Chapter Text
Ithaca, New York
November 2, 1983
It was the type of house that had potential, she told herself. If you mowed the yard, fixed the foundation, replaced the boards with real windows, hired an exterminator, painted the interior, and, okay, maybe the house needed a lot of work, but Elizabeth tried to see the potential. As she sat on the living room floor, adding the lack of furniture to the ever-growing list of problems with this house, she focused on the potential. Not with the house— let’s be honest, there was no fixing it— but with her sister. With her niece.
When word reached her that her older sister had given birth, Elizabeth knew she had to try again. When she heard that baby’s name for the first time, she knew she would never stop trying. She would die trying to free her sister and niece from this curse. She would die to make sure it all stopped with this baby. This baby would not spend her nights in the back seats of cars or on motel couches. This baby would not sit in her own filth, screaming until someone broke out of their drug-induced haze to change her diaper. This baby would not bounce around from school to school, moving each time CPS was called, or cars were repossessed, or eviction notices were given. This baby would not live the life that Elizabeth and Valerie lived.
Elizabeth knew the way out was right there. She could taste it. If she reached out, she could feel it. Warm, comfortable, and full. She knew because her sister always had it in her. Valerie was smart. Not just the kind of smart where she could read a little bit faster than the other kids, but the kind of smart where if she hadn’t gotten expelled after that sophomore year fight, she would have graduated with honors. She had been athletic, too. A complete natural. No fancy volleyball camps or private lessons— just raw talent. Valerie had a mean overhand, but where she really shone was defense. She would dive for even the most outrageous balls. She’d throw herself at the gym floor with no fear or hesitation. Somehow, she always managed to get her hands under the ball and save her team the point against them. She always had that fire behind her eyes. Call it grit, passion, determination, but whatever it was, she had it.
Elizabeth would admit that there was a time when she’d believed that fire was gone. Long after the expulsions, the arrests, and the brief jail time, Elizabeth had found her sister in some grimy bar in south Philly. She’d never seen Valerie’s eyes so dull; so devoid of life.
It was the first time she realized that the fire was just a mirage. A distorted illusion projected into steel blue eyes that originated in Elizabeth’s own pride. After that, every time she looked at Valerie all she saw was dying embers. That warm light of glory Elizabeth had been falsely basking in quickly faded as her augmented reality burned to ash.
Elizabeth had always hoped that when she graduated, Valerie would take her in. Imagining going to live in the big city with her big sister was what got her through most days. It wasn’t until Valerie poured her up a 10 A.M. shot that Elizabeth’s hope broke. It was there, on sticky barstool at Sharkey’s, that Elizabeth grew up. She can remember the exact moment she went from being a 14-year-old child to being a 14-year-old adult. It was with the sour burn of the first and last of alcohol she ever had that she found her resolve. As she tipped the tequila shot back, she promised to never again allow her shortcomings to be fraudulently absolved under the guise of someone else’s success. She would make her own success. She had to— there was no other option.
Her next two years were spent working harder than she ever had. She didn’t miss a single class, she spent her nights babysitting and her weekends picking up odd jobs around the trailer park in an effort to save every penny that she could. No longer fueled by the hope that her sister would take care of her, but rather by the fear of knowing there was nobody to catch her if she fell.
And then she got the news. A postcard addressed to “Libby” announcing that she would soon be an aunt. It shocked her, but more than that, it broke her heart. A new generation of their fucked up family that would that would continue to bare this curse of destitution. For the next nine months a little voice in the back of her head would whisper to her.
That baby deserves more.
That baby is not safe with your sister.
That baby needs you.
When the whispers turned into shouts that she could no longer ignore, Elizabeth devised a plan. Maybe it was too late for her and Valerie— their fates were sealed— but the baby was brand new, and full of possibility. The thought made Elizabeth giddy. She was determined; tonight, they would get out.
She rose to her feet and maneuvered past the drugged-out bodies of the home’s other residents. As she made her way to the kitchen, she tripped hard over a man whom she hadn’t seen move in two days. A deep groan left him at the contact of Elizabeth’s boot, and she was oddly flooded with relief. She had proof of life, barely, but it was good enough for her at that moment.
She reached her sister, and her sister’s douchebag pimp, boyfriend, baby daddy, or whatever the fuck he was calling himself these days, slumped in chairs around the small wooden table. “Val,” Elizabeth whispered as she bent down and shook her shoulder. No response. She grabbed Valerie’s face in between her hands and shook harder. “Val, hey, wake up.” Still nothing. She went to the sink and twisted the creaky knobs. She had no idea how there was running water in the house since nobody seemed overly concerned with bills, but thankfully, the pipes creaked to life and water spurted from the faucet. Elizabeth collected some in her hands and splashed Valerie’s face. She lightly tapped her cheeks, and her sister let out some low grumbles. Elizabeth splashed one more handful of water on the back of Valerie’s neck before turning the sink off. Once her sister’s eyes were fully opened, she hooked her hands under her armpits and dragged her to her feet. “Can you stand?” Elizabeth steadied her sister, making sure her eyes were alert and her feet were firmly under her before she let go.
“Yeah, Libby. I’m good.”
As much as she knew Valerie was nowhere near “good,” she couldn’t help but smile at the nickname her sister always used for her. She wasn’t terribly fond of nicknames, but Valerie was always the exception to her rules. “Take a walk with me,” Elizabeth said as she grabbed their coats.
“Libs, it’s November. We’ll freeze,” Valerie protested, but Elizabeth was already draping the coat over her shoulders and guiding her towards the door.
Frigid air hit the girls’ faces as soon as they stepped outside, but neither could deny that it felt good. Even if tears did prick the corners of their eyes, and their noses did start to go numb, the fresh air smell was worth it. The girls made their way down the front step and onto the street and began walking under the soft glow of the streetlights. For a little bit, neither girl said anything. Valerie was trying to shake off the daze and focus on anything but the pounding in her head. Elizabeth was trying to think of the perfect speech to give. She had come all this way, embroidered baby blanket in hand, to convince Valerie to run away with her, and now she can’t come up with anything to say. Too scared to say the wrong thing and send her further down this path. Too scared to say the right thing, and have to actually go out on their own. How would a 16-year-old, a 22-year-old, and a baby survive on their own? They had no jobs, no real education, hell, the only car Elizabeth had was one she stole. Can’t start an honest life on that note, can they? Finally, she broke the silence, “Val?”
“Hmm?”
“What would it take to get you to leave?” Elizabeth blurted it out before she really had a chance to think about it.
Valerie glanced sideways at her, unsure of what her little sister was asking. She had nothing to leave. The house was just a house they stumbled into one day; a friend of a friend of a dead friend’s, or something like that. She had just been fired from her cleaning job at the motel. All she had was her daughter. And occasionally Rodney. She knew Elizabeth didn’t give two shits about Rodney, and that she would never ask her to leave her daughter, so she was left puzzled. “To leave what, Libs?”
Elizabeth gestured vaguely with her hands, “This… life. The drugs, and the mess, and the Rodney of it all—”
“I will not leave her.” Valerie cut her younger sister off in a clipped tone.
“Of course not. I would never, ever, ask you to do that. Just come with me, please. Both of you. It might still suck, but we’ll be together. We’ll take care of each other, and we can take care of her. With mom gone, and dad fucking off to who knows where, I am all alone. I don’t know how much more I can take, Val. Please,” She begged, her voice cracking with emotion. Elizabeth stopped walking and took a grounding breath. She had to remain brave and stable. Something sturdy for Valerie to put her faith in, so this whole thing wouldn’t fall apart.
“Rodney would kill me if I tried to take her,” Valerie said quietly, not quite meeting her sister’s eyes.
Elizabeth took a step forward and grabbed both sides of Valerie’s face in her hands, forcing her to make eye contact. “He’ll kill both of you if you stay.”
Tears welled in Valerie’s eyes, and though she couldn’t formulate the words, Elizabeth knew exactly what each tear was saying. One fell past her lashes, and she knew that Valerie had nothing to her name. Another one rolled down her cheek, and Elizabeth could see that her sister might actually love Rodney, or at least think she did. Another tear fell over the curve of her lip, and Elizabeth knew that Valerie was being seen for the first time in a long time. Her younger sister was truly seeing her for the mess she was. The ratty hair, the healing shiner, the split lip— it was all on display for her baby sister. Her face was covered in wetness, and in those tears Elizabeth could see all the horrors that ran rampant in her sister’s mind. This terrible, horrible life was also somehow the only comfort she had. She knew what the ache in her back would feel like after a night of sleeping on the floor. She knew the scent of Rodney’s breath— damp old leather— as he claimed her body. She knew exactly which six items she had in her purse: her daughter’s birth certificate, cherry lip balm, two loose cigarettes, her expired driver’s license, a motel shampoo, and a five-dollar bill.
She did not know what life on her own would look like. She knew her current situation was awful, but she at least knew what it was.
Valerie was fully sobbing on Elizabeth’s shoulder as the younger girl comforted her. “Val, I’ve got a plan, okay? Well, sort of a plan. Look, there are shelters and state programs. I’ve been doing research at the library. I hotwired a car, which isn’t a great start, but we’ll have somewhere to sleep. I can still graduate high school, I think, and you can earn your GED. I have all of my babysitting money saved. It isn’t a lot, but we can buy diapers and maybe some formula—” Valerie was doing her best to listen to Libby’s nervous ramblings, but all she could hear over and over again was her saying, “he’ll kill both of you if you stay.” She lifted her head off Elizabeth’s shoulder and looked her square in the eye. The tears had subsided, and Elizabeth had stopped mid-sentence at the sudden, intense look on Valerie's face.
“Okay. Let’s go. We have to go now, because I don’t know if I’ll have this in me tomorrow. We need to go to the house, get the baby, and drive that hotwired car like a bat out of hell, you got it?”
Elizabeth felt a shock run through her spine. She couldn’t believe the words she had just heard. Although she was obviously hoping her sister would say yes, she never let herself fully believe it. She flung her arms around Valerie and held her in that way only a sibling can. That way that says I see you, I understand you, I’ve got you. The older girl returned the embrace, and for the first time in their pathetic lives, the two girls giggled until they were laughing, and then laughed until they were bent over, gasping for air.
“This is such a bad idea,” Valerie whispered as they straightened up.
“Let’s just be fast, okay?” Elizabeth answered, and they practically ran back to the house.
They got to the front stoop, and she held a finger to her lips, signaling for Valerie to remain quiet. She really, really did not want to wake Rodney. To say he hated Elizabeth would be an understatement. When she first got to the house three days ago, she had picked up the baby to wrap the blanket around her. She had gotten it made by the art teacher at her school as a gift for her new niece. It was simple, but beautiful. A lovely cream color with the baby’s first name stitched on in pink and there were small roses all around the edge. Rodney had walked in on her holding the baby and completely lost it. Started screaming about how she was trying to kidnap her. He had slammed Elizabeth against the wall before ripping the baby from her arms. The feral untamed rage in his face was not something Elizabeth wanted to be on the receiving end of again. Rodney had stomped down the stairs with the child without bothering to soothe the cries that erupted out of his daughter. Suffice it to say, Elizabeth did not want a repeat of those events. Especially when this time, she was sort of kidnapping the baby.
Just as they opened the door, a man in a dark coat shoved past them into the house and disappeared quickly up the stairs. Valerie opened her mouth to yell at him for being a dick, but Elizabeth quickly shushed her. She was not in the mood to pick a fight with that guy and wake the whole house. Plus, they had no idea who he was or what mental state he was in. He must have been mostly sober, though, because although he stunk of rotted eggs, he seemed quite steady on his feet. The girls quickly maneuvered the first floor of the house, gathering up their stuff. Valerie only had the coat she was wearing and her purse, so after she swiped that from the kitchen counter, she was good to go. Elizabeth was rummaging through her backpack, trying to make sure everything was still there, when her fingers ghosted over a picture. It was a Polaroid the sisters had taken a few years back when Elizabeth was 12 and Valerie was 18. The faded caption was scrawled in Valerie’s handwriting, “Libby and me 1979.” In it, they were standing under a big oak tree that was at the front of the trailer park their dad’s ex-girlfriend had lived in. It was the last time they had spent more than a day together until now. Elizabeth meant to give it to Valerie along with the baby blanket, but Rodney’s unexpected display of psychopathy halted that plan. She shoved the photo into her coat pocket and zipped up her bag. The girls made eye contact from across the room and silently agreed to go upstairs and get the baby.
As they climbed the stairs, Elizabeth’s stomach knotted, and Valerie felt dizzy. What they were about to do was very dangerous, and there was no turning back. God forbid Rodney woke up, they wouldn’t even make it out of the house. Though with every stair they climbed, both girls convinced themselves more and more that this was the better option. They stepped into the room where the baby was sleeping and stopped in their tracks. She was awake, but not crying. She was not crying because her mouth was latched onto the palm of the stinky man with the dark coat. “Who the fuck—” Elizabeth started, but her words cut off in a gasp as the man looked up at her. His eyes shone yellow in the dark room. Not on a bender yellow, not jaundiced yellow, but bright, glowing, yellow. Bile rose in Elizabeth’s throat, and she opened her mouth again to scream for help, but suddenly the ground was no longer beneath her. She barely registered that she was flying in the air before her head cracked against the wall. Elizabeth remembers three things from right before unconsciousness consumed her. First, the little red smear on her niece’s lips. Second, the sound of her sister choking out the words, “you came,” And third, the sight of Valerie’s dirty sneakers rising off the floor.
When Elizabeth awoke, it was because something was dripping into her eye. And then her ear. And then her cheek. She absentmindedly wiped the side of her head and looked up to see what was leaking on her. She scrambled up to sit against the wall as her eyes adjusted to the scene above her. Valerie: motionless, pale, split open at the stomach, and pinned to the ceiling. Valerie’s blood and intestines were leaking out of her torso and splattering her sister below. Elizabeth screamed out her sister’s name, and in a second, the room went bright and hot. Fire. It was rapidly spreading around the room as Elizabeth sat frozen in panic.
Wailing.
That’s what snapped her into action. The piercing sounds of her niece’s screams from that piss-soaked mattress she was using as a bed. Things all around the room were catching fire, and Elizabeth started screaming to the other people to get out. She didn’t know who was conscious enough to save themselves, or who needed help, but she couldn’t care about that right now. She dove toward the middle of the room, pulling the baby in tightly to her chest. She was so small and so fragile, and Elizabeth had no idea how to move without breaking her. All she had to cover her in the freezing New York air was a dirty diaper. Elizabeth ripped the diaper off and grabbed the first cloth she could find. It was the gifted baby blanket, halfway on fire. She stomped it out with her foot and tried her best to wrap it around her niece. She tripped over Valerie’s purse as she scrambled out of the room. She tugged it over her shoulder before sprinting down the stairs and out of the house.
Once outside, she stripped off her coat and bundled up the baby, who was still crying. Maybe that was the ringing in her ears. Maybe it was the sirens of the fire truck pulling onto the street. Elizabeth watched as a few more people stumbled down the front step out of the house. Her eyes frantically searched for the man with the black coat and yellow eyes, but she never saw him. Unease and confusion bubbled inside her until she was coughing and retching almost into the face of the newborn in her arms. Elizabeth’s eyes raked over the growing crowd, and she saw Rodney across the street, his Boston Red Sox hat glowing like a bad omen under the street lamp. All of a sudden, a sickening piece of the puzzle fell into place. Rodney was already outside. He heard his child wailing for help, watched as the home she was in caught fire, and he saved himself. Even now, as Elizabeth tried to calm the baby in her arms, he didn’t so much as shoot her a second glance.
As Elizabeth started to make her way across the street, two things happened simultaneously. A fireman, Kenny, according to the name patch on his jacket, approached her asking if the baby was alright, and she saw a flash of glowing yellow from the corner of her eye. Elizabeth made a split-second decision that she would regret until her last breath. She shoved the baby into the firefighter’s arms and said, “Not mine. Red Sox hat is the dad.” She jerked her chin in Rodney’s direction and then took off sprinting toward the flash of yellow in her peripheral vision. The firefighter called after her, but she didn’t slow down.
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“David!” Kenny yelled out to his colleague as he approached the truck. “We’ve got a baby. Some kid came out of the house holding her, but claims not to be the mother. Said the Red Sox guy is the dad and then just took off,” He filled them in as he carefully laid the infant down.
“I hate these calls,” David sighed as he ran his flashlight over the baby. “Nobody knows who’s who, or who’s on what. Trying to patch ‘em up is like playing darts with a blindfold.”
“How does she seem?” Kenny asked, “The girl holding her seemed pretty banged up. I mean, her head was covered in blood. The smoke inhalation must have been bad too, ‘cause she was coughing up a lung.”
“We definitely need to look at her more at the hospital, but she appears stable. You said the girl’s head was bleeding?” David raised eyebrows at Kenny, who nodded back at him. David reached for an alcohol swab and began to clean the baby’s face. “I guess that explains the blood on her, then. Go get Red Sox and see if you can get a name, or a mother for this child.” As David watched Kenny jog over to the man with the red cap on, he went through the pockets of the coat that the baby had been wrapped in. The only things he found were a crumpled-up tissue and a Polaroid picture of two girls under a tree. He examined the photo with the flashlight and made a mental note to ask Kenny if the girl he saw was one of the girls in the picture. He gave the jacket a final shake, and something else fell to the ground. He didn’t realize it when he first saw her, but the baby had been wrapped in another layer as well. A badly burned baby blanket. He held it up to the light and tried to make out the embroidery, but only two letters remained legible in the scripted font, “Em.” The baby was still crying, probably out of cold, hunger, sleep deprivation, drug addiction, or some combination of those. He knew that getting the baby skin to skin was the best way to warm her up and regulate her nervous system, so he gently nestled her against his chest under his t-shirt. David held her close against his body and rocked her. “It’s okay, darling. Em. Short for Emma? Or maybe Emmerson?” The infant continued to cry. “Well, I think ‘Em’ will do you just fine for now. You don’t gotta worry about nothing. We’re gonna take good care of you. Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay. We’ve got you.” He whispered reassurance into the baby’s ear, and no matter how loudly she screamed, he kept her close to his chest and rocked her.
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Elizabeth sprinted down the street as fast as she could. Her hair whipped around her face, and the cold air bit sharply through her thin sweater. Her head was pounding, and when she rubbed the back of it, she realized her hair was matted with blood. She quickly wiped it on her jeans and kept running down the street. Her lungs were screaming for air as she turned the corner and almost slammed into the fence closing off the alley. No yellow eyes. No black coat. No crazy man smelling of rotted eggs. She staggered for a moment and tried to catch her breath before thinking through what to do next. The thoughts didn’t come. No matter how hard Elizabeth tried, she couldn’t seem to get a thought to stick. Her feet slowly carried her back to the house, but everything was gone. The fire had been put out, the vagrants had left, and the ambulance, presumably with her niece, was nowhere to be seen. Even Rodney was MIA. She bent down mechanically to gather the backpack and purse she had dumped on the sidewalk, then continued to let her feet carry her down the road. Eventually, she saw the shiny blue paint of the Mustang she had parked three blocks down. It seemed to almost glow against the dark night, as if it were a porch light left on to welcome her home. Feeling undeserving of the comfort the plush interior might have brought, she climbed onto the hood. Silent tears streamed down her face as she turned her chin up to look at the stars. How had everything gone so wrong? They were so close to escape. So close to freedom. And it literally burned up in front of her. She didn’t have anything left. No plan. No coat. No Polaroid photo. She had no niece in her arms. She had no sister. All she had left was this black hole of unrelenting despair to face the world with. After rapidly moving past the denial stage of grief, anger began to take hold. Without thinking, she opened her mouth and screamed into the night sky. She didn’t care who she woke up, and she didn’t even scream anything in particular. She just screamed until that aching pit of loneliness crept back through her chest, and those screams turned into heaving sobs.
Elizabeth was cursing the world and cursing God from the hood of a ‘69 Mustang that wasn’t even hers, feeling the loneliest she’d ever felt in her life. She was feeling the same gutting loneliness that a man named John Winchester was feeling 1,156 miles away in Lawrence, Kansas. As he desperately clung to his two sons on the hood of a ‘67 Impala, he was throwing the same silent curses to the world, and to God. Elizabeth would eventually make her way to the backseat for some rest. John and his boys would sleep on the neighbor’s couch that night. Even though they didn’t know it, and even though they didn’t feel it, neither one of them was alone. They both lost their anchor to this world, and the last thing both of them did that night before sleep took them was to dedicate their lives to finding the yellow-eyed man who stole their everything.