The knocking came at three in the morning.
I knew every kind of knock. The panicked pounding of someone running from something. The slow scrape of something that wanted in. The knock of a cop asking questions you couldn't answer.
This was none of those. Three knocks. Quiet. Hesitant. Then silence.
I lay on the bed, shoes still on, gun under the pillow. I hadn't slept since Purgatory. Not really. My body lay still, but something inside me stayed awake the whole time, like an animal holding its ears up, waiting for the sound that meant: Run. Or: Fight. Or: Die.
Sam was asleep at the table, his head resting on an open book. His laptop was still glowing. Typical.
Three more knocks.
I pulled out the gun and stood. Silently. I'd learned that in Purgatory—to move without the air noticing. Without the floor knowing. Without anything lurking in the dark being able to hear my heartbeat.
Through the peephole, I saw a figure in the glow of the neon sign. Tall. Broad-shouldered. One arm bent at an odd angle, as if he were holding something.
I yanked the door open.
Dad.
He looked like Hell. And I don't mean that as an expression—I knew what Hell looked like, and my father looked exactly like it. Sunken cheeks. A scar over his left eye that hadn't been there before. His jacket torn, his beard unkempt, and his eyes—his eyes looked like those of a man who'd stared into the darkness for too long, and the darkness had stared back.
But that wasn't what took my breath away.
There was a bundle in his arms. A blanket, dirty and worn, and something small moving inside it. A tiny face scrunched up like a fist, eyes closed, mouth making soft noises. Not crying. More like—I don't know. Like something dreaming in its sleep, and the dream was good.
A baby.
My father stood at my door at three in the morning with a damn baby.
“Dean.” His voice was hoarse. Broken. Like gravel under tires.
“Dad?” I heard myself as if from far away. The gun hung forgotten in my hand. “What the—”
“Not out here.” He pushed past me. Slowly. Carefully. As if one wrong move could break the bundle in his arms.
Sam jerked awake. His chair tipped backward and crashed to the floor. “What—” He saw Dad. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Dad?”
I knew that look on Sam's face. That mix of hope and anger and fear and trying to process everything at once while showing none of it. I knew it because I wore the same look myself.
Dad stood in the middle of the room, between the two beds, beneath the flickering ceiling light. He looked from me to Sam and back again. Then he looked down at the baby in his arms.
“This is Johanna,” he said.
Silence. The kind of silence that roars in your ears.
“Your sister.”
I stared at the bundle. The baby—Johanna—shifted and turned her head, and for a moment she opened her eyes. Dark. Almost black in the dim light. And she looked at me. Not like a newborn who couldn't focus on anything. Like someone who knew exactly who she was looking at. As if she wanted to say: There you are. I've been waiting for you.
Then she closed her eyes again and made a sound like a contented hum.
Damn.
“Sit down, Dad.” Sam's voice. Calm. Controlled. The voice he used when everything inside him was screaming. “Sit down and tell us what happened.”
Dad sat on the edge of the bed. He was still holding Johanna, as if he were afraid to let her go. As if she were the only thing still holding him together.
“Her mother is dead.” No hesitation. No explanation. Just the fact, laid down like a stone on a gravestone.
“Who was she?” I asked.
“Someone I wanted to protect.” He looked down at Johanna. His thumb brushed over her cheek, so carefully, as if she were made of glass. I'd never seen my father like that. Never. Not with Sam, not with me. John Winchester had been many things—soldier, hunter, drunk, commander—but tender? Never. “I couldn't. She's three weeks old.”
“Three weeks.” I dragged a hand over my face. “You've been dragging a baby around for three—”
“I'm sick, Dean.”
Four words. Four goddamn words, and the world tilted.
Sam stood up. “What do you mean, sick?”
Dad looked at him. And in that look was everything he didn't say. Everything he would never say, because John Winchester had no words for the things that really hurt. He'd taught us to load guns and exorcise demons, but he'd never taught us how to say: I'm scared. I'm dying. I'm sorry.
“I mean I'm not going to be around long enough to look after her.”
The room grew smaller. The walls moved closer. I felt something tighten in my chest, hard and hot, like a fist closing around my heart and squeezing.
“No,” I said. Not angry. Not loud. Just—no. As if the word alone could hold reality back. As if I hadn't already tried that a hundred times.
“Dean—”
“No. You show up here in the middle of the night with a baby and tell me you're dying? That's not—you can't just—”
Johanna started crying.
It wasn't a loud scream. It was a thin, trembling whimper that cut through the room like a knife through cloth. Dad tried to calm her, but his hands were shaking, and the baby could feel it. Babies feel everything. I knew that because I'd raised Sam. I knew how to hold a baby before I knew how to drive a car.
I set the gun on the nightstand. Walked over to my father. Held out my arms.
“Give her to me.”
Dad looked at me. For a moment, there was something in his eyes—relief, grief, pride, all at once, all too much. And I understood. This was it. This was why he was here. Not to visit us. Not to explain. But to hand her over. To the only person he trusted.
He placed Johanna in my arms.
She was so light. So damn light. I'd held guns that weighed more. I'd killed monsters bigger than this room. I'd survived Purgatory, Hell, death itself. But nothing—nothing—had ever felt like this tiny weight in my arms.
Johanna stopped crying. Just like that. She lay in my arms, and her whimper grew quieter, became a sigh, became silence. Her little hand reached for my shirt and held on tight. Five tiny fingers digging into the fabric as if she wanted to say: I'm not letting go. Don't even try.
I looked down at her. And something inside me—something Purgatory hadn't been able to destroy, something older than every curse and every demon and every scar on my soul—that something said: I've got you, little one. I've got you.
Sam stepped up beside me. I saw him swallow. Hard. Like back when he was twelve and didn't want to cry because he thought crying was for kids, and I told him: You're a kid, Sammy. Go ahead and cry.
“Hey,” he said softly. He reached out and touched Johanna's forehead with his fingertip. Carefully. As if he could break her. “Hey, little one.”
Johanna made a sound. It almost sounded like a laugh. Three weeks old, and she laughed as if she had no idea what kind of shitty world she'd been born into. As if everything was okay as long as someone was holding her.
Dad sat on the bed and watched his three children. And for the first time since I could remember, John Winchester cried.