Friday, August 23, 2013. 11:23 PM. Somewhere outside of the New Orleans French Quarter. In the blink of an eye, Sam Winchester was truly, permanently, and irrevocably… dead.

The word left a bitter taste in Dean's mouth. Dead. His baby brother was a cadaver lost somewhere in Louisiana. He hadn't had time to find the body, and when he went back for it, it was gone. He couldn't even fucking bury him properly, like he deserved. He hated himself; for living, for running, for dragging Sammy into it. God, Sam… He deserved more, so much more.

Dean was holed up in an apartment somewhere. Ellen and Jo had bought it for him as a consolation, paying the bills and keeping his fridge stocked. He was perfectly content to just waste away on the couch, staring at the TV. He'd never appreciated just how awful daytime television was until now.

"Jawan… You ARE the father!"

He smirked a bit as the hefty woman from the Projects proceeded to do all kinds of flips and dancing, screaming and yelling at the man who looked like he was on Death Row. He'd kind of liked being Claire's dad. It made him feel like he'd done something right for once. Of course, she'd tried to kill him, and then Sam killed her, and it was once again fucked up beyond all belief, like everything he came into contact with. But still. It had been nice.

Knock, knock.

Dean glanced up at the door, considering if he should open it. "Dean Winchester?" A man's muffled voice called. "This is CPS, open the door, please."

CPS? Why would CPS want to talk to him? Did they have him mixed up with someone else? God forbid one of the kids that lived around him was being hurt. If that was the situation… well, child abusers were close enough to demons and monsters for Dean to make an exception and put his skills to use.

Dean did some speed-cleaning in the apartment, made himself look decently presentable, and opened the door. "Yeah?" He asked, his voice cracking from its little use. "Can I help you?"

"Are you Dean Winchester?" The clean-cut suit in front of him asked. The man looked like he'd been steam-pressed, with a crisp suit, a briefcase, and a stern face that couldn't be older than maybe twenty-eight.

Dean glanced him up and down. "Yes sir, I am." He said.

The man nodded, holding up the ID hanging from the lanyard around his neck. "My name is Agent Jaime Gonzalez, may I come in?"

Dean nodded and stepped aside to let him inside. "Yeah, knock yourself out." He said with a yawn.

The man nodded and entered, his eyes critically scanning the small apartment. "Please, sit." Dean said, gesturing to an armchair across from his couch and flopping down on it. "Can I offer you something? Beer? Water?"

Gonzalez shook his head smiled tightly as he sat. Before Dean could ask why CPS was there, he took out a folder and handed it to him. Dean glanced up at the man, then took it and flicked it open. As soon as he did, his heart stopped as three familiar women smiled at him from photos, little blips under them identifying them. Oh no. "Do you know these women, Mr. Winchester?" Gonzalez asked.

Dean wet his lips and managed to nod. "Yeah. I…" He cleared his throat. "I do. Old… acquaintances."

Gonzalez took back the folder. "You and I know that they were more than acquaintances." He said.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I've made a lot of mistakes." He said. "But now my baby brother is dead, and I couldn't do anything to help him, so the last thing I want is old girlfriends coming back to bite me in the ass."

Gonzalez didn't even bat an eyelash. Dean wasn't surprised; CPS saw a lot of shit. "I'm sorry to hear about your loss." He said flatly. "But this isn't about some old ex-girlfriends looking for revenge. This is about three beautiful children whose mothers trusted the children's father to step up and take care of them when they passed."

Silence.

"I…" Dean ran his hands over his face and blinked owlishly. "They… I… What? Run that by me again?"

"Those three women had much the same story. They got pregnant, went looking for the father, couldn't find him. They, being worried and desperate for their child's father, went to New York to pass around the guy's photo and ask if anyone had seen him. They ran into each other and became close friends, then came to CPS, thinking that we could help." Gonzalez leaned forward and clasped his hands on his knees. "They passed away in a car accident three weeks ago. We took blood tests, isolated common DNA, and traced it to you."

Dean sat in stunned silence, his groggy brain trying to wrap around the concept. "… There has to be a mistake."

Gonzalez's eyes flashed with what looked like anger as he leaned forward. "Oh, there's no mistake. We ran tests against every database we had access to, and you were the perfect match for all three of them. You're not quite as good as covering your tracks as you think you are." Disgust creeped its way onto his face. "I can see that these women were mistaken. There are three children with no one else but you in the world, and you don't even remember their mothers's names. Maybe they're better off in foster care, where someone wants them." He stowed his folder away and stood up, walking for the door. "Sorry to bother you, Mr. Winchester. Have a nice-."

"The blonde's name was Carolyn."

Gonzalez froze.

"I met her at a nightclub in St. Louis. She was twenty-four years old, had bright green eyes, and knew every Elvis song in the world. She wouldn't stop singing the entire night." He paused and sighed. "I met Sarita in San Diego. She was almost twenty-six, and had a scar over her entire left side from a surfing accident. She said that it made her look ugly… I told her that she was beautiful." Gonzalez turned in amazement. "Jane's favorite book was some John Green book about a bunch of chicks named Katherine or something. She was the first girl in a long time that I actually tried the serious dating thing with. We both hate Rom-Coms or that Nicholas Sparks kind of movie, so we went to see Captain America for our first date. I was thinking about going into the military then, so she called me Cappy or Steve and I called her Peggy."

Gonzalez sat back down across from Dean. "Army?" He asked.

"Marines. My dad was a Marine, so I thought that it would be a good thing to be one too. You know, follow in his footsteps. It was during this time where there wasn't anything happening in my line of work, but my brother needed help, so I forgot about it and moved on. I still regret it. It was a stupid idea, yeah, but I guess I wanted to do something good." Dean reached out his hand for the folder, then flipped through it. "This is real? I… I have kids?" Gonzalez nodded silently. "W… what are their names?"

"… You have two sons, Hector and Timothy. Hector is the oldest one, he's three years old. Your daughter, Ivette, is eight months old. Tim is two years." He paused. "They're great kids. My wife's been taking care of them for the past three weeks while we tracked you down."

Dean leaned back and stared at the smiling women in the photographs, his mind going a million miles an hour. This was all so crazy… He cleared his throat and looked up at Gonzalez's unreadable face. "Can I meet them?" He asked, wetting his lips.

Gonzalez nodded and smiled. "You can see them right now."

Dean immediately stood up. "Well, let's go."

The next few weeks were a blur. Jo and Ellen got involved immediately and moved him to a medium-sized house in the nice, suburb district that normally Dean would have hated. He knew that Cas was helping and was more than glad that his friend had children, and that Charlie wove in and out of her involvement, usually dropping off a goblin blanket or a dragon mobile or something. He met his children; his oldest son had his mom's tan skin and face, but Dean's eyes. His other son looked more like him with his mother's nose and eyes, and his daughter was the spitting image of her mother. They were all so beautiful; the second he saw them, the second that Hector clung to him and said "Will you be my papa?" Dean knew that he never wanted them to ever leave his life.

To be honest, Dean didn't really care what his friends did with his new house – or his new rewards card at the grocery store, or his new healthcare plan, or his new job, or his paperwork for putting Hector in preschool – because at the end of it all, he had three children who adored him, and even though they had their own bedrooms, every night somehow ended with him crashed on the couch with his children all curled up around him.

For the first time in years, Dean slept without any nightmares.

.

I'm sorry for killing Sam, but it's what ended up coming out.

I refuse to have Ellen and Jo out of the story, so just imagine that they're alive and well and hovering over Dean like mother hens. And Charlie. Who doesn't love Charlie?