## Sam
I couldn't stop staring at her.
Not at Dad. Not at the fact that our father, who had been missing for months, was suddenly sitting in our motel room and looked like someone had dragged him through Hell and spit him back out on the other side. Not at the words he'd said—sick, not much longer, your sister—words that circled through my head like flies around a corpse.
No. I was staring at Dean.
Dean, who was holding a baby.
He stood by the window, slowly rocking Johanna back and forth, and his mouth was moving. Quietly. It took me a moment to realize he was humming. Led Zeppelin. Kashmir. He was humming Led Zeppelin to a three-week-old baby, and the baby was asleep as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I knew my brother. I knew every version of him—the show-off, the soldier, the drunk, the idiot who thought he was invulnerable. I knew the Dean who had come back from Purgatory and jolted awake at night, reaching for things that weren't there. I knew the Dean who had carried me out of a burning house when I was four.
But I didn't know this Dean.
This Dean was quiet. Not the tense silence before a fight. A softness. Careful. As if someone had unlocked a room inside him that he hadn't even known existed.
Dad was sitting on the bed. His eyes were closed, his head resting against the wall. He looked old. Not old like a man in his fifties. Old like someone who was finished. Whose body was running on nothing but habit.
I sat down beside him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked quietly. Not angry. Not yet. The anger would come, I knew that. It always did. But right then, there was only this numb fear that felt like cotton stuffed inside my skull.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Dad—”
“It doesn’t matter, Sam.” He opened his eyes. Looked at me. And I saw it. I’d seen enough people dying to recognize it—that look that was already half somewhere else. That had already begun to let go. “What matters is her.”
He nodded toward Dean. Toward Johanna.
“How long?” I asked.
“Weeks. Maybe a month.”
I swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper. “And you’re telling us now? You have a kid, you’re—you’re dying, and you’re telling us this now?”
“Who was I supposed to tell? When?” His voice was calm. Not cold. Tired. “Dean was in Purgatory. You were—where were you, Sam?”
That hit. Directly in the spot that was already raw. Where had I been? In Texas. With Amelia. Trying to live normally while my brother rotted in Purgatory and my father was raising a baby and dying somewhere out there.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Nothing’s fair.” He leaned his head back again. “I need you. Both of you. She needs you.”
Dean came over to the bed. Johanna lay against his shoulder, a tiny bundle against his broad chest. She looked ridiculously small. Like a toy. Like something you could slip into a jacket pocket.
“She needs milk,” Dean said. Matter-of-factly. As if we hadn’t just found out our father was dying. As if this were a normal Tuesday night. “And diapers. And—Dad, did you even bring anything?”
Dad reached beside the bed and pulled up a backpack. Worn. Stained. He opened it, and I looked inside: two bottles, a can of formula, a few diapers, a crumpled stuffed animal—a dog, gray, with one ear missing—and at the very bottom, beneath everything, a gun.
Of course. A gun under the diapers. That was so Winchester I almost laughed. Almost.
“That’s enough for tonight,” Dean said. He looked at me. “Sammy. Milk.”
Not a question. An order. And I obeyed, because that was easier than thinking. Easier than feeling.
I went into the bathroom and prepared the bottle. My hands were shaking. Not much. Just enough for me to notice. I looked at myself in the mirror—dark circles under my eyes, hair too long, face too thin. I looked like someone who hadn’t slept properly in months. Which was true.
When I came back, Dean was sitting on the bed with Johanna in the crook of his arm, and Dad had fallen asleep. Just like that. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of the chaos, John Winchester had fallen asleep as if his body had decided it had done enough for today.
I handed Dean the bottle. He took it without looking up, held it out to Johanna, and she drank. Greedily. Small swallowing sounds that were much too loud in the silence of the room.
I sat down on the other bed. Across from Dean. And watched.
“You know how to do this,” I said.
“I raised you, Sammy.” A half grin. Tired. Sad. But real. “Bottles, diapers, three in the morning—that’s my specialty.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
“You don’t forget some things.” He looked down at Johanna. She was still drinking, her eyes half closed, one hand wrapped around his finger. “Like riding a bike. Or shooting. Or feeding a baby a bottle while your own father is dying in the same room.”
His voice didn’t break. Not quite. But there was a crack, thin as a hair, and I heard it because I knew Dean like no one else in the world.
“Dean—”
“Not now.” He shook his head. “Not now, Sam. Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll make a plan. Tomorrow—tomorrow we’ll take care of everything. But right now I’m feeding my sister, and you keep your mouth shut.”
My sister. He said it as if it had always been true. As if he’d spent his whole life waiting for this baby without knowing it.
I leaned back. Watched Dean feed Johanna. Watched him rub her back when she was finished, gently, rhythmically, until a tiny burp came out so quietly you could almost miss it. Watched him lay her against his shoulder again and keep humming. Ramble On this time.
And I thought: This is it. This is the moment everything changes.
Not Purgatory. Not Lucifer. Not the Apocalypse. But a three-week-old baby with dark eyes and a grip that wouldn’t let go.
I stood up, went to the closet, took out the thin motel blanket, and draped it over Dad. He didn’t move. His breathing was shallow. Too shallow. I laid my hand on his forehead—hot. Fever. Whatever was killing him, it was working fast.
Then I went back to my bed. Lay down. Didn’t close my eyes.
Dean sat in the dark, Johanna against his chest, and hummed.
Sometime during the night—I don’t know when, the hours blurred together—Johanna started crying. Not the quiet whimpering from earlier. Real crying. The crying of a baby who was hungry or wet or simply afraid in this strange, loud, dark world.
Dean was there immediately. But this time the humming didn’t work. He rocked her, talked to her—“Shh, sweetheart, it’s okay, I’m here, shh”—but she kept screaming, her face red, her fists clenched.
“Give her to me,” I said.
Dean looked at me. Hesitated. And I understood—he didn’t want to let her go. Not because he didn’t trust me. But because letting go was the worst thing there was for Dean Winchester. Letting go meant losing. And Dean had already lost too much.
“Dean. Give her to me.”
He placed her in my arms.
She was so small. So unbelievably small. I’d held books that weighed more. I held her awkwardly, too stiffly, too carefully, and Johanna kept screaming, because babies can tell when someone’s afraid of breaking them.
So I stopped being afraid.
I held her against my chest so she could hear my heartbeat. I’d read that somewhere—in one of the books I’d devoured as a teenager, when I was trying to know everything about everything. Babies calm down when they hear a heartbeat. It reminds them of the womb. Of safety.
Johanna grew quieter. Her screaming turned into sobs, then hiccups, then that small, shaky breathing babies make when they’ve cried themselves out.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, Johanna. I’m Sam. I’m your brother.”
She opened her eyes. Looked at me. And I swear—I swear—she smiled. Not really. It was probably just a reflex, a muscle twitch, something biological. But it looked like a smile. And it felt like a promise.
I looked over at Dean. He was leaning against the headboard, arms crossed, watching us. And there was an expression on his face I rarely saw. Not pride. Not relief. Something that looked like: Yes. Exactly like that. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
“Not bad, Sammy,” he said quietly.
“Shut up, Dean.”
He grinned. I grinned. Johanna fell asleep.
And for a moment—just a moment, between the snores of our dying father and the flicker of the neon sign and the smell of baby formula and gunpowder—for a moment, everything was good.
Not fine. Not okay. Not saved.
But good.