## Dean
**Three years old. A motel in Tennessee. Morning.**
The first time Johanna asked a complete question was on a Tuesday.
Not “There?” or “No” or “Sammy?”—a real question. With words. Several of them. In the right order. And of course, it was the one question I had no answer for.
“Why don’t we have a house?”
She was sitting at the table. Breakfast. Lucky Charms, because I was a good brother, and banana slices, because Sam was an annoying brother. She had milk on her chin and cereal in her hair, and she was looking at me with those green eyes, and the question hung in the air like smoke.
I looked at Sam. Sam looked at me. The thing we did when neither of us knew what to say.
“We do have a house,” I said. “We have lots of houses. A new one every week.”
“Those aren’t houses. They’re motels.”
Three years old. Three freaking years old, and she knew the difference between a house and a motel. Because in her entire life, she’d slept nowhere but motels and the Impala and sometimes Bobby’s place, and Bobby had a house, and she’d seen that a house was different. That a house had pictures on the walls and a refrigerator covered in magnets and a door you locked because you were coming back. Not because you were afraid.
“Motels are like houses,” I said. “Just smaller. And with worse TV.”
She looked at me. That look. My look. The look that said: I’m three, not stupid.
Sam cleared his throat. “We travel a lot, Jojo. For work. Some people travel for work.”
“What kind of work?”
Silence.
“We help people,” Sam said. Carefully. Weighing every word. “When people have problems, we go there and help.”
Johanna thought about that. I could see it—the furrowed brow, the narrowing eyes. My face. Dad’s face. Three generations of Winchesters in a three-year-old.
“Okay,” she said. And kept eating.
But she wasn’t finished. Johanna was never finished. She collected questions the way other kids collected rocks, and she brought them out when you least expected it.
**Three years, four months old. Bobby Singer’s kitchen.**
“Where’s my mommy?”
Bobby nearly dropped his coffee. I was at the stove making scrambled eggs—the only thing I could cook without Sam giving me a lecture—and my hand stopped halfway through the motion.
Johanna was sitting on the kitchen floor. Drawing. Crayons on paper Bobby had pulled from some drawer. She was drawing a car. Black. Four wheels. Too many doors. The Impala, as a three-year-old saw it.
“Mommy?” I said. Because I needed time. Because my mind was blank.
“Everyone has a mommy. Lily at the park had a mommy. The lady at the store had a kid and was a mommy. Where’s mine?”
Lily. A girl she’d met three weeks earlier at a playground in South Dakota. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes at a playground, and Johanna had learned that other kids had moms. That it was normal. That she wasn’t.
Bobby stood up. “I’m gonna go—sort some screws.” He disappeared. Coward. Lovable, old coward.
I turned off the stove. Sat down on the floor. Beside her. She kept drawing. Focused. Like she hadn’t just dropped a bomb.
“Your mom,” I said. And then I didn’t know what to say next. Because I knew nothing. Dad hadn’t said anything. No name. No face. No “She was like this.” Nothing. Johanna had shown up like a package with no return address, and Dad had died before we could ask.
“Your mom couldn’t stay with you,” I said. “But she wanted you to be safe. That’s why she brought you to us.”
Lie. Half a lie. Dad had brought her. But the truth—your father, who was supposed to be dead, showed up with you and then really died—wasn’t a story for a three-year-old.
Johanna looked at me. “Is she coming back?”
My heart. My damn heart.
“I don’t know, Jojo.”
She thought about it. Then: “It’s okay. I have you guys.”
She kept drawing. I sat on the floor and couldn’t breathe.
## Sam
**Four years, six months old. A motel in Colorado. Night.**
Johanna had been having nightmares. For three weeks. Every night. Always the same one—she didn’t talk about it, but I knew the signs. The screaming, the sweating, the eyes that were open but saw nothing.
Night terrors. I’d looked it up. Normal in kids between three and six. Harmless. They went away.
But Johannas nightmares weren’t normal. Johannas nightmares had started after she saw the thing in the closet.
It had been nothing. A shadow. A coat hanging on a hook that looked like—like something in the streetlight. I’d opened the closet, shown her the coat, and said, “See? Nothing. Just a coat.”
But Johanna was a Winchester. And Winchesters knew that sometimes the things in the closet were real.
“Sammy?”
Her voice. Small. Thin. From the bed beside mine.
“Yeah, Jojo?”
“Are monsters real?”
Dean was asleep. Or pretending to be. His breathing was too even, too controlled. He was listening. He always listened.
I sat up. Looked over at her. She was lying in her bed, blanket pulled up to her chin, eyes huge in the half-dark. Four years old. Four years old, and she was asking the question that would change everything.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you guys leave at night. And when you come back, you have blood on your hands. And you say it’s nothing. But it’s something.”
Four years old. Four years old, and she had seen everything. Every time we thought she was asleep. Every time we thought we were quiet enough. She’d opened her eyes and watched us leave, watched us come back, seen the blood and the cuts and the bruises and said nothing. For weeks. Months. Maybe forever.
Dean’s breathing caught. Briefly. Barely audible. But I heard it.
“Some things,” I said slowly, “are hard to explain.”
“Try.”
My God. She sounded like Dean. Exactly like Dean. That tone that allowed no argument, that said: Don’t lie to me.
“There are things in the world most people can’t see,” I said. “Things that—sometimes hurt people. And Dean and I make sure those things stop.”
Silence. Johanna thought about it. I could hear it—the quiet breathing that sped up when she was thinking.
“Monsters,” she said. Not a question. A statement.
“Yeah.”
“And you hunt them.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s why you have scars.”
“Yeah.”
She was quiet. For a long time. So long that I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then:
“Do the monsters come after me, too?”
And there it was. The fear. Not nightmare fear, not closet fear. Real fear. The fear of a child who’d just learned that the world was more dangerous than she’d thought and wanted to know whether she was safe.
I stood up. Went to her bed. Sat on the edge. She immediately moved closer, her body against mine, her hand gripping my T-shirt.
“No,” I said. “Never. That’s what we’re here for. Dean and me. We won’t let anything get to you. Nothing. Never.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She rested her head against my arm. Her hair tickled my skin. Blond. Fine. She smelled like the strawberry shampoo she loved and Sam hated because it was full of chemicals, but she’d stared at it in the store for so long that he’d bought it.
“Sammy?”
“Yeah?”
“When the monsters come—wake me up. I’ll help you.”
I laughed. Quietly. Not because it was funny. Because it was so damn Winchester it hurt.
“Deal,” I said.
Dean turned over. I couldn’t see his face in the dark. But I heard him swallow. And I knew he was thinking what I was thinking: She knows now. There’s no going back.
## Dean
**Five years old. A motel in Montana. Three in the morning.**
The Rugaru got both of us.
Me first. Ribs, left side, left side again, like the universe had a favorite joke. Two broken, minimum. Maybe three. I couldn’t breathe deeply without feeling like someone was sliding a knife between my ribs.
Then Sam. Worse. Much worse. The Rugaru had grabbed him and hurled him against the wall, and Sam had stayed down, and for three seconds—the longest three seconds of my life—he hadn’t moved. Then he’d coughed, and blood had come up, and I’d set the Rugaru on fire and dragged Sam to the car and driven, one hand on the wheel, the other on Sam’s chest, because I had to feel his heartbeat.
Bobby had Johanna. Bobby was there. Bobby was always there when we needed him, three hours’ drive or not. Johanna was safe. Johanna was sleeping in Bobby’s guest room and didn’t know that—
But Bobby had called. Twenty minutes ago. “She woke up. She wants you guys. I can’t calm her down.”
So we drove. I drove. Sam sat beside me, clutching his side and breathing shallowly and saying nothing, because Sam didn’t say anything when it was really bad. The blood on his shirt was dark. Too dark. Not skin-deep. Deeper.
“Hospital,” I said.
“No.”
“Sam—”
“Johanna first.”
Of course. Johanna first. Always Johanna first.
We arrived. Three in the morning. Bobby’s house was brightly lit, every window, like he’d turned on every lamp he owned. I parked. Got out. My ribs screamed. Sam got out. His face was gray.
The door opened before we knocked. Bobby. Cap, flannel, shotgun in hand, because Bobby always had a shotgun in his hand. His eyes moved over us. Over the blood. Over Sam’s face. Over the way I was moving—stiff, crooked, one hand pressed to my side.
“Damn it,” he said quietly.
“Where is she?”
“Living room.”
I went inside. Sam behind me. Slowly. Too slowly.
Johanna was sitting on the couch. Bobby’s old, worn-out couch that smelled like whiskey and dog. She was wearing her pajamas—the ones with the little cars on them, the ones she loved because they looked like the Impala, even though they were actually fire trucks. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were red.
She saw us.
And her face—her face broke.
Not crying. Not screaming. Something worse. Something I’d seen only once before, back when she was sixteen months old and had seen my blood on the car seat. But back then she’d been a baby. Back then she hadn’t understood.
Now she was five. Now she understood.
She saw the blood on my shirt. The blood on Sam’s shirt. The way I was holding myself. The way Sam leaned against the doorframe because his legs could barely hold him up. She saw everything. And she understood everything.
“Dean.” Her voice was so small. So thin. “Sammy.”
“Hey, Jojo.” I tried to smile. It felt like a lie. “It’s okay. We’re here.”
She stood up. Came toward us. She didn’t run—she walked. Slowly. Carefully. Like she was afraid we’d break if she moved too fast.
She stopped in front of me. Looked up. Her eyes traveled over my face, my shirt, my hand at my side. Then to Sam. His face, his shirt, the blood seeping through his fingers.
And then she started to cry. Quietly. Without a sound. Tears ran down her cheeks, over her chin, onto the car pajamas. She stood there crying and said nothing, and it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. Worse than Purgatory. Worse than Dad. Worse than anything.
I dropped to my knees. It hurt. Everything hurt. But I dropped to my knees because my sister was crying, and I couldn’t stand over her while she cried.
“Jojo. Hey. Look at me.”
She looked at me. Green eyes, my eyes, full of tears.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. Promise.”
“You’re lying.” Five years old. Five years old, and she knew when I lied. “You’re lying, Dean. Sammy’s bleeding. You’re holding your side. You’re broken.”
Broken. She said broken. Not hurt. Broken. Like a toy. Like something that couldn’t be fixed.
Sam came over. Slowly. Lowered himself to the floor beside me. His face was white, and I saw Bobby take a step behind him, ready to catch him. But Sam lowered himself under control. Beside me. In front of Johanna.
“Hey, little sister,” he said. His voice was thin. Too thin. “We’re okay. We look worse than we are.”
Johanna looked at him. Then me. Then him again. And then she did something that broke me.
She put one hand on my cheek. And one hand on Sam’s cheek. At the same time. One hand for each of us. Her fingers were warm and small and trembling, and she stood between us, holding our faces and crying quietly, and she said:
“You can’t break. You can’t.”
Bobby made a sound behind us. I heard it—that rough, choked sound Bobby made when he didn’t want to cry. Then his footsteps. The kitchen. The bottle. Bobby grieved with whiskey. We all grieved in our own way.
“We’re not going to break,” I said. “We’re Winchesters. We don’t break.”
“Promise?”
I looked at Sam. Sam looked at me. And we both knew it was a promise we couldn’t keep. Not in this life. Not with what we did. But we said it anyway, because she was five and needed us, and because sometimes lies were the only truth that mattered.
“Promise,” we said. At the same time. Without discussing it.
Johanna let go of our faces. Climbed into my lap. Carefully. So carefully, like she knew exactly where it hurt. She rested her head against my chest—the right side, not the left, not the side with the broken ribs—and reached for Sam’s hand. Held it tight.
We sat on the floor of Bobby Singer’s living room. Two broken brothers and a child holding them together. Blood on our shirts. Tears on our cheeks. And Johanna between us, holding our hands and refusing to let go.
Bobby came back. Whiskey in one hand. First-aid kit in the other. He looked at us. Three Winchesters on his floor, leaning against one another like a house of cards.
“Idjits,” he said quietly. But his voice wasn’t harsh. His voice was the voice of someone looking at his family and knowing they were falling apart, without knowing how to stop it.
He knelt down. Opened the first-aid kit. “Johanna, sweetheart. Will you help me?”
She lifted her head. Looked at Bobby. Wiped away her tears. And nodded.
Five years old. Five years old, and she helped Bobby clean Sam’s wound. She held the gauze. Handed him the tape. She didn’t say a word, but her hands didn’t shake. Not once.
Winchester.
When Bobby was finished—Sam stitched up, my ribs taped, everything treated as well as it could be without a hospital—Johanna lay down between us on the couch. My hand on her back. Sam’s hand on her stomach. Bobby in his chair, shotgun in his lap, whiskey on the table.
“Sleep,” I said.
“You guys, too.”
“We will.”
She closed her eyes. And before she fell asleep, she whispered, “I’ll look after you.”
Five years old. She was looking after us.
I stared at the ceiling and thought: We’re doing this wrong. We’re doing everything wrong. She shouldn’t know what blood is. She shouldn’t know how to hold gauze. She shouldn’t be lying on the couch watching over her broken brothers.
But she did. Because she was Johanna. Because she was a Winchester. Because this was the only family she knew, and she loved us so much that at five years old, she learned how to treat wounds instead of how to ride a bike.
Sam fell asleep. His breathing grew deep. Even. Johanna held his hand in her sleep.
I didn’t sleep. I lay there listening to them breathe—both of them—and thought: Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll find a way. Tomorrow I’ll do better.
But today—today I held my sister close and was grateful we were all still here.
Broken. But here.
## Sam
**Five years old, two weeks later. Everywhere.**
Johanna wouldn’t let go anymore.
Not metaphorically. Not figuratively. Literally. Physically. Her fingers hooked into my shirt, Dean’s jacket, Bobby’s flannel. Always. Constantly. Like someone had flipped a switch the night she saw us bleeding on the floor, and now the switch was broken and couldn’t be turned back.
Mornings: Johanna in Dean’s arms. Breakfast: Johanna in Dean’s lap. Dean stood up to get coffee—Johanna screamed. Didn’t cry. Screamed. That high, thin scream that sounded like someone breaking glass. Like the world was ending because Dean was three feet away.
He came back. Picked her up. She buried her face in his neck and breathed. Fast. Shallow. Like an animal that had just escaped a trap.
“Jojo. Hey. I’m here. I just went to get coffee.”
She didn’t answer. She held on. Her fingers white against his collar.
I watched it. Every day. And I saw Dean change. How he stopped putting her down. How he learned to do everything with one hand—make coffee, load guns, open the car door—because his other hand was holding Johanna. Because he couldn’t stand hearing her scream anymore.
At night it was worse.
Her bed was there. The folding bed we set up in every motel, with the blanket that smelled like laundry detergent and the pillow she’d gotten from Bobby—an old, flat thing with an oil stain in the corner that she loved because it smelled like Bobby. The bed was there. Johanna didn’t sleep in it.
Johanna slept on Dean. On his chest. Her ear over his heart. Her hand on his neck, where his pulse was. As if she had to hear and feel that he was still alive. At the same time. Double-checked.
When Dean turned over in his sleep, she woke up. Immediately. Eyes open, hands reaching, breath quick. And then she felt around. His face. His neck. His chest. Checking whether everything was still there. Whether anything was missing. Whether there was any blood.
Only when she was sure did she close her eyes again.
Dean didn’t really sleep anymore. I could see it—the circles under his eyes getting darker. The way he got up in the morning, stiff, slow, like he was a hundred years old. But he said nothing. Didn’t complain. Not once.
“She needs this,” he said when I brought it up. Quiet. Final. “She needs it, so she gets it.”
I tried, too. Of course I tried. I sat beside her, offered my arm, and said, “Come on, Jojo. Come to me.”
She came. Sometimes. Climbed into my lap, rested her head on my shoulder, held on to my T-shirt. But her eyes went to Dean. Always to Dean. Every thirty seconds. Checking. Is he still there? Is he still breathing? Is he bleeding?
And when Dean left the room—to use the bathroom, get something from the car, make a phone call outside—she went rigid. Her whole body. Hard as wood. And she started counting. Quietly. Under her breath.
“One. Two. Three. Four.”
I asked her once what she was counting.
“How long Dean is gone.”
Five years old. She counted the seconds her brother wasn’t in the room.
I called Bobby. In the evening, while Dean was in the shower and Johanna sat outside the bathroom door—not inside, not outside, exactly in front of it, her back against the wood, her eyes fixed on the crack beneath the door where the light came through.
“She won’t let go, Bobby. It’s been two weeks. She won’t sleep alone. She only wants to be carried. She counts when one of us leaves the room.”
Silence on the other end. Then Bobby’s voice, hoarse and quiet: “She saw you die, Sam.”
“We didn’t—”
“For her, you did. To her, you were as good as dead. You were covered in blood and could barely move, and she’s five. Five, Sam. In her head, you almost died. And now she’s afraid it’ll happen again. That she’ll fall asleep and wake up and you won’t be there anymore.”
I swallowed. “What do we do?”
“You let her. You let her cling and hold on and sleep on you and count your seconds. For as long as she needs to. You’re everything she has, and she just learned she can lose you. That doesn’t go away in two weeks. Maybe it never goes away completely.”
Bobby paused. I heard whiskey. Glass on wood.
“And you stop letting yourselves get torn up like this. I mean it. Find a way. Because next time—next time you might not come back. And then she’ll sit in front of a door counting seconds, and nobody will come.”
He hung up. Bobby always hung up when he was done. No goodbye. No see you later. Just silence.
The shower stopped. Dean came out. Johanna stood up—so fast, like someone had pulled her upright—and stretched out her arms. Up. Carry me. Now.
Dean picked her up. Wet hair, towel around his hips, Johanna on his arm. She rested her head against his neck. Closed her eyes. Her hand found his pulse.
“It’s okay, Jojo,” Dean said. “I’m here.”
I looked at them. My brother, who didn’t sleep anymore. My sister, who wouldn’t let go anymore. And I thought about what Bobby had said. Maybe it never goes away completely.
And I thought: Fine. Then it doesn’t. Then we’ll hold her. As long as she needs us. And if that’s forever, then it’s forever.
That night Johanna slept between us. Not on Dean. Between us. My hand on her back. Dean’s hand on her stomach. Her fingers wrapped around Dean’s thumb. Her feet against my leg.
She woke up three times. Three times she felt around. Dean’s face. Mine. Pulse. Breathing. There.
The third time she whispered, “Are you still here?”
“Yeah, Jojo. We’re still here.”
“Promise you’ll still be here when I wake up?”
“Promise.”
She fell asleep. And I lay awake listening to her breathe and thought: We have to stop. We have to find another way. Because Bobby was right. Because next time could be the last time. And because this child deserved to wake up in the morning and not check first thing whether her brothers were still alive.
But I knew, too: We wouldn’t stop. Because we were Winchesters. And Winchesters didn’t stop. Winchesters kept going until it killed them, and then they kept going anyway.
So I held my sister close. And hoped it was enough.