The Winchester Girl

I was born and raised by hunters to be a hunter.

It's in my blood, my father always says. You can't escape it. No hunter ever could. If you've been called, if you've been chosen, then this is who you are. This is your life.

Hunting isn't a job. It's an existence. It controls everything you do, everything you say, everywhere you go.

I was born into this life. And so were my brothers. We've never been what one would call a "normal" family. Unless you consider decapitating a whole nest of vampires family bonding time.

My name is Danielle Mary Winchester. And this is my story.

I don't remember my mother, Mary Winchester. I was 6 months old when she died in the fire that destroyed our home. All I have left of her is her cross around my neck, my hazel eyes and wavy hair, and the memory of her whispering to me as she laid me down to sleep every night. "Angels are watching over you."

My father, John Winchester, wasn't always a hunter. He was a mechanic for a long time. Then he met Bobby Singer. And his world was turned upside down.

Bobby came to Lawrence, Kansas on a job, a hunt. He saved Dad's life when the creature, which turned out to be a werewolf, cornered him in an alleyway. Bobby shot the thing straight through the heart with a silver bullet.

Dad thought Bobby was crazy. How could demons and monsters possibly be real? He'd seen it with his own eyes, but he still wasn't convinced. Bobby saw something in John, even then. It's almost like Bobby knew all along what my father was destined to become. And the truth was, though he was scared and skeptical, John was intrigued. He wanted to know more about this shadowy world around him that he'd never even known existed.

So Bobby taught him how to be a hunter. How to make devils traps and ward off ghosts and fire a shot gun full of rock salt.

Dean and Sam, my brothers, were born two years apart from each other. That's not much of an age difference, but believe me, Dean has never failed to remind Sam who's the big brother and who's the little brother. Dad had no intention of ever dragging them into the hunting business. Dad wasn't exactly a dedicated hunter. He did odd jobs on the side when something popped up close to home, but it didn't consume his life. Yet.

Then one day, 5 year old Dean and 3 year old Sam found Dad's journal, chronicling his scrapes with various supernatural forces. And, naturally, they blabbed it to Mom. John was in for the shock of his life when he found out Mary had been raised a hunter. And she forbade him from ever involving her boys in it.

But, boys will be boys, and they found ways to sneak around their mother's watchful eye. Sam and Dean hunted deer out at Bobby's cabin on the weekends, and they both became pretty comfortable around guns. They knew from a young age that monsters were real, but they never thought they'd ever have to face them. Dean was always persistent, begging Dad to take him on a hunt every time he left. Sam was never as interested. He was the school spelling bee champ, played Little League, and did what his parents told him to do.

For ten years, that was their lives. John was a half-way hunter, Mary was a somewhat concerned but ultimately happy mother and wife, and Sam and Dean were two brothers who constantly got on each other's nerves.

And then I was born.

I was definitely an unplanned baby. Both Mary and John were content with just two kids, and loved their boys to death. Besides, they were a handful as it was. But when Mary discovered she was pregnant again, all that changed. And nine months later, John and Mary finally got what they were missing. A daughter. "I'm finally not so outnumbered by boys," Dad told me my mother used to say. They named me Danielle because it's kind of a combination of my brother's names, Dean and Samuel.

I wish I'd known my family the way it was back then. I wish I could have seen them, back when we had a home, when we had a real life. More than anything, I wish I could have grown up knowing my mother. I wish I could have seen my father before he was a hunter.

But that thing, that demon, ruined our lives, ruined everything. It came into Sam's room while he was asleep, and my mother came into check on Sam, and it killed her. My brothers, my father and I barely got out of the house alive. Sometimes I feel like I can remember Sam carrying me in his arms as we dashed out into the yard.

My mother, our home, our lives, had been reduced to nothing. So hunting became our everything.

I can't even begin to count the times Dad has said he never wanted this life for me, how sorry he is that I had to grow up this way, that this is the only thing I've ever known. At least Sam and Dean had a chance to be normal and care-free. I never did, and I never will. But I've always found a way to be okay with that. Because one day we're going to kill the thing that murdered my mom. And it'll all be worth it.

My name is Danielle Mary Winchester.

My brothers are Sam and Dean Winchester, and my father is John Winchester. We're hunters. We hunt the supernatural.