Don’t think about Dean getting rid of Emma’s body. Don’t think about him folding her small hands over her bloodied chest. Don’t think about him crossing her ankles, seeing her brand new converse shoes and wondering who bought them for her. Was it someone who loved her? Did Amazons even feel love for their children or only a sense of duty? Don’t think about him snapping at Sam to shut up while his brother urged him to hurry before someone called the cops about the gunshot. Don’t think about Dean carefully lifting her hair from behind her back, laying it out in two tresses over her shoulders, wondering what it would have been like to learn to braid it. Don’t think about him stripping the sheets off the hotel bed and tucking them gently, gingerly around her lifeless body. Don’t think about him hoisting her into his arms for the first time, marveling at how light she was, how tiny. Don’t think about him laying her across the backseat in the car. Don’t think about him pulling off the road several miles away. Don’t think about him carrying her into the woods on the side of the road, Sam lugging a couple shovels and a jug of accelerant. Don’t think about Dean walking until he found a peaceful clearing, grassy where the trees broke for the night sky, surrounded by a chorus of crickets and tree frogs. She’d be able to see the stars here, Dean thinks, as he starts to dig. He gruffly directs Sam to keep watch; Dean will do the work. He’ll dig until his shoulders ache, until it feels like his spine is splintering at the small of his back, until the shovel rubs raw blisters into his palms. The hole is untidy and shallow - above all, small. Barely five feet long. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder. Would she have kept growing? Don’t think about Dean lifting his little girl for the last time, laying her into the cradle of damp dirt. He spills salt and accelerant over her still body and he thinks she should have had a pyre. She was a hunter, after all, just as much as him. He lets his lighter fall, watches long after her bones turn to ash, blinking back the sting of smoke in his eyes.
On the way back from her gravesite, Sam tells him she wasn’t yours. Not really.
