## Johanna
**Fourteen years, six months. The bunker. Library. Three in the morning.**
Dean was asleep on the couch.
Not really. Not the way people were supposed to sleep—in bed, under a blanket, with their eyes closed and their breathing calm. Dean slept the way Dean always slept: half sitting up, his head tipped back, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's on the floor beside his hand, his other hand on the gun under the pillow.
I stood in the doorway and counted the bottles.
Three. Since Monday. Three bottles, and today was Wednesday. Three bottles in three days, and Dean thought I hadn't noticed because he threw the empties in the trash and took it out before I got up. But I got up earlier than he thought. And I saw the bottles before he hid them.
I went over to him. Quietly. Picked up the bottle from the floor. Set it on the table. Pulled the blanket over him—the plaid one that smelled like motor oil and aftershave, the blanket that was always on the couch because Dean fell asleep here more often than in his bed.
He mumbled something. My name. Or Sam's. Or both. In sleep, we sounded the same.
I sat down on the floor beside the couch. My back against the side. Knees drawn up. And stared at the bottle.
Jack Daniel's. Tennessee whiskey. 40 percent. 0.7 liters. Empty.
I knew what alcohol did to a liver. I'd looked it up. Fatty liver, cirrhosis, liver failure. I knew what it did to the brain. The heart. The kidneys. I knew because I looked up everything that could destroy my brothers, because the monsters were only half the danger.
The other half was sitting on the table. 0.7 liters. Empty.
Dean snored softly. His breath smelled like whiskey. Even in his sleep. Even through the blanket.
I rested my head against the couch and closed my eyes and thought: I have to get better. Not better at sewing. Not better at patching. Better. Really better. Professional. So I could fix them—not just the wounds the monsters left behind, but the ones they inflicted on themselves, too.
Medicine. Medical school. Real training. Not YouTube videos and anatomy atlases and Bobby's kitchen-table surgery. Real.
I would become a doctor. For them.
## Sam
**Fourteen years, seven months. The bunker. Library. Afternoon.**
Johanna sat at the table reading.
That wasn't unusual. Johanna was always reading. But normally she read bestiaries or lore or—when she thought nobody was looking—novels she hid under the table because she didn't want Dean teasing her about them.
Today she was reading a textbook. Orthopedic surgery. Eight hundred pages. Hardcover. From the library at the University of Lawrence—I didn't know how she'd gotten it, and I didn't ask because the answer was probably "stolen" and I didn't want to hear that.
"Jojo."
"Hmm." Without looking up. As always.
"What are you reading?"
"Broken bones. Rib fractures. How to splint them properly so they heal straight." She turned a page. Her finger moved over a diagram—transverse fracture, oblique fracture, comminuted fracture. "Did you know a rib that heals wrong can puncture the lung? Just like that. You think everything's fine, and then—" She made a gesture. Air escaping.
I sat across from her. "Why are you reading that?"
She looked at me. Briefly. That look that said: Don't ask stupid questions. "Because Dean's broken his ribs three times in the last six months. And because I've taped them three times. And because tape isn't enough, Sam. Tape is a Band-Aid on a—on a—" She searched for the word. "On a problem a Band-Aid can't fix."
"Jojo, you're fourteen."
"And?"
"And you shouldn't—"
"What? Learn how to keep you guys alive?" She closed the book. Not angry. Tired. "Who else is supposed to do it, Sam? Who?"
I had no answer. Because she was right. Because there was nobody. Because we lived in a bunker where we couldn't call an ambulance, because then we'd have to explain why we had gunshot wounds and claw marks and why the blood on the floor smelled like sulfur.
"I want to study medicine," she said. Quietly. Not like a dream. Like a plan. "Someday. If this—" She made a gesture that meant everything. The bunker. Hunting. Life. "If this ever stops."
I looked at her. My little sister. Fourteen. An anatomy textbook in front of her. Glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Scars on her hands from sewing. And I thought: She's like me. She wants out. She wants something normal. And she's going to manage it about as well as I did.
"That's a good plan, Jojo."
She smiled. Not the empty smile. A real one. Small. But real.
"I know."
## Johanna
**Fourteen years, eight months. The bunker. Bathroom. After the vampire nest.**
Dean's collarbone was broken.
Not cracked. Broken. I could see it—the spot where the bone made a bump beneath the skin, where it shouldn't have been, where the flesh bulged and the skin pulled tight and Dean clenched his teeth and pretended it was nothing.
"It's just dislocated, Jojo. Just push it—"
"It's broken, Dean. Shut up."
Sam sat on the edge of the bathtub. His face was green. Not because of his own wounds—bite marks on his forearm, deep but clean—but because he was watching me examine Dean's collarbone, and Sam was the only one of us who got weak around bones.
I'd read the chapter. Three times. Clavicle fracture. Lateral third. Immobilization, sling, six to eight weeks. No surgery necessary if the fragments weren't displaced.
But the fragments were displaced.
I could feel it. Beneath my fingers. Two pieces that no longer fit together. Like a puzzle where someone had turned one piece around.
"I have to set it," I said.
Dean looked at me. "What?"
"Set it. The ends of the bones. They're displaced. If they heal like this, it'll heal crooked, and then—"
"Jojo. No."
"Dean—"
"You're fourteen. You're not setting my collarbone."
"Then who is?" My voice. Calm. Flat. The machine voice. "Sam passes out when he hears bones grind. You can't do it yourself. And we can't go to the hospital because you have three outstanding warrants and Sam is officially dead. So—who, Dean?"
Silence.
Dean closed his eyes. Swallowed. And nodded.
I took a deep breath. Put my hands on his collarbone. Felt the break. The edges. The displacement.
"On three," I said.
"On three."
"One—"
I pushed. Not on three. Never on three. Dean had taught me that—you do it on one because the body prepares for three, the muscles tense, and everything gets worse.
The sound.
I would never forget that sound. Bone on bone. A grinding that wasn't loud, but deep, so deep I felt it in my own teeth. And Dean—Dean made a sound that wasn't a word. Not a scream. Something in between. Something that came from a place he usually kept locked away.
Sam turned away. I heard him gag.
But I stayed. My hands on Dean's collarbone. I felt the ends meet. Felt them fit together. Felt the bone become what it was supposed to be again.
"Done," I said. My voice was calm. My hands were calm. Everything about me was calm.
I put on the sling. Padded it. Secured his arm. Everything by the book. Everything correct. Everything perfect.
"Thanks, Jojo," Dean said. His voice was hoarse. His face was wet. Not with tears—Dean didn't cry. With sweat. From the pain moving through his body and needing somewhere to go.
I nodded. Cleaned up. Washed my hands.
Then I went to my room. Closed the door. Went to the bathroom. Closed that door too.
And threw up.
For a long time. Everything in my stomach—which wasn't much, because there wasn't much in my stomach, because there was never much in my stomach. But my body tried anyway. Gagging, gagging, gagging. Stomach acid. Bile. Nothing. And then more nothing.
I knelt in front of the toilet and gripped the rim and my whole body shook—now, now it shook, now that nobody could see, now that the door was closed and the machine was switched off and I was Johanna again, fourteen, on the bathroom floor, with the sound of Dean's bones in my head.
Grinding. Grinding. Grinding.
I threw up until nothing else came. And then I sat there. My back against the wall. And pulled out the blade.
Not for the feeling this time. Not for control. But because I needed the grinding out of my head. Because the pain in my arm was louder than the grinding in my head. Because I needed something stronger than the sound of Dean's bones beneath my hands.
Four lines. Deep. Deeper than ever before. The blood ran fast—not slowly like it usually did, not in thin threads, but in streams that ran down my arm and dripped onto the floor.
I watched. And the grinding grew quieter.
Then I wiped up the blood. Band-Aids. Bandage. Sleeve. Two layers.
And went into the kitchen and said, "Dean needs ice for the swelling. And ibuprofen. And no whiskey, Dean, I'm serious, no alcohol with painkillers."
## Dean
**Fourteen years, eight months. The bunker. Kitchen. Evening.**
My collarbone throbbed.
But it was set right. I could feel it—the spot where the bone fit together again, where my fourteen-year-old sister had set it with her bare hands, like she was some damn surgeon instead of a teenager with glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling.
She stood at the stove. Making soup. For me, because I couldn't chew anything solid, because my whole upper body felt like someone had put it through a meat grinder.
"Jojo."
"Hmm."
"What you did before—that was—" I searched for the word. Impressive. Terrifying. Wrong. All of it. "Thanks."
She stirred the soup. Said nothing.
I reached for the bottle. Automatically. Like always. My hand knew the way to the whiskey before my head had made the decision.
"Dean." Her voice. Sharp. Without turning around. "I said no alcohol."
"One sip—"
"No. Alcohol. With. Painkillers." She turned around. And looked at me. And there was something in her eyes I couldn't place. Not anger. Not worry. Something older. Something that didn't belong in a fourteen-year-old's eyes.
"You drink too much, Dean."
Silence.
"Jojo—"
"Three bottles since Monday. I count them."
I set the bottle down. Not because she was right. But because she was looking at me, and that look held everything—every night she'd found me on the couch, every empty bottle she'd seen in the trash before I did, every lie I told myself.
She set the soup in front of me. Sat across from me. And ate nothing.
"Eat with me," I said.
"I'm not hungry."
"Jojo—"
"I had something earlier."
Earlier. Something. When? The same words. Always the same words.
I ate the soup. She watched. And I thought: Something's wrong. Something's wrong with her, and I don't see it because I'm too busy with my own bullshit, with the whiskey and the ribs and the monsters and all the goddamn—
But the thought sank beneath everything. The pain. The whiskey I wasn't drinking but wanted. The exhaustion.
And the next morning, her plate was clean and put away again, and once again I didn't know whether she'd eaten.
## Johanna
**Fourteen years, nine months. The bunker. My room. Saturday afternoon.**
Mark stood in the doorway, and I barely recognized him.
Not really. Of course I recognized him. But—he was different. Since summer. Since the three months I hadn't seen him because we'd been hunting and I hadn't had time and he was at football camp.
He was—bigger. Much bigger. A head taller than me, and I wasn't short. His shoulders were broader. His arms—I stared at his arms because they weren't the skinny stick arms I knew anymore. Muscles. Real muscles. Beneath a T-shirt that was too tight because he'd bought it before summer and had outgrown everything since.
"Stop staring at me like that, Jojo."
"You're—what happened?"
He grinned. Even his grin was different. Wider. More confident. The glasses were gone—contacts. And his jaw was—sharper. More masculine. Like someone had taken the thirteen-year-old boy with the dinosaur backpack and replaced him with an adult.
"Football camp. And the gym. And—I don't know. Puberty?" He shrugged. "Lucas says I look like—"
"Lucas?"
Mark turned red. Still. That hadn't changed. All the way to his ears. "We're—together. Since August."
I screamed. Loud. So loud that Dean came running from the kitchen, gun in hand, stood in the doorway, looked at Mark and then at me, lowered the gun, and said, "What the—"
"It's fine, Dean. Go away."
Dean didn't go away. Dean stood in the doorway and looked at Mark. And I watched his gaze move over Mark—the shoulders, the arms, the height—and watched his face change. Slowly. From surprised to—something else.
"Who are you?"
"Dean, this is Mark. You know Mark."
"That's not Mark. Mark is—" Dean made a gesture. Small. Thin. Glasses. "Mark is a kid."
"Mark is fifteen."
Dean looked at me. Then Mark. Then me. "Door stays open."
"Dean—"
"Door. Stays. Open."
He left. But not far. I heard him in the kitchen—right next door, right behind the wall, and he made no attempt to be quiet.
Mark sat down on my bed. Looked around. Glow-in-the-dark stars. String lights. Stuffed animals. "Your brother hates me."
"My brother hates anyone who's taller than me and sitting in my room."
"I'm gay, Jojo. I'm literally gay."
"Dean doesn't know that."
Silence. Mark looked at me. "Tell him."
"No."
"Why not?"
Because it was funny. Because Dean Winchester, the man who killed demons, was afraid of a fifteen-year-old gay boy with contact lenses. Because it was the most normal thing I had—an older brother who acted like a father protecting his daughter, even though there was nothing he needed to protect her from.
"Because I'm enjoying it," I said. And grinned.
Mark threw a pillow at my head.
And for an hour—for an hour we sat on my bed and he told me about Lucas and I told him nothing, because there was nothing I could tell him, nothing normal, nothing that didn't involve blood and blades and bones. But I listened. And laughed. And for an hour I was just Jojo. Not the hunter. Not the fixer. Not the girl with scars beneath her sleeve.
Just Jojo.
## Dean
**Fourteen years, nine months. The bunker. Kitchen. Evening.**
"Sam."
"Hmm."
"Have you seen Mark?"
Sam looked up from his laptop. "Yeah."
"He's—he's—"
"Grown?"
"He's a goddamn linebacker, Sam. He's got arms like—like—" I made a gesture. Big. Muscular. Dangerous. "And he's sitting in Johanna's room. On her bed."
Sam looked at me. That look. The Sam look that said: You're an idiot, Dean.
"He's her best friend."
"He was her best friend. When he looked like a toothpick with glasses. Now he looks like—like someone who could do things."
"Could do things."
"You know what I mean."
Sam closed the laptop. Slowly. Patiently. So damn patiently I wanted to hit him. "Dean. He's fifteen. She's fourteen. They're friends. And even if they were more—which they aren't—then it would be normal. That's what normal teenagers do."
"We're not normal."
"No. But she's trying to be. And you should let her."
I said nothing. Because Sam was right. Because Sam was always right about the things I didn't want to see.
But I left the door open. And I listened. And I heard her laugh—Johanna, my Johanna, who had laughed so rarely lately, who had been so quiet lately, so thin, so—I heard her laugh, and it sounded real, and that was enough.
For today, that was enough.
I reached for the bottle. And put it back down. Because Johanna was counting.
Three bottles since Monday. She was counting.
So I didn't drink. Not today. Not because I didn't want to. But because my fourteen-year-old sister counted my bottles and set my bones and stitched my wounds and didn't eat and didn't sleep and smiled without it reaching her eyes.
And because I was starting to suspect that something was wrong.
But I didn't know what. Not yet.
So I sat in the kitchen and listened to her laugh and didn't drink and thought: Tomorrow I'll ask her. Tomorrow I'll look. Tomorrow—
Tomorrow.
Always tomorrow.