma like she knows Emma knows what she's going to say next. "Guess what's on the way back to South Dakota?"

"It's really not," Emma says.

But the next morning finds them calling home to tell the dads they're planning to make a detour on the way home to look at America's largest ball of twine. It would never work on Dean, but Cas is the one who answers the phone, and he has this thing where he actually thinks there's a reason people would want to see giant rolls of twine, so he just tells them to have fun and make sure to bring him a pressed penny from Cawker City.

The bunker's front stoop is clogged with old dead wet leaves, which means Garth hasn't been around in a while. Maybe no one's been there since they spent Christmas there with everyone, especially because when Claire finally heaves the heavy iron door open, a faint scent of fir tree and the brown sugar Amelia used in all her Christmas dishes wafts out to tickle Emma's nose along with the usual smell of bare cement and ancient books.

She follows Claire inside and down the stairs, turning on the lights as they go. Their footsteps echo on the steps, the sound somehow unfamiliar without Dean's voice ringing up from the kitchen to ask if they brought pie or the Ella Fitzgerald records he and Cas put on when they're all here together.

"So, are we going to address the elephant in the room?"

"What?" Claire says. "The fact that if the key in the fic is actually a key in our bunker, it means that emotionalrangeofateaspoon is someone we know?"

"Yeah," Emma says. "That."

They're both quiet for a minute.

"It's a Harry Potter reference," Emma says finally. "But that rules out basically no one. Even Benny likes those books. And Garth loves them."

"Are we really postulating that Garth could be the author of--" Claire pulls her tablet out of nowhere and consults it, "Bagginshield, Thranduil/Bard, Drarry, and several hundred-thousand word Rurouni Kenshin fics?"

"I admit the Thranduil/Bard seems a little out of character for him," Emma agrees. "He'd be more interested in dwarves."

"The best thing would be if it was Dean," Claire says. "But I'm pretty sure he's too busy writing SuperBat."

"And Stony," Emma adds.

"He probably has WIPs of both," Claire agrees. They stop at the door to the armory and share a headshake of solidarity in disapproval for Dean's Stucky-less ways.

The armory is as cramped and crowded with stacks of boxes as ever. They consider it for a moment; then Claire takes a hank of twine out of her pocket.

"Seriously?" Emma says.

Claire ties one end of it in a loop around Emma's wrist, then does the same with the other end around her own. "In case something weird happens."

"Twine's only going to do so much," Emma says doubtfully.

"Better than nothing," Claire says, and sets off to the left.

Emma heads to the right, the big hank of twine slowly unspooling on the floor behind them.

"Bingo!" comes Emma's shout several hours later.

Claire slides down off the Beauty and the Beast-esque library ladder she's found to investigate the wall-length shelves. "You found it?"

"No, I found Narnia," Emma says as Claire wends her way through the towers of books and boxes. "Yes, I found it."

"Lemme see--" Claire crowds up close to look at it. It's a big clunky thing inside a trunk the size of a shoe box, looks like it's carved out of some dark wood. It doesn't look particularly key-like, maybe instead like a gingerbread cookie that was attempted to be made into the shape of a key and then expanded way too much in the oven and had a key shape painted onto the top of it. Not terribly impressive.

Emma considers it a minute longer, then starts to close the trunk lid. "I guess that answers that question--"

Claire stops her, picking up the key and turning it over. Emma gives her a what are you doing? look.

"Evidence," Claire says.

"Remember last time you didn't listen to me in here?"

Claire gives her a Look. "That was different."

"Not that different."

Claire raises an eyebrow. "It's not like you to be such a goody two-shoes."

Emma scowls at her. "I just don't think it's a good idea to mess around with something that could make us go Good Clone Bad Clone."

"Do you really think things are that easily delineated?"

"I think that with the sort of 'bad' I've got floating around in my DNA I don't wanna risk it."

"There's nothing bad about your DNA," Claire says sharply.

"Yeah, whatever," Emma mutters.

Claire glares at her. "I could use this on you right now and whatever 'good' twin came out would be exactly the same as you are now."

"Wow, that actually makes me feel worse," Emma says, not entirely sarcastically.

They glare at each other for a minute. Then Emma just mutters, "Whatever" again and heads back up the stairs.

She forgets about the twine still tied around her wrist, and has to stop short halfway up the stairs to tug it off. She leaves the thread lying on the steps.

She wakes up the next morning with a sense something's wrong. She couldn't explain exactly what it is, just that--

"Emma?"

She blinks. The room is dark. The bedrooms inside the bunker always are, what with having no windows. "What," she thinks she hears herself say sleepily.

"Something's happened."

Emma shoves up onto her elbows, reaching for the night table lamp.

"Um," Claire begins hesitantly, but then it's too late; the light comes on and illuminates another Claire sitting on the other bed.

"Seriously?" Emma cries. She throws herself back down onto the bed, her face into her pillow. "Come on!"

"Sorry," whispers the Claire standing next to her bed.

"You suck," Emma says into the pillow. "You suck you suck you SUCK what did you even do?"

"Isn't it obvious?" says the voice from the other bed, the one that's always Claire's when they come to the bunker and she and Emma have to share a room because the whole extended family clan is usually here crowding up the place. That voice sounds a lot more like Emma's Claire, and Emma inhales the musty smell of her pillow for another few seconds before rolling onto her side and looking across the space between their beds at that Claire. She's lounging on the bed with her pajama pants kicked off, blanket slung over her legs and Claire's Kindle with its tiny green book light on her lap.

"Yes," Emma says. "But why?"

"It was an accident," says the Claire next to her bed. She's still whispering.

"Was it?" says other Claire without looking up from the Kindle. There's something contemptuous about the curve of her mouth.

The Claire next to Emma doesn't say anything. Emma pushes up into a sitting position and looks back and forth between them. It's not too hard to guess which Claire is Bad Claire and which one is Good Claire. One's in her underwear with her nipples peaking her cami like she's reading porn on the Kindle, which she probably is, and the other one, the one standing next to Emma's bed, looks like she's about to burst into tears.

Emma has a weird urge to grab her hand and squeeze it, tell her everything'll be okay. Or to make her sit on the bed and to pat her knee or something. It makes her seriously uncomfortable, especially with Bad Claire over there smirking down at the Kindle like she knows exactly what Emma's thinking--okay, maybe not smirking, because she doesn't seem to be paying attention to them at all, but it feels like she is; Emma can sense the weight of her attention the way she can always feel when Claire's watching her, from across the school gym or the parking lot or the dinner table.

She shakes her head. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you…two already tried to fix this." Her eyes flick back and forth between them, looking for the key.

Good Claire looks even more like she's about to cry.

"Um, hey, hey," Emma says lamely. "It's okay." She scoots a little closer, feeling supremely stupid. "We're, uh, we're gonna figure this out."

Good Claire lets herself be drawn under Emma's arm. It's weird how small she feels, her shoulders slender and wing-like under Emma's. Except maybe she's always felt like this, because it's not like she and Emma really touch, that often? Feet in each others' faces, sure, and bumping shoulders while they walk sometimes, but almost always with thick winter coats padding them, or the intention to knock the other over making Claire feel bigger, stronger, than she is.

Or maybe being pure good just shrinks a person, makes them more fragile.

"Yeah," Bad Claire echoes sarcastically. "We'll totally figure this out."

Emma shoots her a you're not helping glare. "Where's the key?" she says in a more patient voice, inviting Good Claire to join the conversation. She doesn't, though, and after a minute in which the two Claires stare at each other, Bad Claire clears her throat.

"So here’s the thing," she says. "It disappeared."

Emma throws her a sharp look. "What, like--"

"Like vanished into thin air," Bad Claire says flatly. She makes SpongeBob imaaaaaagination! hands. "Like. You know. Magic."

Emma frowns at her. "That's not what happened in the fic."

Bad Claire shrugs. "Apparently TPTB got it wrong."

"But--!" Emma remembers how Good Claire is still curled under her arm and makes herself go quieter, calmer. More confident. "All right. That’s okay. We'll figure it out." She reaches for her phone where it's sitting on the nightstand.

"If you call them, I'm out of here."

Emma looks over at Bad Claire. She's still got the Kindle in her lap, swiping the screen idly to turn the page in whatever she's reading. "What?"

"You heard me," Bad Claire says.

A beat of silence.

"Yeah, I guess I did," Emma says slowly. "I'm just trying to figure out why."

"Why wouldn't I want to go back to hang out with the angel in my dad's body? It's not that hard to figure out, Emma-Jemma."

The nickname stings. Claire hasn't used it since they were both four years old under that stupid spell, and Emma likes the name, has wished Claire would use it on her sometimes, like a real big sister would to her little sister. To hear it now, from the wrong Claire--Emma's fists clench.

She makes herself unclench them when the Claire under her arm stiffens. "You've been living with him for the past two years," she points out.

Bad Claire doesn't say anything, just raises an eyebrow.

"How else are we supposed to figure out how to fix this?" Emma demands.

"What's there to fix?" Bad Claire says.

Emma makes herself look away from her, anger rushing along her bones. She makes her voice gentler despite it, as she says to the other Claire, "Are you on her side, here?"

Good Claire bites her lip, eyes on her hands. "They'll be upset if they find out what we did," she says quietly.

"Yeah, but they'll help us fix it."

Bad Claire gets up abruptly. The blanket falls from her legs, and she grabs her jeans from the dresser, pulls them on and pulls Emma's hoodie over her head, too. She heads for the door.

"Stop!" Emma says in a panic. She darts to the door, getting there before Bad Claire. "You're not leaving."

Bad Claire gets up in her face, her chest against Emma's. "Are you really gonna stop me?"

Emma swallows. Claire doesn't have a bra on under her--Emma's--hoodie, just a cami, and she's really aware of that fact. And of the smell of Claire's breath, and the travel-sized Pert shampoo she's been using to wash her hair while they're on the road. "Maybe I will."

"Go ahead."

They stare at each other for a long minute. Emma angry and flustered and Claire as cool as ever, eyebrow cocked and a little smirk to her mouth.

Finally Emma breaks eye contact. "Fine," she says, sliding from between Bad Claire and the door.

The thing is.

The thing is--

Claire had this summer all planned out. This summer, their last summer before going to college. They had their two weeks at her grandparents’ and Fourth of July with Dean and Cas and then life guarding and Spanish review up until they left to move into their university apartment in August. Claire had planned it painstakingly, Emma's seen the colored little squares on her calendar, and now…this? Real Claire will be pissed at Emma for letting it happen, but these two Claires kind of also are Real Claire, so what is she supposed to do?

A part deep inside her, that she tries to drown out with other thoughts, points out that it sure is convenient that this means she gets to spend a little more time this summer with Claire. No shortage of people have gone out of their way to sit her down and talk to her about what college means--Sam, for one thing, which was beyond weird; and Cas and Charlie and even Dean, but the most important one was Amelia. She and Sam came over for the weekend, and she took Emma out to the gelato place she always insisted on going to when she and Sam were in Sioux Falls, and said, "So, look. This thing sometimes--happens--when you go off to school."

Emma was only paying half attention, licking dripping ice cream from her cone. The ice cream at the gelato place was so fucking good, but it always melted twice as fast as other ice creams.

"People get--different interests. They join different clubs, they hang out with different people--" Amelia paused. "Sometimes they grow apart."

Emma made an "mmm" noise to indicate she was listening, chasing a rivulet of chocolate dripping down her hand. Then it sank in. What Amelia meant by people, and who she was talking about.

But--whatever. It wasn't like that wasn't something Emma had been ready (preparing) for since the first time she even met Claire, before she knew Claire was Claire, even, and just knew her as fallenangel420. Claire would find other friends, friends whose interests overlapped more with hers, whose backgrounds and abilities and humanity overlapped with hers, and it wasn't like Emma was going to be annoying about it. She hadn't even wanted to make Claire room with her in the first place, hadn't even planned to go to college with her; that had been Dean and Cas's decision, their offer to pay for the girls' housing if they lived together, and Emma knew just like all of them know that it was because they were scared she might do something, that they wanted Claire there to keep a hunter's eye on the Amazon.

"What's wrong?" Bad Claire says. "I'd have thought you'd be happy to spend more time this summer with me." Her blue eyes are knowing, taunting, and Emma's mouth goes dry. She can hear her pulse thud in her ears.

Bad Claire opens her mouth to say something else.

"Stop," says Good Claire desperately.

Bad Claire quiets. But the damage is already done. Emma drives, her ears ringing, and doesn't talk for the rest of the drive.

They end up at the IHOP in Lebanon. There's no food in the bunker except for granola bars and the Slim Jims that Cas keeps trying to convince Dean to stop eating because sodium's bad for his blood pressure, and there's nowhere else open at four-thirty a.m. except for the Waffle House, where the waitress who's used to seeing them in town with Dean and Cas might wonder how Claire magically acquired a twin sister.

Bad Claire stands aside to let Good Claire slide into the window side of the booth bench, then slides in after her. Emma slides into her own side silently. She hasn't had the whole fake leather bench of a diner booth to herself since she was riding around with Dean and Sam after Seattle, when half the time she was sure she could sense that Sam had a gun trained on her under the table.

She shakes her head. Both Claires are watching her keenly, like they know what she's thinking. She glares at them reflexively; Good Claire looks back down at her menu quickly, and Bad Claire just raises an eyebrow at her.

"What'll we have to drink?" the waiter asks.

Good Claire orders milk. Bad Claire wants coffee. Emma was going to order coffee, too, but doesn't want to be like Bad Claire. "I'll have milk, too," she says instead, and remembers the way Claire's grandma always has glasses of milk sitting at the table for them at every meal, like it's her own personal job to take care of their bones. She would like Good Claire, Emma thinks; there would be a lot less of the silent, prickly pauses between conversations that Emma's Claire and her grandma have, that have Emma wondering uncertainly if she should say something, anything, to fill the hole.

When the waiter's come back and gone away again with their orders--whole wheat toast with fruit for one Claire; red velvet pancakes for the other; and a plain order of home fries and sausage links for Emma--Emma sits forward. "Look," she says. "This whole--not telling Dean and Cas thing. If we're doing that, we need to have a plan."

"Summer," Bad Claire says. The waiter's already brought her the syrup pitcher and she's poured drizzles of it onto her plate to shape her name. She drags her fork through it, licks the sticky tine. "That's the plan."

"'Summer' is not a plan."

"I believe," Bad Claire says, "that not being a plan is the whole point of," She crooks her fingers to imitate Emma mockingly, "summer."

"Not your summer," Emma snaps. "You start life guarding next week at the pool, and you're in charge of tutoring the juniors for AP Chemistry, and you were going to start reviewing conversational Spanish with your Skype pals or whatever."

Bad Claire shrugs like none of this means anything. Good Claire moves her empty straw wrapper around beside her sweating glass of milk, then seems to realize she's playing with her food and puts her hands back in her lap contritely.

"Could you back me up here?" Emma asks, as not impatiently as she can. "You're supposed to be the good one."

Good Claire gives her a wide-eyed, mournful look.

"Look, we're just asking for one week," Bad Claire says, and for the first time there's a spark of something like anger in her voice. "One week to be not--me." Her eyes narrow. "I'd think you of all people would understand."

Emma flinches backward. Bad Claire doesn't break eye contact, and when Emma does, looking guiltily at Good Claire, she's avoiding Emma's eyes.

"Um," Emma says. Her voice is small. "Yeah. I--sorry. I--yeah."

They eat the breakfast in silence.

In the story, Dark Charlie tries to kill someone. This would be easier to deal with if Bad Claire was trying to kill someone. But she's just…being a bum. Mostly. When they finish eating at IHOP, she asks the waiter where the public pool is and then drags Good Claire and Emma there. It's not open yet, the sign proclaiming that it won't open until nine, so they camp out on the curb kicking gravel back and forth with their toes as the sun starts to beat down on their backs and make them sweat, and then when a guy in the red trunks and white shirt of a life guard comes and unlocks the gate, they go in along with a gaggle of kids who are clutching towels and kickboards under their arms.

The kids all settle on the shallow end of the pool with the life guard. Emma and the Claires fork over three bucks each and head to the deep end of the pool to sling their stolen-from-some-long-forgotten-motel towels over plastic pool chairs. Bad Claire sprawls out on her stomach on one of the lounge chairs like some kind of octopus; Claire and Emma only had a swimsuit each, so Bad Claire is in an old yellow bikini top Claire kept to wear as a bra during marching band practice and a pair of Emma's old gym shorts. She looks objectively ridiculous, but Emma can't help looking at the curves of her shoulder blades, anyways, the slopes of her thighs as they emerge from the baggy black fabric of the gym shorts.

She slits her eyes open from where she's got the side of her face mashed against the bottom of the lounge chair, and for a second, the sun is so bright that Emma can't see where she's looking, think maybe she's caught Emma staring, but then her head shifts just enough that she sees Bad Claire's watching Good Claire lower herself slowly into the deep end of the pool, one ladder step at a time, her head craned around to look behind herself at the deep, clear blue water. It's still nearly still, far enough away from where the little kids are splashing around in the shallow end that only an occasional wave ripples through to break the stillness, the outline of the tiles at the bottom of the twelve-foot-deep water.

"Watch out for anacondas," she says. Good Claire laughs, and Bad Claire grins: There's some joke there, between them, that only the two of them understand, and Emma feels stupidly left out and stupidly jealous.

She jumps into the water, splashing them both. Good Claire is laughing when she surfaces from her cannonball, blinking water from her face, which gives her a vindictive little stab of pleasure, and Bad Claire has pulled Emma's towel, distinguishable by the fact that it's a faded discolored pale pink instead of a faded discolored white like the others, over herself to shield her from the water.

"Hey!" Emma says.

A middle finger emerges from under the towel just long enough to point at Emma before retreating back underneath it. Light Claire laughs some more.

Emma pushes back into the water, feeling it ripple over her shoulders as she kicks petulantly backward, toward the center of the deep end. She tilts her head back to stare directly up into the sky, so blue and cloudless that it almost dips her into a vertigo, the blue of the sky and the blue of the water and the silence of the pool as the water closes around her ears, laps at the underside of her chin, the corners of her eyes. She inhales and hears nothing; exhales and hears the same. Feels the heat of the sun against her toes and the palms of her hands, the cool of the water against everything else. Somewhere, distantly, there is a thud: someone else entering the water, but they are far away, and Emma could float here forever.

She inhales and twists. Kicks down, down, down, until her outstretched fingertips brush the slippery tile at the bottom. She kicks again, and flattens her palms against it. Kicking to keep herself down, pressed against it. Then she twists and bullets back to the surface. Pressure popping in on her ears and the inside of her nose as she breaks the surface. She shakes her head and opens her eyes.

It seems as though there should be a lot of noise up here, after the silence of the water. But there's still only the quiet of mid-morning: the ripple of the water against the sides of the pool, the distant voice of the life guard giving instructions at the side of the pool, the occasional warble of a bird in the trees across the street. The engine of a passing car on the adjacent road.

She revolves slowly in the water, turning back to face the Claires. Bad Claire has kicked off her towel, lying sprawled on her stomach now, sunglasses on her face, and Good Claire has her elbows propped on the top step of the ladder, legs moving slowly back and forth in the water as she nods her head lazily back and forth on her crossed arms. Her swimsuit is white, and she looks golden, golden in the sun.

Emma stays on the other side of the pool. Dog-paddles and breast-strokes and butterflies back and forth until the next two lessons of children come and go and people of normal age start to arrive and fill up the other lounge chairs and spaces on the pool deck and Bad Claire finally sits up and looks around for Emma's eyes.

They don't really do anything all day, but by the end of it Emma feels drained somehow, her skin a size too big, or too small. It feels warm, too, like a blanket on top of her trying to lull her to sleep. She yawns, scooting further down the couch in front of the TV.

"Ice cream?" Bad Claire says.

It takes Emma a minute to realize she's said anything. "What, for dinner?"

"Yeah," Bad Claire says. "Perfect end to a perfect day."

Emma doesn't really know what was so perfect about it. They didn't do anything. But she looks at Good Claire, who looks alternately horrified and excited by the idea of eating junk food for dinner.

"We don't have to," she tells her.

Good Claire hesitates. "I want to."

"Okay," Emma hears herself say. "Then we will." She rolls off of the couch and into the next room, finding her flip flops and pushing her feet into them. Her toes still feel pruned from the water, the ridges curious against the worn surface of the cheap foam.

There's a Gas'n'Sip not far down the highway, and she returns with two bags of ice cream sandwiches and Klondike bars and mini Haagen Daz already going soft from the heat.

Good Claire eats until she's surrounded by sticky wrappers, a bit of chocolate at the corner of her mouth. Emma brings her water because she looks like she feels faintly ill, the chocolate and dairy hitting her all at once. In her armchair on the other side of the room, Bad Claire is still working on her Drumstick, picking the nuts off chocolatey piece by chocolatey piece to let them melt on her tongue.

When Claire's phone rings, both Claires stiffen. Good Claire's eyes dart to Emma; she pushes to her feet and picks it up. "Hello?"

"You're not Claire," is Dean's greeting.

"Claire is on the can," Emma says. "She ate too many Drumsticks like the greedy pig she is."

Bad Claire flips her the finger.

"Oh," Dean says. He's quiet for a moment or so. "…she doing okay?"

Emma is torn between rolling her eyes and feeling gooey over Dean for being worried about Claire. They all know that she comes away from visits with her grandparents kind of messed up, torn between one life and another. She turns away from the Claires, heading into the War Room and scuffing her socked toes against the floor. "…yeah."

"Well," Dean says. "Tell her we miss her, yeah?"

"Yeah," Emma says, feeling guilty now. "Is Cas there?"

"What am I, chopped liver?" Dean says in mock indignation.

"Pot!" Emma cries. "You told me to tell Claire you miss her; I'm the one who's chopped liver!"

Dean's laughing as he hands the phone over to Cas. From the background, she hears, “Miss you, Em!" as Castiel says, "Hello?"

"Cas!” she says. Immediately wincing at the amount of relief in her voice. “Hey.”

"Hello," he responds, sounding slightly amused by this greeting. "How are you, Emma?"

The truth teeters on the edge of her tongue. Her gaze skates across the room as she chews on it, whether to tell him, and lands on the scimitar on display on the shelf. The polished blade shows the reflection of one of the Claires behind her. She can’t tell which one it is: just unreadable blue eyes and a tight, white mouth.

She closes her mouth. "Okay," she says. "Good. We forgot to get you a souvenir, though."

"I see. I suppose I'll just have to take Dean there one of these days to show me around."

"No way in hell am I going to look at the world's second largest ball of twine again," comes Dean's voice in the background.

"I imagine I can find a way to convince you," Cas says placidly, and Emma laughs despite herself.

"Aaaand that's my cue to hang up," she says. "Bye, Cas."

"Good night, Emma," he says.

After the phone call, Bad Claire goes off to pet other Claire’s hair until she falls asleep, both their profiles outlined in the wash of light from the TV. Emma determinedly clenches her jaw against a yawn and stays sitting up on the loveseat, blocking the door. Bad Claire’s eyes watch her amusedly, gleaming in the dark like she knows that Emma’s halfway to falling asleep.

“Sleepy?”

Emma doesn’t answer the question, just glares warningly at her.

Bad Claire gives an elegant shrug. “You know there’s one way you could sleep and make sure I don’t run away.”

Emma eyes her suspiciously. Bad Claire extricates her leg from under Good Claire’s head and crawls onto Emma’s loveseat. Grabs Emma’s shirt and pulls her down on top of her.

Emma flushes, going hot all over under her skin. Claire’s hipbones are sharp and her breasts soft against Emma’s body for only a minute before she’s panicking back upright, scrambling up off of Claire and backwards so that she’s not straddling her hips. Her eyes fly to Good Claire; she’s awake, looking at her, huge-eyes, and Emma’s stomach pitches. Claire’s going to know, Claire’s going to know—who is she kidding, this means that Claire does know, and Bad Claire’s taunting her with the knowledge.

She flees up the stairs. It’s pitch dark outside, the air chilly and the dead leaves on the front step soft and squishing under her boots. She paces back and forth on top of them, fists clenched at her sides, pushed deep into her jacket. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She wakes up the next morning to something dripping down her face. She startles awake, feeling stiff and wet and cold and, blinking at the foggy landscape around her, realizes she fell asleep sitting up against the front door.

It opens behind her as she leans forward to push dew-wet hair from her face. Some frost cracks against her fingers.

“Wow,” says Claire’s voice. “Pathetic much?”

“Shut up,” Emma says automatically. She wipes a hand down her face that comes away wet with dew and swipes it down her equally wet jean legs. “Why are you only wearing underwear?”

“Why did you sleep outside?” Claire counters.

Emma glares at her. Bad Claire just smirks back, leaning against the doorjamb. She has a mug of coffee steaming in her hands and a flannel shirt buttoned unevenly and haphazardly over her chest, but she’s only wearing panties under it, something that Emma, from her current vantage point, can see very clearly.

She pushes to her feet. “You’re not even wearing shoes.”

“I like feeling the cold cement.”

Emma looks down. Claire’s bare toes wriggle against the pavement. Her pale legs, above them, are goose pimpled all the way up to the hem of the flannel shirt.

Emma looks away. “You’re crazy,” she says. “Is other Claire awake?”

Bad Claire cups the coffee mug in both hands, close to her mouth, and raises both eyebrows innocently at Emma above the rim. “Why?”

Emma ignores her and pushes inside. It’s wonderfully warm inside the bunker, the heat seeping in through her wet clothes. Good Claire is still asleep on the couch, pink lips parted like a child, or a Sleeping Beauty, and Emma feels like a bad guy as she shakes her shoulder gently from over the back of the couch. “Claire.”

Bad Claire has followed her in. “Claaaaiiiire,” she sing-songs loudly, and Claire startles awake, eyelashes fluttering. Her eyes fix on Emma’s just as a drop of water from Emma’s wet hair plops down onto her cheek.

Emma immediately pulls back. Claire blinks up at her, and Bad Claire comes up beside Emma.

“Emma’s making us get going,” she informs her. “Sorry, I know you only just fell asleep.”

She retreats, leaving Emma feeling even guiltier than before. “I—” she begins. “Sorry, I didn’t know—”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Claire says. She’s avoiding Emma’s eyes. “After--last night—I mean—”

“Oh,” Emma says. “Oh, I—” She takes another step backward. Her ears are burning. “Sorry.”

She flees to her room before she can do anything more embarrassing.

It’s a frigging gift from God when Claire falls asleep in the backseat, bundled up in the comforter that Bad Claire stole from their room for her. Emma finally feels like she can breathe again, fingers loosening around the steering wheel.

It’s about two hours into the drive when they pass a sign for an upcoming rest stop and Bad Claire, in the passenger seat, says, “How ‘bout I drive the next bit?”

Emma glances over. Neither of them have asked yet where Emma is driving toward, although that may be because it’s clearly not in the direction of Sioux Falls. “How ‘bout no.”

“Why?” Bad Claire is watching her with her sly eyes. “You think I’m going to carjack us off to somewhere?”

Emma, watching the rest stop sail past them on the passenger side, realizes that she doesn’t know where Claire would take them, if she was the one in the driver’s seat. Her Claire or this one—Bad Charlie in the fic had gone on a revenge spree against the people who killed her parents, but the closest person to that for Claire would be…

Well. Cas.

Her eyes flick to Bad Claire’s profile. To the rearview mirror, Good Claire’s shape under the covers.

Why wouldn’t I want to go back to hang out with the angel in my dad’s body? It’s not that hard to figure out, Emma-Jemma.

“Is it really that bad?” Emma asks. “I thought things had gotten…better.”

Claire frowns at her for a minute, Cas-style, before comprehension crosses her face and her mouth twists.

“Things don’t ‘get better,’” she says. “You just finally stop thinking about them as much. You decide you can’t afford to care anymore.” Her lips twists more, eyes dark and hard. “And isn’t that selfish.”

Emma understands, suddenly. “By not going back—you’re protecting her. Aren’t you?”

Claire flicks her a dark look. But she doesn’t say anything.

“Ah,” Emma says. Feeling suddenly playful, and much more kindly disposed to Bad Claire. “I see. On the inside, you’re a real softie. The Tadashi to her Hiro.”

Claire snorts. “What does that make you? Baymax?”

“Are you satisfied with your care?” Emma intones, and Bad Claire punches her arm.

Claire’s personal style includes a lot of sweaters and hoodies. Emma only ever wears hoodies at home; they’re somehow too exposed and soft when she’s out in public. She’s more about bomber jackets—it’s a bonding thing for her and Dean, kind of, to find them at thrift stores and consignment shops. Claire doesn’t exactly turn up her nose at thrift store clothes, but it’s also not what she’s grown up with, so. The thrift store trolling thing is for Emma and Dean, and sometimes they find stuff they think Claire would like and bring it back for her, but not near as often as they do for Cas, although the clothes Dean buys for Cas just as often end up in his own dresser, repossessed.

Anyway, the point is that when Emma comes out of the bathroom of the motel they’re staying in that night, one Claire is asleep in the bed further from the door, and the other in lounging with her laptop against the headrest on the one closer to it, wearing one of Emma’s bomber jackets and also one of her pairs of jeans under that, because Claire doesn’t do distressed jeans, and the pair that Claire is wearing definitely have a big frayed hole at the knee, exposing the pale curve of her patella. Emma can make out the prickly pale hairs there, limned gold by the light from the lamp between the two beds.

“Those are my clothes.”

And? Claire’s raised eyebrow says.

“And—” Emma begins, then stops. “Nothing.”

That’s what I thought, Claire’s eyebrow says. She scoots over on the bed, as though to make some room for Emma.

“Thanks,” Emma says dryly, and settles next to her, picking up her laptop from where she’d left it before she went to take her shower.

She has to resist the urge to angle her screen away from Bad Claire when she opens it. She’s gotten used to browsing in close proximity to Claire given the sheer amount of times they’ve been stuck together on family road trips, but it’s weird to have someone who isn’t, technically, Claire next to her when she has her laptop open. Especially when there are a few e-mails from Claire in her gmail inbox from before this whole debacle happened.

Does this version of Claire even remember them? Emma tries surreptitiously to check Bad Claire’s reaction from the corner of her eye, but the other girl looks back at her with clear amusement.

“Save the one with the all caps subject line for last,” she says. “It’s the funniest.”

That answers that question. Emma closes her gmail and opens her tumblr, only to find her dashboard full of reblogs from Claire’s url. They’re mostly Kylux with a few Gotham Sirens and korrasami mixed in.

 “Hey,” Emma says, affronted. Gmail is one thing, but tumblr is sacred.

“What?” Bad Claire says indifferently, as a han/luke/lando post appears with a chime at the top of Emma’s dash.

“What…nothing,” Emma says lamely again. She glances at the serene lump Good Claire makes under the coverlet on the other bed.

But:

“Is this really okay?” she asks after a minute. “I mean, you’re not…”

“I dare you to finish that sentence,” Claire says without looking up. “I am Claire.”

“You’re only half of her.”

“Wow. Rich for someone who’s not even human to make such a reductive statement.”

Emma sucks in a breath. She’s aware, though, that she deserved that. She pulls her lip under her teeth and refreshes her dash.

WHAT AN ASSHOLE, a text post from Claire’s url reads.

A snicker escapes Emma’s teeth. She moves her cursor automatically for the reply button before remembering it’s not there anymore, and moves to the top of the screen for the messaging icon. srry, she types.

She hears the ding of a message on Claire’s computer. Bad Claire’s fingers fly across the keyboard. A new message notification appears at the top of Emma’s screen, and she clicks it.

Emma snorts.

Bad Claire grins.

Emma’s fingers hover above her trackpad for a minute, as she debates a gif to send in response. Then she remembers that this isn’t Claire, it’s Bad Claire, and she lowers her hand again. Taps her fingers against her leg for a few seconds before saying, “So, is there a reason you decided to treat yourself to my clothes?”

“I had to give you some way to tell me and the other Claire apart.”

Emma casts her a dry look. “I haven’t had a hard time with that so far, thanks.”

“You never know when things will change,” this Claire says carelessly, and slouches further down in the bed. Her shirt rides up under Emma’s jacket with the motion, exposing more of Claire’s hipbone than Emma usually gets to see. “Hey. Didn’t you want to know Claire’s Kindle password?”

Emma glowers. “I’m fine without it, thanks.”

“Are you suuuuure?” Claire sing-songs. “I’ll give it to you.”

Emma’s stomach flip-flops. “Don’t.”

Claire just smirks at her. Then she opens a Word document and says, “Guess I’ll finally have time to write the cartinelli fic Claire’s been thinking about for forever once school starts up.”

“Hold up,” Emma says. “Don’t go thinking you’re going to get out of going to school. If I have to go, you have to go.”

“And explain two Claires how?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Emma says stubbornly.

“Sure,” Bad Claire says. She returns her gaze to her laptop screen, but she doesn’t move the cursor at all, and Emma tenses in anticipation of whatever it is that’s coming. “If we used the key on you, we could both play hooky, you know.”

Emma keeps her eyes very firmly on her screen. “A,” she says, “the key we don’t have? And B, it probably wouldn’t even work on me.”

“What?” Claire says. “You think because you’re not 100% Homo sapiens you don’t have a dark side of the moon?” She makes a scoffing sound and knits her hands behind her head, slanting a look up at Emma. “I’d make a mess of your good Emma.”

Emma flushes.

Claire sets her laptop aside. She reaches over to Emma’s, too, closing it and pushing it down the bed. “Lie down.”

Emma doesn’t move. Her breathing is very shallow. Claire rolls her eyes, and straddles her. Her thighs are warm bars on either side of Emma’s hips, Emma’s knees involuntarily jerking up as Claire splays her hands on Emma’s stomach over the cami she put on after her shower.

Her abdominal muscles quake as Claire flexes her fingers there, against the softness of Emma’s stomach. She lowers her head, not releasing Emma’s eyes from her dark, dark ones as she breathes against Emma’s collarbone, the V of her breasts, “A wet, wet mess.”

She licks a line from the soft skin between Emma’s breasts up to the notch of her collarbones.

Emma’s eyelids have fallen shut; they’re squeezed together as she pants, her hands scrunched tight in the sheets. “This isn’t—Claire doesn’t—”

Bad Claire sits back. There is something dark in her expression; it looks like contempt and disdain; it becomes exasperation and boredom.

“Sure I don’t,” she says shortly, and swings off of Emma, onto the floor. She shrugs off the bomber jacket and leaves it in a heap on the floor, disappearing into the bathroom.

The shower starts. Emma lets out a breath, and stares at the ceiling.

When Kevin opens his apartment door and sees them, his mouth drops open.

Then he shuts it and shakes his head, stepping back and opening the door wider. The girls file inside, Bad Claire taking point and Emma bringing up the rear. Kevin shuts the door after them. Emma gives him a half apologetic, half what are you gonna do shrug as he hisses, "What the hell?"

His voice doesn't get as high-pitched as it used to when he was freaked out. College has mellowed him out a lot.

Bad Claire has already settled into his saggy couch. "Magical Oz key from the bunker split me into two Claires, etc., etc.," she says, waving a hand at the other Claire, who's standing awkwardly next to the TV, looking around with her hands carefully at her sides.

Kevin sighs. "When are you guys gonna learn to stop messing with stuff in the bunker?"

"Excuse me," Emma says. "It was Claire, not me."

"I may have been suffering from a little bit of a pre-college crisis," Bad Claire says. Emma looks at her sharply. But she's picked up the remote and turned on the TV, making Good Claire jump at the sudden newscaster voices from right beside her, and changes channels until she finds Cartoon Network.

"I know all about pre-college crises," Kevin says. "But I'd kind of just come back from the dead, so mine seems a little more justified."

Bad Claire gives him the bird without looking away from the TV. He makes a scoffing expression and looks at Emma, who shrugs.

They go into the tiny kitchenette. "So what's the reason you guys haven't…reversed it?" Kevin motions at the doorway, through which Good Claire has slipped to follow them.

"The key disappeared," Good Claire says quickly. She accepts the water bottle Kevin offers to her. Pulls off the cap and takes a sip, puts it back on, twisting it back and forth.

"Crappy luck," he says. "Are you guys looking for help, or…?"

"Somewhere to crash?" Emma says. "We only budgeted for so many nights on the road, and Maleficent in there is refusing to let us go home yet."

"And how long do you think that's going to last before Dean goes GPS-Whisperer on your asses?"

"I disabled them already," Bad Claire calls from the living room.

Kevin looks contemplative. "Okay," he says, and tilts his head to take a swig of his own water.

They watch Teen Titans Go! with bowls of microwaved ramen until sometime after eight o’clock, when a knock comes on Kevin's door. He puts his second bowl of ramen down and steps over where Bad Claire has settled back against Good Claire's knees on the floor. "Coming!" he shouts, then opens the door.

A group of guys promptly push past him inside, all talking loudly. They stop short, though, when they see the two Claires. Emma can see the fantasies spinning in their gross little heads. She clears her throat loudly.

Kevin comes from around the group of guys, looking pained. "Sorry."

"Dude!" bursts out one of the guys, who's in an FMA shirt under an open button-up. "Where'd these hot ladies come from?"

Two of the guys on either side of him groan; Kevin looks more embarrassed.

"Sorry for him," says the last guy, who's standing next to Kevin at the back of the group. "He's an asshole."

"Excuse you," says said asshole indignantly.

He's ignored, one of the other guys putting his hands in his pockets, nodding at the girls in acknowledgement, and looking at Kevin. "What's the deal, Kev, are we going tonight or what?"

"Going where?" says Bad Claire.

Kevin mutters, "I sort of promised I'd go to this party tonight."

"Party?" Bad Claire says, perking up.

"No," Emma says.

"Yes," Bad Claire says.

Emma points at herself. "Under. Age."

Bad Claire points at herself and the other Claire. "Eight. Teen."

"It's not on campus," says the guy who had apologized for The Asshole. Emma glowers at him, the glower all the more potent for how awkward she feels. He's not terrible-looking, and he hasn't leered at the Claires, which somehow makes him even more of a threat than the other guys. "You can chill with me if you want, I'm not going to be drinking. I'm DD."

"Hey, DD," Bad Claire says, and nudges Good Claire toward him. "This is Claire."

"Hey," he says to her, holding out a hand, and Good Claire takes it shyly, her eyes flicking up to his with a little smile.

Emma shoots Kevin a glare that could wither a Devil's Snare.

The party is several blocks away, at an off-campus house rented by a group of grad students Kevin apparently knows from one of his physics or poli-sci classes, Emma doesn't remember which. The thick summer humidity smells strongly of beer and sweat, with underlying streaks of cologne and deodorant, and, when Bad Claire comes out onto the back porch to settle against the banister next to Emma, the musty spice of marijuana.

"What the fuck."

Bad Claire blows out a stream of smoke. "Lighten up."

Emma could wrap her hands around Claire's throat and squeeze until the blood vessels in her eyes pop. "You're going to ruin everything," she hisses. "What if you get caught? They'll rescind your scholarship!”

Claire shrugs. "So?"

"So?" Emma echoes, incensed. “Are you serious?”

Another long drag released. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because yo—Claire wouldn’t risk getting kicked out of college!”

"Why not?"

"Why not?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

"What the fuck do you mean why not?"

"I mean, why does she care so much about college?”

Claire takes another drag and blinks at Emma, innocently, expectantly. Emma stares back at her, faltering. Tongue empty.

Then she rallies. "To--to get away, probably. I don't know, how am I supposed to know?"

Bad Claire shrugs again. "You seem pretty invested in it," she says. "So I figured you'd know why it was so important to her."

Emma has no response to that. The heavy aroma of all the people presses in against her again, the throb of the music from inside the house, the rough wood of the deck under her hands. She stares across the light-strung backyard to where Good Claire sits on some rickety lawn furniture next to DD guy, smiling at something he says.

"My mom went to this all-girls' university," says the Claire beside her. "So did my grandma, and her mom, and hers, etc., etc. They're legacies or whatever. They were all part of the same sorority."

Emma listens, watching the soft white lights reflect off Good Claire's loosely braided hair.

"My gran was disappointed, you know. That I hadn't even applied." Bad Claire nods at Good Claire. "She felt like shit about it."

"Oh," Emma says. She generally tries to stay out of things between Claire and her grandparents. They treat her politely but distantly, like a stranger you'd pass in the hallway of a hotel where you're both staying. "Do you want us to…I mean. You--She. Could transfer."

It's not like there's any school that wouldn’t accept Claire. There had been a rumor going around at school in February that she had been accepted to Yale. Emma hadn't been brave enough to ask her, had gone two weeks with nausea pitching violently in her stomach that any day now Claire would announce at dinner that she was headed to Connecticut.

"I didn't say she regretted the choice," Bad Claire says. "Just that she felt bad about it."

There's silence for a while.

"She kinda thought," Bad Claire says finally, "this would make it easier. If one of us did…what we wanted to do, and the other one did…what we should."

Emma's quiet. Trying to figure out, as she studies Bad Claire's profile, what should is. What her grandparents want? What her mother wanted? She follows that Claire's gaze to Good Claire, who's sitting under DD Guy's arm now, kissing him shyly. They both watch in silence.

"I never had a boyfriend," Bad Claire says distantly. "Seemed kind of like something my parents would have wanted."

Emma looks away. The roach is still held loosely in Claire's pale fingers, rough and ugly inside them. She takes it, and takes a tentative inhalation, pressing the taste against the roof of her mouth with her tongue.

She releases the smoke. "You can't split yourself in two just to do what your parents wanted you to."

Bad Claire accepts the roach back. "Maybe." She breathes in. "Maybe not."

When Emma wakes up the next morning on Kevin's couch, both Claires are still sacked out on the carpet, tucked under Star Wars microfleeces. Emma pushes off the Invader Zim one she cocooned herself in for the night and pads into the kitchen, which smells faintly of disinfectant and vomit, although whose she can't identify. Kevin is nowhere to be found, until she ventures downstairs to the Dunkin Donuts across the street from the apartment complex. Kevin, with a case of bedhead as impressive as her own, is sitting at one of the outdoor tables with a huge cup of coffee and a textbook as thick as an encyclopedia.

She gets a raspberry Coolata and goes over to join him. He looks up when she pulls the chair out, pulling out his earbuds. "Hey."

"Hey," she says. "Sorry for…all that." She motions back at the apartment.

"S'okay," he says. "We all have our first college party sometime."

"Yeah." She cups her hands around her Coolata.

Kevin makes to put his earbuds back in, then stops, looking at her directly. He twists his earbud cord around his fingers. "I noticed you and, uh, Dark Claire seemed…pretty close last night."

Emma goes still. The Coolata is very cold against her fingers. "What, like DD and Good Claire close?"

"No," Kevin says, almost too quickly. "Just…close."

"Makes sense, doesn't it," Emma says. "The Amazon and Bad Claire. We have a lot in common."

Kevin Looks at her. He opens his mouth like he's about to say something, but a girl in the line, nearly dwarfed under the huge backpack she's wearing them, spots them and calls, "Hey, Kevin!"

Emma excuses herself pretty quickly after that, escaping a conversation between them about how unfair it is for their professor to give them an exam so soon after their last essay. It's full mid-morning daylight by now, bright sunlight filtering through the trees to dapple the sidewalks and bicycle trails that wind through the campus to the dorms and libraries. Emma follows one, passed by the occasional elderly jogger or college kid in sweatpants walking their dog, until she finds a copse of trees encircling some cement picnic tables at the intersection of two of the smaller streets that cut through campus. The sun falls directly onto the tables, warming the cement, and she stretches out on one, folding her hands over her stomach and watching the clouds drift slowly by in the blue sky above her, sun warm on her face. It reminds her of floating in that community pool in Lebanon. The stillness and the sunlight, the feeling of being completely cut off.

She thinks about if there were two of her. Whether one of them would go back to Lydia and the Amazons. That Emma would be better, would be good enough, maybe.

She feels protective of that Emma. She doesn’t want her to go back to the matriarch and the others. But that Emma would hate her, probably, for not being the Emma that did go back to her tribe.

What would a light version of herself even be made of? She can’t think of any parts of herself that she could call light. The parts of her that aren’t bad, or hungry, are just the parts that are afraid. Of losing Cas, Dean, Claire. Herself.

After a while she feels something. She pushes upright on one elbow, blinking, and sees one of the Claires across the street, looking back at her.

For a moment, Emma doesn't know which Claire it is. But the way she waits until the light changes and crosses at the zebra stripes instead of just jaywalking, decides it.

"Hey," Emma says as Claire gets to the other side of the street and steps up onto the curb.

"Hi," Good Claire says. Her eyes are crystal blue in the sunlight. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Emma says. "Just…a bit hungover."

Claire looks apologetic. "I'm--sorry about last night."

Emma frowns. "You don't have to apologize for that. I'm a big girl, I take credit for my own substance abuse."

Not that," Claire says. Her neck is flushing a dark pink, the color spreading up her face. She says, very fast, "When you were looking at me and Drew. I think maybe you--"

Emma is turning not pink but very, very red. "No," she says, "no, of course I wasn't--I don't--"

"Okay," Claire says. "Because--because it's--I don't agree with--that."

Emma wants to die. She wishes, with a sudden sick rush of her blood, that she had never met Claire.

"Of course not," she makes herself say. "I know you don't…that way."

"O--okay. Good." Claire looks relieved. "I just--didn't want to hurt you."

Emma makes herself smile. “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Let's go make Kevin make us tofu dogs for lunch."

Bad Claire’s gaze follows them closely when they get back to the apartment. Emma wonders if she knows what happened. She knows her own mood is too ebullient and carefree not to be suspicious, and that night, when they go with Kevin's friends to the movies, she arranges things to sit next to Kevin's Asshole Friend instead of anyone else.

As they sit in the dark with the movie lights playing over their faces, she wishes, more than anything, to go home. She wants to butt her head against Dean's shoulder and have him put his arm around her the way he does when he understands that she doesn't want to talk about anything but just wants to belong somewhere, to someone.

She turns her phone over, inside the pocket of her sweater, and closes her eyes against the playing lights.

At breakfast the next morning, which consists of toasted bread butts and slightly stale Sour Patch kids, she announces she's heading out.

"Wait, what?" Kevin says. All his hair is sticking up on one side; he has a Hello Kitty shirt on. "Why?"

"I've got a thing," Emma says. "Amrit asked me to come babysit his cousin so he can go to Metrocon."

Kevin’s face creases. “Metrocon’s not till next weekend,” he says slowly.

Emma shrugs. “They’re going early.”

Kevin’s face doesn’t uncrease, but he doesn’t say anything more. The Claires don’t say anything at all, except for Good Claire, who moves her bread crusts around on her plate and asks quietly if Emma wants them to go with her.

“Nah,” Emma says. “You guys…do your thing. I’ll cover for you with Dean and Cas.” She doesn’t meet either of their eyes, digging the tines of her fork into the blue Sour Patch Kid on her plate. The head stretches and stretches under the pressure. “Just—let me know what you decide.”

She hasn’t been on a Greyhound since that first time with Claire, going to Arizona on the Fourth of July. She has her Kindle with her, and she downloaded a few fics onto it before leaving Kevin’s place and his wi-fi, but as she sits in a window seat with the sunshade pulled down against the noon-time glare and scrolls down the options, she somehow can’t bring herself to care enough to read anything more than a few sentences of them. She thumbs the power button and leans her head back into the seat, watching the road roll by through the weave of the gray sunblind.

After a while, her phone buzzes with a text. She knows it’s not Claire, or at least tells herself not to get her hopes up that it is, but when she swipes the screen awake and sees Charlie’s icon, disappointment brushes past her anyways.

When r u guys coming home?

now, Emma texts back. Why?

that’s for me to know and u to find out ;p

Emma’s fingers hover over the keyboard. She doesn’t type a reply, not sure how to broach the whole Claire’s-not-coming-back(-at-least-not-yet)(and-maybe-never-again) thing.

They stop at a rest stop halfway through the afternoon, when the sun is fierce enough to make the air waver above the asphalt. Emma descends the steep bus steps, squinting.

There are two blonde girls leaning against a familiar car hood in the car lot. Emma stops a few feet away, meeting their gazes through the dark sunglasses.

After a long moment, one of the Claires finally pushes away from the car hood. “Are you coming or what?” she says, and slides into the driver’s seat.

Emma takes one step, then another, toward them, her bag bumping against her hip. “I don’t want to get in the way of your—” she begins.

“The ‘rents’ll flip if we don’t come home together,” Bad Claire says, starting the car. “Might as well face the music now.”

They stop at a motel at half past eleven. Good Claire takes one bed, the one farthest from the door, and Bad Claire slides into the other one with Emma, on the far side so that she is between Emma and the door. Emma tenses on the stiff mattress but says nothing.

Minutes slide past in the darkness. The shuddering start of the AC unit and its subsequent sigh when it stops. The muffled sound of voices passing by the door outside. The whine of distant car engines on the road.

And, when Emma thinks they are both asleep. The whisper of bed covers being pushed back.

She stays very still as the dark figure moves past her. As the door clicks unlocked.

The brief sliver of light through the opened door illuminates Bad Claire’s open eyes, on Emma’s.

The door shuts. Darkness swallows them again.

“It’s her choice,” Bad Claire says quietly.

“I thought you’d be the one to leave,” Emma whispers.

Claire says nothing for a long time. Then: “I thought about it.”

But in the morning when they wake up, there’s a warm weight on their legs.

It’s Good Claire, curled up at the foot of the bed with the spare blanket drawn tightly under her cheek.

- - -

 (“Is she what you were like when you were little?” Emma asked as they watched her. Marijuana smoke pungent and thick around them. “Or—when Claire was, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Bad Claire said. Her words were slow and heavy. “Could you describe what you were like when you were a kid, if somebody asked you?”

“Scared,” Emma said automatically.

Bad Claire didn’t say anything for a minute. Just studied Emma, her eyes unreadable, and eventually Emma became aware of heat crawling into her face.

“Yeah,” she said finally.

Some of the heat filtered away. “Do you even feel fear?” Emma asked. “I mean…if you’re the dark part of Claire.”

Bad Claire gave a bark of laughter. “Emma-Jemma,” she said. “Where do you think darkness comes from?”)

- - -

Dean shoves the door back open, leaping in from the porch. “They’re coming!” he hisses. “Everyone get down.”

Half the graduation party guests in the living room dive for their hiding spots; the other half, led by Cas, exchange amused looks and move much more leisurely into positions behind the couch or table or the doorway that separates the living room from the kitchen. They leave their beer bottles and wine glasses behind, which is a clear give-away that something’s up, and Dean shoots everyone who does it, including Sam and Benny, dirty looks. Sam ignores his, as usual; Benny at least has the decency to shrug sheepishly and snag his bottle from the coffee table to take with him.

The porch step creaks.

“Ssshhh, ssshhh, ssshhh!” Dean hisses at everyone, and crouches down behind the decorative table just two feet from the front door.

The door opens.

Emma steps in. Claire follows her inside, glancing around.

“SURPRI—”

Dean’s bellow cuts off. Behind him, about half of the chorus that accompanied him continues, “—ISE!” The other half, able to see the same thing he does, disintegrates into stunned silence and a few exclamations.

“Um,” Emma says, glancing back at the two Claires behind her. “Ditto?”

“I can’t believe this,” Dean says. “Forget about college. There will be no college for you two. You’re grounded. Forever.”

“Don’t you mean you three?” Sam says. He seems more amused than worried. That tends to be his default when it comes to Claire and Emma’s what-the-fuck-ups, which, you know what, Sammy, someday you’ll have teenage kids and we’ll see how funny it is then, asshole.

Cas touches his elbow. “Glaring a hole through Sam won’t help anything, Dean.”

“It’ll make me feel better,” he grumbles, and returns his attention to the three kids. Emma and the Claire in Emma’s aviator jacket are standing almost protectively in front of the Claire in the pink hoodie. Everyone else they invited for the post-graduation/pre-college party has politely retreated to other areas of the house. “What were you thinking?”

“Please,” says the Claire in an aviator jacket sarcastically. “Like you never touched stuff in the bunker just to see what it would do.”

“Actually, no,” Dean snarks back, as Sam says, “True” with a pointed look at Dean. Dean flips him the finger without removing his glare from the girls. “Did that pixie not teach you anything?”

“That’s what I said!” Emma mutters.

“She did,” the Claire in the pink hoodie says guiltily.

Before Dean can reply to this, the front door flies open. “HEEEEEEYYYY!” shouts Charlie’s voice. “Where are my favorite high school graduates—”

She cuts off when she sees the six of them in the living room. “Oh.” Her sunglasses fall down onto her nose. “Um.” She pulls them off, her eyes flicking back and forth between them. “Is this a shifter situation?”

“No,” Dean says. “It’s an Oz situation.”

Charlie pales. “How…?”

“Wait,” Emma says. “That’s real?” She looks back and forth between them. “That whole—that really happened?”

“Whole what?” Dean says suspiciously, and Charlie winces.

“Are you emotionalrangeofasteaspoon?” Aviator!Claire asks baldly.

Dean looks at Charlie. “What is she talking about?”

Charlie looks deeply uncomfortable. “I may have…written about…stuff,” she says. “That’s happened to us.”

Dean makes a loud aggrieved noise. “Come on, Charlie—”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Emma demands.

“Sorry,” Charlie says, her voice as warning as it is flippant, “you must be a level eight to access my tragic backstory—”

“No,” says Aviator!Claire, “you just have to have an AO3 account.”

Dean lets out an angry breath. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this. Why the fuck would you write that stuff down, Charlie?”

“Dean, stop,” Cas says. “You can’t blame Claire’s use of the key on Charlie. She’s the one who sought it out—”

“She wouldn’t have known it was there to look for if Charlie hadn’t written all her crap down!”

“My crap?” Charlie echoes. Her eyes flash angrily, though her face is pale. “Those were some of the worst days of my life, Dean—”

“Then why’d you go and write a story about them!?”

“Because they were poisoning me inside!” Charlie shouts. “I had to get them out, what do you not understand about—” She breaks off, breathing through flared nostrils. “You know what? I don’t have to justify it to you. It was my story, it happened to me, what I do with it is my choice.”

“Not when it involves my kids—”

“Dean,” Cas says.

“Stop!” Hoodie!Claire cries, at the same time that the other Claire says, “The fuck is wrong with you?” angrily to Dean. It makes him falter and backpedal, looking to Cas for help.

Aviator!Claire looks at Emma, taking the other Claire under her shoulder. “See?” she says. “This is why we didn’t wanna come home.”

No one says anything else as the one Claire chivvies the other up the stairs. Charlie looks flushed and upset; after a moment, she slips out the kitchen door.

Charlie isn’t the type to sulk, or at least she tries not to be. It’s hard not just to slide back into her car and drive away, to find some motel where she can queue up her Netflix or Kindle and try not to think, but she knows that the girls are going to need some support from an adult who isn’t Dean once all the dust dies down.

She doesn’t feel quite up to giving it right now, though.

“Charlie.”

She recognizes Cas’s voice without looking up.

He settles beside her on the other pollen-dusted Adirondack in the back yard. “I’m sorry for all of that.”

She shrugs, pulling her feet up into the chair with her. She smiles reassuringly at him. “Not your fault, Cas.”

“Dean will be coming to present his own apology soon, if I know him.”

“…probably.”

She feels his studying gaze on her. “Do you wish me to keep him from coming to you?”

Charlie hesitates. “No. I mean—maybe.” She shakes her head. “No. I’m a big girl.”

“Adults are permitted to have feelings, too.”

“So is Dean,” Charlie says. “I… Don’t worry about me. How’re the girls?”

“I am giving them…space,” Cas says carefully.

“Probably a good idea.” They sit in quiet for a while longer. “Sorry to wreck the party.”

“You didn’t,” Cas says. “As I said, the girls’ choices are their own. And our circle of friends is used to this sort of thing by now, I think.”

Charlie snorts. Cas smiles slightly as well, then rises. She looks up at him inquisitively.

“I think there is someone waiting to speak to you,” he says. Charlie cranes her neck around to look behind him. It’s not Dean but Emma, peeking her head outside.

She stands back to let Cas pass her. He says something quietly to her as he goes inside. Emma nods and comes out across the grass to where Charlie sits.

She stays standing instead of sitting down in his spot. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Charlie says with a reassuring smile. She nods toward the chair. Emma sits gingerly.

“I’ve never seen you…like that. With Dean.”

Charlie fiddles with a string on her jeans, a little ashamed to meet Emma’s eyes. “Yeah. Me neither.” She clears her throat. “What did that Claire mean? About not wanting to come home?”

“They—I guess things have been harder for Claire than I thought.” Emma darts her this guilty look. “She—they. Really didn’t want to come back. To—”

“Cas,” Charlie finishes. Her eyes rest on Emma’s, searching. “Did they—did she—”

Emma’s brow creases.

“—hurt you?”

Emma’s brows fly up. “No,” she says, almost too emphatically; she sees the suspicion flit through Charlie eyes, the sadness like she thinks Emma’s lying to her. But it’s incredible—the mere thought of it; Claire hurting her. The thought hadn’t occurred to her even when she was watching Bad Claire warily from the corner of her eye, wondering when, not if, she was going to go on a killing spree à la Dark Charlie. But that would’ve been the obvious option, wouldn’t it—she thinks of how Bad Claire could have done something to her in her sleep, tied her up in the bunker, slit her throat in a motel.

But the only moment that either of the Claires had hurt her—

I don't agree with—that.

Charlie watches her for another minute, as though trying to gauge the honesty of Emma’s denial. Then she sighs, and leans over, resting her head on Emma’s shoulder. Emma hesitates for a second, then pets Charlie’s soft red hair.

“You should go back inside now,” Charlie mumbles.

“You’re not gonna leave?”

It comes out sounding more like a scared little kid than Emma intended; she winces.

But Charlie just sits up. “No! Why would I?”

“Dean was…”

“A dick?” Charlie finishes wryly. “Yeah. But I’m pretty sure Cas has raked his ass over the fire in a fierce yet emotionally educational way.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma says guiltily.

“Hey. It’s not your fault.” Charlie hesitates a minute. “It kind of is mine. I didn’t mean for you guys to—”

“The author is dead,” Emma interrupts firmly. “It’s about what the reader takes away from it, the author’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Dead-dead or Supernatural-dead?” Charlie raises an eyebrow. “Because one’s a lot more permanent than the other.”

They share a laugh.

“Not that I’m making excuses for him,” Charlie says, “…but I think Dean’s scared.”

Emma looks over at her.

“He always gets uptight when you and Claire are gone for the summer. I think he thinks you guys are going to like it there better. And…decide not to come back.”

Emma makes a sound of disbelief. “Does he know how strict Claire’s grandma is?”

“Yeah, but—blood counts for a lot. And Claire’s not exactly— There’s not a lot holding her here.” Charlie meets her eyes. “Except you.”

I don’t agree with—that.

“I don’t think that counts for as much as you think it does,” Emma says quietly.

Charlie regards her a minute longer, then shrugs. They sit in quiet for a bit, as the last gray lights of the sky darken to night.

Finally Charlie nudges her with her foot. “Time for you to go back inside before everyone thinks we eloped.”

“I’m game for that,” Emma says.

“Sorry, kiddo, you’re too spry for me,” Charlie retorts, and kicks Emma’s leg until she gets up and goes back inside, casting a last look over her shoulder back at Charlie as she steps into the light and noise of the party.

Cas finds him where he’s hiding out in the kitchen, washing the dishes that have gotten used so far in their bust of a party. He doesn’t say anything, but the mere presence of him, the warmth of his shoulders against Dean’s, feels like a prompt.

Dean looks over at him. Cas meets his gaze, leaning against the counter.

“I suck.”

“No one judges you as harshly as you do yourself, Dean.”

“Yeah, well. They should.”

Cas’s gaze is compassionate. Under it, Dean feels no less poisonous, but he does feel, more easily, the path he needs to take. He squares his stance.

Cas takes the dish rag from him. He starts to soap up plates as Dean grabs two beers from the refrigerator and, with a deep breath, pushes his way out the back door with his hip.

“Charlie.”

She has her feet slung onto the second Adirondack, watching him come closer. Night has fallen in earnest, the sky turned from dark blue to black. Someone’s mosquito lantern is lit in the next yard over, wafting its citronella scent into theirs.

“I’m…”

“Sorry?” She doesn’t move her feet from the second Adirondack yet. “Cas already came out and gave me an apology for you.”

Dean scuffs his boot in the dirt before taking a step closer. “Mine comes with a beer, though.”

She considers the extended bottle before she takes it. “This must mean we have a chick flick moment coming on.”

Dean sits gingerly on the Adirondack next to hers. He rubs his thumb across the cold wet rim of the bottle. The background is filled with the low chorus of cicadas.

“I never asked how you were doing after the whole Dark Charlie thing,” he says finally. He lifts his eyes to meet hers. “How are you doing?”

“I’m past it.” She inclines her head. “Mostly.”

Dean waits.

“You know how…after you watch a scary movie. Whenever you’re, like—bending over the sink and you have your eyes closed to wash your face. You’re afraid when you open them back up, there’ll be something from the movie behind you looking back at you in the mirror. You can feel something there. Even though when you open your eyes and look, there’s nothing. You know that there’s…it’s not the possibility, exactly. It’s already there. I’ve already done it. I’m—I’m that thing. Behind me. I am there.”

“I get it,” Dean says. “Sometimes—you think, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? You’ve already done the worst. What’s to stop you from doing it again?”

“Exactly,” Charlie says. Half in dread, half in relief.

Dean is quiet. “I ain’t got an answer for how to fix that yet.”

“Sure you do,” Charlie says, and there’s no mistaking the shade of jealousy in her voice. “You’ve got Cas. And the girls. And Sam.”

“You got us, too,” he says. Then, shamefacedly: “I’m sorry, Charlie. I shoulda asked you about this before.”

“Yeah.” She leans her head against his arm. “You should’ve.” A moment passes. “I don’t think I would’ve talked about it, though.”

Dean wraps an arm around her.

They sit for a long time. But eventually, Charlie pulls away and Dean lets her go.

“C’mon,” Dean says. “Let’s go get your bag out of the car.”

“Who says I’m staying the night?” grouses Charlie, but she leads the way around the side of the house up to the driveway where her yellow Gremlin is parked behind the girls’ Honda.

The party peters out with only one of its guests on honor present, and her only halfheartedly there, sticking for the most part to Cas’s side. Even Benny doesn’t coax much more than a weak smile out of Emma; respecting the subdued atmosphere of the house, the guests take their leave fairly quickly. Dean comes back downstairs around the time that Amelia and Sam are telling Cas they’ll be back tomorrow, after they’ve checked out from their hotel; Sam wraps him in a one-armed side-hug that Dean turns into a full one, digging his chin into Sam’s shoulder and closing his eyes for a minute. Then he thumps Sam on the back and escorts him and Amelia out onto the porch.

“Considering the change in circumstances,” Charlie says, “am I still bunking in Emma’s room?”

“I’m sure Emma will not begrudge you her bed,” Cas says.

“That’s fine,” Emma says distractedly. She’s wondering whether to go up to Claire’s room. Eventually, when Cas and Charlie go up to hers, she scrapes up her courage and knocks on the door.

A voice says, “Come in.”

She half expects to find them packing Claire’s things into suitcases. They’re aren’t. She half expects to find the Claires packing Claire’s things into suitcases. They aren’t; Good Claire is standing at Claire’s window, her arms wrapped around her stomach, and Bad Claire is sitting at Claire’s vanity, legs drawn up under her knees, running her hand slowly back and forth across the makeup-scattered surface. Her eyes glance toward Emma in the mirror when she comes in but don’t rest on her long, returning to the contents of the vanity.

Emma remembers the way Bad Claire stroked Good Claire’s hair back from her face, that night on the road. She remembers the one time Lydia did it for her, that morning in the house before the Matriarch came for her: brushing her hair in slow gentle strokes.

She knows where Claire usually packs her hairbrush in the side pocket of her suitcase. She goes to where it sits propped up against Claire’s bed and squats to unzip the compartment.

Good Claire makes a noise, darting forward. Too late.

Emma stares at the Oz key nestled in the side compartment.

Her eyes rise slowly to meet the Claires’. Bad Claire is looking away, her eyes shut as if in pain; Good Claire looks defiant, and determined.

“You’ve had it all along,” Emma says.

You’re protecting her.

“Give it back,” Good Claire says. “Please.”

Emma steps backward.

Good Claire steps after her. “Give it back.”

“Why?” Emma says. She remembers what Bad Claire said, about it being easier if one Claire did what her parents wanted and the other—didn’t. “You can’t want—”

Bad Claire leaps at her. Emma drops, but not quickly enough: Claire’s hand catches her collar, and they both thud heavily into the carpet, Claire scrabbling at Emma’s fisted hand for the key. Emma fights her way over Claire, rolling them so that she’s on top; Claire shoves her off and herself back into top position, knees right around Emma’s sides. Emma bucks, getting halfway up, and then grappling Claire halfway over, so that they’re both on their sides on the ground, shoulders digging into the carpet, Claire digging her hand into Emma’s armpit to try and make her clench her arm to bring the key into reach. Emma, tense with the effort of keeping herself from doing it grits her teeth and—and—leans forward and bites Claire’s nose.

Bad Claire rears back. Emma scrambles backward on her hands, panting heavily.

Pain explodes in her fingers.

“Claire!” Bad Claire yells.

Emma looks up. The other Claire takes the key from where Emma’s numb fingers and steps off of her hand.

Emma lifts it to her stomach, pressing the crushed fingers against her shirt. Disbelief throbs in her ears.

Good Claire looks awkward but not apologetic. “You should’ve given it back.”

A flare of scent from the doorway. Emma’s head snaps toward it. Dean stands there, mugs of ice cream balanced in his hands. His eyes are on Good Claire. His face is gray.

“Dad,” escapes Emma.

Dean sets the mugs down on Claire’s vanity. He does it very deliberately, telegraphing each movement, his eyes on Good Claire as he moves toward Emma. It’s the way he watches monsters, the way he used to watch Emma, and this doesn’t feel as vindicating as the darkest most secret parts of Emma had ever thought it would.

When he gets to her, he takes her hand in his. Examines the red, swelling fingers while keeping Good Claire in the corner of his eye. His hands are cold from the mugs, relief against Emma’s throbbing skin.

Good Claire tightens her grip on the key. Her eyes are flicking to the door, Bad Claire, Emma and Dean, and back again.

They freeze, then, on the door.

Emma follows her gaze. Cas stands in the doorway, Charlie at his shoulder.

“Get back,” Claire says.

Cas doesn’t move. “You’re frightened.”

Neither Claire says anything.

“It is difficult to feel town between conflicting responsibilities,” Cas says. His blue eyes are very intent. “Do you think it will be easier if only one of you has to bear the burden of doing what your parents would not have wished?”

Silence reigns. Dean’s hand tightly grips Emma’s.

“The Claire I know,” Cas says into the quiet, “has sworn never to let anyone sacrifice themselves for her ever again.”

The Good Claire’s gaze falters. Her eyes flick to Bad Claire, and then—to Emma.

Cas holds out his hand.

Good Claire hesitates. And then. Bad Claire steps forward. They stare at each other. Then Bad Claire grasps the other end of the key.

Light begins to glow from the metal between them. It spreads, the arc widening until it encompasses both of them.

One Claire floats into the other. Emma tries to figure out which one floats into which, but somehow it blurs; she couldn’t say, looking back, whether Bad Claire merged with Good Claire or vice versa. When the blur fades, there’s only one Claire, lying in a pink hoodie under Emma’s aviator jacket with blood trickling from her nose.

Her eyes struggle open, and she rolls upright, looking dazedly around. Her eyes meet Emma’s, focusing. Emma motions awkwardly to her own nose, and Claire, after a moment, seems to get the message, wiping her knuckles across her nose and looking down at the red smeared across them like she’s never seen blood before.

“Hey,” Charlie says quietly from beside her.

Claire says, “Hey.” Her eyes flick to Dean’s, then Cas’s, and not Emma’s. After a minute, she says quietly, “I’d like to go to sleep, please.”

Emma looks at Dean and Cas and Charlie. Dean is the one who moves first, herding them all gently out of the room, and Emma looks over her shoulder, where Dean’s hand rests gently, at Claire as they file out of the room.

They go downstairs. Emma presses a Ziploc bag full of ice against her fingers and watches the condensation drip off of it onto her jeans.

Dean pulls her closer. She starts to pull away when Charlie heads back to the stairs, but he holds her tighter and shakes his head.

Charlie knocks once before easing Claire’s door open. Claire is lying in the dark. Her arms are around a pillow, and her eyes are open.

Charlie shuts the door carefully behind her. She feels her way to the edge of Claire’s bed and sits down on it. “Hey.”

Claire makes a sound that may have been “hey” in response. She doesn’t do anything else, though, and after a minute, Charlie reaches out and touches her shoulder.

Claire shrugs it off. “Save me the meaningful talk, please.”

“I will,” Charlie says. “Just…didn’t want you to be alone.”

They sit there, as the sounds of the house settle around them.

Claire avoids them all for the next few days. She’s gone when Emma comes downstairs for breakfast in the morning and somehow manages not to be home in time for dinner several nights in a row. On Thursday, it’s just Emma and Cas at the dinner table, Charlie having left the day prior.

Emma pushes some arugula to the side with her fork. “Where’s Dean?”

“I believe he has gone to find Claire,” Cas replies.

Emma stiffens. “If she needs space—”

“We are respecting that need,” Cas says gently. “However, I think we also need to make sure she knows we love and miss her.”

Emma has nothing to say to this. She pushes some more arugula aside.

“I have not read Charlie’s stories,” Cas says after a few minutes. “But I have read the Winchester Gospels. I cannot agree with all of it, but there is something it portrayed very correctly.”

Emma looks up at him.

“When I forsook Heaven for Dean,” Cas says, “he carried deep guilt. He felt that I had given up something too great for him. And he was sure that eventually I would resent him for that.”

Emma’s breath is arrested in her lungs.

“I would not,” Cas says. “What I did resent was him not allowing me to live with what I had chosen. Refusing to accept what I wanted to share with him because he was sure that he did not deserve it ruined my sacrifice for both of us.”

Emma goes to her bedroom that night thinking. Turns on her lava lamp and lies there in the shifting orange and yellow and blue light it casts across her walls.

“Hey.”

Her head snaps up. Claire is standing in the doorway, hand raised halfheartedly as though to knock.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, of course.” Emma starts to sit up, making to turn on her bedside lamp, but Claire shakes her head. As she comes a little bit further into the dim room, Emma sees that she has something in her hand.

“One of…me promised you the password.”

“Claire,” Emma says. “It wasn’t you. You don’t have to—”

“It was me,” Claire says. “But not—they were both—” She finally meets Emma’s eyes, her own dark and reflecting the shifting orange and yellow shapes of the lava lamp. “Just—take it.”

Emma raises her hands just in time to catch the Kindle. The ridges of the spike-studded case, a birthday gift Cas bought for Claire at “Hot Topical,” are unfamiliar under her fingers.

“Are you sure?”

“I trust you.” Claire seems to be trying to communicate something to her by gaze alone, her eyes intent and dark. “With everything, okay?”

The silver studs press into the meat of Emma’s palm. One is loose in its setting, shifting in her grip. “What you said at Kevin’s—”

“Was fear,” Claire interrupts. “Maybe my parents would’ve been okay with—bisexuality.” The falter before she says it is so brief that Emma almost misses it. “And…probably they wouldn’t have.” Quiet for a minute, and then Claire shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “So.”

Emma wants to hug her. It’s the way she had wanted to put her arms around that Claire she thought was the good one, that first night, and pull her close under the shelter and comfort of Emma’s arm, protected from all the things that didn’t deserve to be able to hurt her. She shifts on the bed, instead, and looks down at the Kindle in her hands, turning it over.

As lightly as she can, she says, “This conversation just got kind of deep, huh?”

She doesn’t look up in time to see the expression flicker across Claire’s face. Only looks up when Claire is shrugging, folding herself into Emma’s desk chair. “You’re right. Have you checked to see if Chicon tickets are on sale yet? I bet we could guilt Dean into buying us some.”

“Guilt with what?”

“We didn’t get a proper graduation party,” Claire says with a perfect pouty face.

A laugh bounces out of Emma. “He’s gonna say that he’s not the one who told you to experiment with a dangerous Men of Letter artifact.”

“Of course he’ll say that,” Claire says, “but he’ll still feel guilty. Trust me, Emma. That’s the point of parents.”

“To make us feel guilty or to be made feel guilty by us?”

“Both. It’s a symbiotic relationship, see?”

“What do you call it when both sides suffer?” Emma says, getting up to follow Claire downstairs.

“That’s called a sibling relationship,” Claire says.

Emma kicks her in the back of the knees.

I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more.

I know I deserve more.

-- Michelle K., I Know I Deserve More