## Dean
**Sixteen months. A motel in Wyoming. Night.**
The Wendigo got me. Left side, three claws, from rib to hip. Not deep enough to die. Deep enough to bleed like a stuck pig.
Sam was driving. I sat in the passenger seat, pressing Dean's flannel shirt—my flannel shirt—against the wound and trying not to look in the back seat. But I looked. Of course I looked.
Johanna was awake. Awake and quiet. She sat in her car seat—the car seat Sam had researched for three weeks before buying, safety tests, reviews, recalls—and stared at me. Green eyes. My eyes. But not happy. Not curious. Not the normal Johanna stare that meant: What are you doing, and can I put it in my mouth?
She stared at the blood.
At my hand. At the shirt. At the blood seeping through the fabric, running over my fingers, and dripping onto the leather seat. Dad's leather seat. I'd never get that out.
“Don't look, Jojo,” I said. My voice was thin. Too thin. “It's nothing. Dean just got hurt.”
She looked at me. And then her face crumpled. Not crying. Not screaming. Something else. Something I'd never seen in her before.
Fear.
Real fear. The kind of fear babies shouldn't have, because babies shouldn't understand what blood means. But Johanna wasn't a normal baby. Johanna was a Winchester. And Winchesters understood blood before they understood what blood was.
Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled. And then she held out her arms. Toward me. Both arms, as far as the car seat allowed, and she made that sound—not “Da,” not a word, just a noise, high and thin and desperate, and it meant: Take me. Hold me. Make it stop.
I couldn't. I couldn't take her because my hands were covered in blood and I had to keep pressure on the wound and Sam was driving and—
“Just a minute, baby. Just a minute. I promise.”
She cried. Quietly. Not normal baby crying. That silent, trembling cry that sounded like something breaking.
Sam looked in the rearview mirror. Saw Johanna. Saw me. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscles.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Hang in there.”
I didn't know whether he meant me or her.
At the motel, Sam stitched me up. Johanna sat on the bed. On the purple blanket. Ten feet away. Too far. Much too far. But I couldn't hold her while Sam pulled a needle through my skin.
She watched. The whole time. Sixteen months old, and she watched her brother sew up her other brother, and she didn't say a word. Not a sound. Nothing.
That was worse than the screaming.
When Sam finished—eleven stitches, neat and straight, Sam had steady hands—I picked her up. Immediately. Before the last thread was even tied off. She clung to me, face pressed into my neck, fingers gripping my T-shirt, and she trembled. Her whole tiny body trembled.
“It’s over,” I said. “Look. It’s okay. Dean’s okay.”
She lifted her head. Looked at me. Put her hand on my cheek. “Da,” she said. But it sounded different than usual. It sounded like a question.
There? Are you there? Are you still there?
“Yeah,” I said. “There. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She laid her head back against my neck. And held on. As tightly as sixteen-month-old hands could hold.
That night she didn't sleep in her bed. She slept on me. On my chest, over the stitches, and it hurt every time she moved, but I wouldn't have put her down for anything in the world.
Sam sat at the table and watched us and said nothing. But I saw his face. And written all over it was everything he didn't say: We can't do this to her. Not forever. Someday we'll have to—
But he didn't say it. And I was grateful.
## Sam
**Nineteen months. A motel in Missouri. Evening.**
It was the first time we'd had to leave her alone.
Not alone. Bobby was on the phone. Three hours away, but on the phone, and he'd said, “Put the phone on speaker next to her bed. I'll read to her.” Bobby Singer, reading to a toddler over the phone. From a book about car engines, because Bobby didn't own any children's books, but that didn't matter. It was about the voice. About being there.
But we weren't there.
The ghost was in a school. At night. Two dead janitors in one week. We couldn't wait. We couldn't leave one of us behind because the ghost was strong—too strong for one person—and there was no one else.
I put Johanna to bed. Salt line in front of the door. Salt line in front of the window. Protective symbols on the ceiling that Dean had drawn with an Edding marker because we didn't have any chalk. The phone on the pillow beside her, Bobby's voice low, gruff, familiar.
“And then you take the carburetor apart, sweetheart. Carefully. Not like your brother, who rips everything out like a—”
Johanna looked at me. Nineteen months old. She understood more than she could say. She understood “put your jacket on” and “we're leaving” and “stay here.” She understood that jacket and leaving went together. And that “stay here” meant without us.
“We'll be back,” I said. “Very soon. Bobby's here. Can you hear Bobby?”
She looked at the phone. Looked at me. Her eyes—Dean's eyes, green, enormous—filled with tears.
“No,” she said.
Her second word. After “Da” came “no,” and she used it for everything. No to carrot purée. No to sleeping. No to getting dressed. But this no was different. This no was quiet and trembling and meant: Don't go.
Dean stood in the doorway. Shotgun in hand. Salt in his pocket. Ready. But his face—his face wasn't ready. His face was the face of someone tearing himself in half.
“Sam. We have to.”
“I know.”
I bent down. Kissed Johanna's forehead. She grabbed my hair—her reflex whenever she didn't want me to leave. Hold on. Don't let go. Winchester.
“We'll be back,” I said again. “I promise.”
I pried her fingers loose. One at a time. Five tiny fingers clinging to a strand of my hair, and each one hurt.
Dean came over. Knelt down. “Hey, Jojo. We're going to hunt a monster for a little while. We'll be right back. Bobby's keeping watch.”
“No.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
He kissed her head. Stood up. Walked to the door. Didn't turn around. Because Dean Winchester never turned around when he knew he wouldn't be able to take it.
I turned around. Once. Briefly.
Johanna was standing in her crib. Holding on to the railing. Tears on her cheeks. Mouth open. And she said nothing. No “Da.” No “no.” Nothing. She just stood there and watched us leave.
That was the worst part. Not the screaming. The silence. As if she'd understood that screaming changed nothing. As if at nineteen months she'd learned what Winchesters learned first: Some people leave. And there's nothing you can do.
It took us four hours. Four hours for a ghost that didn't want to stay where it was buried because it wasn't buried where we thought it was. Dean dug. I shot salt. Dean kept digging. I burned the bones. Routine. Dirty, dangerous, normal.
Four hours during which I couldn't think about anything but Johanna in that bed. Her eyes. The silence.
When we came back—three in the morning, filthy, exhausted, Dean with a new bruise on his chin—the room was quiet. Bobby's voice was still coming from the phone. Soft. He was still reading. For four hours, Bobby Singer had read from a book about car engines to an empty room.
Johanna was asleep. Curled up. Thumb in her mouth. But not in the bed.
In front of the door.
She was lying on the floor, on the doormat, right in front of the door. As if she'd waited there. As if she'd lain down where we'd last been and waited until we came back.
Dean made a sound. Not a word. Just a sound deep in his throat that sounded like something breaking.
He picked her up. Carefully. As carefully as he treated nothing else. She didn't wake up. Her head fell against his shoulder, her hand reached for his collar in her sleep, and she sighed—once, deeply—and kept sleeping.
“Bobby,” I said into the phone. “We're back.”
Silence. Then: “Good. She cried for an hour. Then she went quiet. I kept reading.”
“Thanks.”
“Don't do that again.” His voice was hoarse. Hoarser than usual. “Not like that. Not alone. Call me. I'll drive three hours, I don't care. But don't leave that kid alone.”
“Bobby—”
“I mean it, Sam.”
I looked at Dean. He stood in the middle of the room, Johanna against his chest, dirt on his face, blood on his chin, and he looked like someone who'd just lost the worst fight of his life. And the fight hadn't been the ghost.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
I hung up. Dean lay down on the bed. With Johanna. In his boots, in his dirty jacket, with grave dirt under his fingernails. He didn't care. He held her tightly and closed his eyes, and I watched his lips move. Silently. I couldn't hear it, but I knew the words.
It's okay, Jojo. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.
I sat on the other bed. Took off my shoes. Lay down. Stared at the ceiling.
We couldn't do this forever. We couldn't hunt and raise her and pretend both were possible. Someday something would break. Someday we'd arrive too late—not for the ghost, but for her.
But not today. Today we'd come back. Today she lay in Dean's arms and slept and breathed and lived.
Today, that was enough.
Tomorrow I'd worry. Tomorrow I'd look for solutions, for alternatives, for a way that didn't end in disaster.
But today—today I closed my eyes and listened to Johanna breathe and was grateful she was there.
That we were all there.