The phone rings, and Sam's eyes jolt open. Groggily, he feels around the nightstand for his phone. He puts it to his ear. "Hello?"

There's a small female voice on the other end. "Um, is this Sam Winchester?"

"How did you get this number?" he demands, now sitting upright. A light goes on. He's woken up Dean.

"It's kind of a long story."

"Tell me, or I hang up." Dean looks over at him with confusion, he wants to know what's going on. Sam raises a finger to him and Dean glares, still curious.

"Well, I started asking friends of my Mom's if they knew who you were, and none of them knew anything. Um, then…I had this dream…"

"And?" Sam asks impatiently.

"You'll think I'm nuts."

He heaves a sigh. "Try me."

"Fine. I had this dream where a weird guy in a trench coat told me your number, happy?"

Sam shakes his head in confusion. "Cass?"

"Who's Cass?"

"Never mind that. Why the hell did you call me at four in the morning?!"

She lets out a nervous chuckle. "My name's Anna. I'm your daughter."

Sam's face falls in shock. "Sam, who the hell is it?!" Dean asks. Of course, he doesn't get answer.

"No." Sam says quietly. Then again, louder and firmer, "No."

"Look, please just listen to me. I know that you probably want nothing to do with me and I wouldn't even call, but my Mom's name was Rose Cassidy. She…died four days ago of Leukemia.

"I'm…so sorry." Rose…he remembers. It was eleven years ago, right after Stanford, getting back on the road with Dean. He was still grieving over Jess, but he remembers her clearly. Rose…

Dean is staring at him again. "It's fine, well, no it's not but…" Anna says. "She didn't have any family besides me and now…I'm in a foster home calling you at four in the morning 'cause I'm not allowed to use the phone."

Sam is slack jawed. "I'm—"

"Sorry, yeah…. She had a will. And it said that she wanted you to take care of me if anything happened to her."

"Okay, look, kid I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to do."

Kid? Dean mouths.

"Where I'm staying, it's in Harrisonburg, PA 456 Connelly Drive. Can you remember that?" Her voice drops to a whisper. "Shoot! I have to go." The phone hangs up.

Sam's eyes widen and he drops the phone next to him.

"Sam, you mind telling me what the hell that was?!"

"I…"

"Spit it out!"

"That was… my…daughter."

"Come again?"

"Apparently I have a daughter."

"Dude…"

"Her mom died and she wants me to come get her from her foster home."

"Congratulations, man."

"Shut up!"

"Well, you gonna go or what?"

"Are you crazy?!"

Dean shakes his head. "Man, I don't know how you can just not go. She's your daughter, you don't even want to meet her?"

Sam is annoyed. "Of course I want to meet her, Dean! She's my friggin' responsibility now! I can't take care of her, Dean."

Dean wipes his face. "If you won't, then who will?" He pauses. "What's her name?"

"Why?"

"Because Sam, I'd like to know my niece's name."

"Anna."

"Anna," he repeats, testing the name in his mouth. "I like it."

"Yeah," Sam says softly.

"Well, Sammy, it comes down to this: Do you want to raise your daughter, or are you gonna let someone else do it?"

"I don't wanna be Dad, Dean."

"Then don't be."

.

.

Dean sighs as the two of them pull up to the house. They drove through the night to be here. "You ready, Sam?" he asks.

"Yeah. Look, Dean I'm gonna give her a choice. I'm gonna lay out all of the cards in front of her. I'm going to tell her what could happen, and what will happens if she comes with us."

Dean nods. "Good luck."

"Thanks." Slowly and carefully, Sam gets out of the Impala and makes his way up the stairs of the house. He runs his fingers through his hair before ringing the doorbell.

The woman who answers the door appears to be in her mid-forties. She is slightly pudgy and has unnaturally blonde hair. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, yeah, you can. My name's Sam Winchester. I…believe my daughter is here, Anna?"

She looks at him up and down skeptically, then motions for him to come inside. "I'll get her for you. First I need to see some identification."

"Yes, of course." He gets out his wallet and hands a card to her. She looks at it for a moment, then hands it back to him.

"Wait here." After a few moments she comes back with a girl trailing behind her. She looks to be about five feet tall and is smaller than what he imagined from her voice on the phone. She has unruly, jet-black hair that gets in the way of her deep brown eyes. She's beautiful, and he helped make her. He looks at her with awe. "I'll leave you two to catch up." She eyes Sam one more time before leaving the room.

Anna smiles. "I knew you'd come."

He smiles. "Listen, Anna, why don't you sit?" She nods, and they both sit down next to each other on the sofa. "Look, there…is a lot you don't know about me."

"I…think I know."

"What?"

"I had another dream, and Castiel told me who you are. He said you hunt monsters, evil things."

"And you believed him?"

"Was he right?"

Sam sighs. "Yes. And I'm warning you, if you choose to come with me, you'll be in danger all the time."

"But you'll protect me."

"Yeah, I will, but eventually…."

"I don't care."

"You will care."

"No."

"We'll be moving constantly."

"I don't care." she repeats. "My mom said she wanted you to take of me. I'm going."

"Okay," he says finally. "If you're that sure, I'll come back tomorrow."

She smiles. "I'll pack."

.

.

The next day when Sam rings the doorbell, the door opens immediately. It's the same woman again, and this time Anna is next to her.

"You ready to go?" Sam asks.

"Yeah." She grins up at him.

"Come on."

"Bye, Charlotte." she says, rather unenthusiastically to the woman. She then slings her backpack over her shoulder and hops down to the first step. The door closes behind them.

Sam eyes her bag. "That's everything?"

"Everything that matters." They reach the bottom of the steps and her eyes wander over to the Impala. "That's your car?"

"Yeah, it is."

"It's cool." Sam smiles.

Dean gets out of the car to get a good look at Sam's daughter. She really looks no different than he imagined. "Anna, this is my brother Dean."

"Hi," she says shyly.

Dean smiles. "Hi."

Once in the car she asks, "I don't have to call him 'Uncle', right?"

Dean chuckles. "Not if you don't want to."

"Well, I guess this means I'm gonna grow…like a lot, huh?"

"I would bet on it." Sam says.

.

.

The engine powers down as they pull up next to their motel room. Sam and Dean turn their heads and look at Anna in the backseat. She is fast asleep. Sam looks to his brother. "Should I wake her?"

"Your call, but I'd let her sleep. When she wakes up, her old life will be gone."

Sam nods and gets out of the car. He opens the door to the backseat and scoops Anna into his arms. Dean unlocks the motel door and Sam walks in, laying her down gently on one of the beds, taking off her shoes and putting her under the covers.

.

.

Anna moans softly, rubbing her eyes as she wakes up. Sam and Dean are working on their computers. They look over at her when she sits up. "How long was I asleep?"

"Like 3 hours." Dean says. "When's the last time you got any sleep?"

"A couple days, I guess. Where are we?"

"Michigan," Sam says.

"There's…monsters here, then?"

"Yeah." Sam says, knowing that this is going to be hard for her.

"Great." She scans the floor until she finds her backpack. She rummages through it until she finds her journal and begins to write.

OCTOBER 19th

Dear Journal,

I'm sorry for not writing yesterday. It's been 5 days since Mom died.

She stops writing and stares at the last sentence. Seeing the words in front of her makes everything around her seem more real than ever. All of the sudden, tears well up in her eyes. She is barely able to wipe them away before they fall. She looks over at Sam and Dean. They're talking about strange murders and luckily aren't paying her any attention at the moment.

The day she died, she told me that she was going someplace better than Earth. A place where all your sorrows and despairs and worries just fade away into nothing. A place where time is distorted so an eternity can feel like a day. A place where your greatest memories become the world around you. A place where suffering fades away.

If only you didn't have to die first to get there.

It's a long story, but I found my father, and my uncle. Their names are Sam and Dean Winchester. Sam is my father. To tell the truth, the both of them scare me…a lot. Not as in I'm afraid they would hurt me, but rather it's the way they carry themselves. Nothing scares them.

We're all born with instincts. Those instincts help us survive. One of those instincts happens to be running away from danger. It seems that over the years, these guys, my family, had this particular instinct brutally beaten out of them, stomped on, and then set on fire for good measure. I can't help but wonder if this will happen to me….

I'm with them now that Mom has died. They seem like the kind of people that put family before everything, even themselves. I guess that puts the odds in my favor as much as possible, if I'm going to live this lifestyle with them. I know that my chances of survival are probably much higher at the foster home where nobody gives a crap about me, but I'd take quality of life over quantity of life any day.

And thus, with this entry I begin to document this brand new chapter of my life. The chapter in which I have no actual parental guidance, I may or may not go to college, get married and have children and grandchildren, and I may or may not die tomorrow.

Yeah, I guess in all of the heartfelt talk I forgot to mention. My dad hunts monsters. And has an angel-friend named Castiel.

Please feel free to interpret and/or absorb this information any way you wish. Just know, however that everything I have written in this journal about my life is the 100% Grade A truth. I have never misled you in anyway, but have instead shone light on the brutally honest truth of all my endeavors, experiences, and thoughts. My journals contain my entire life, so I must do what I can to keep them safe… and accurate.

I, Anna Cassidy, (/Winchester), am at this point in time, 87% sure of my complete and total sanity. I will let you know if and when this number changes.

Anna lets out a deep, satisfied, sigh and then turns the very first page of the journal and picks up her pencil again.

WARNING

If your name is not Anna Cassidy/Winchester, you probably should not have her journal. That said, I simply cannot stop you from continuing if you choose to do so. I understand that humans are very curious creatures, and that if I wanted to keep my thoughts private, I should have left them in my head. This journal contains everything that I think and feel. So, by all means, continue if you think that it will help you understand me, or that it will satisfy your curiosity.

But tread carefully. I may have written about you.

Anna puts down her pencil and gives her work a once-over, smiling because her work is completed.

Until she looks up from her book, she doesn't notice that Sam and Dean have been watching her write for several minutes. "What have you been writing?" Sam asks her tentatively.

"Stuff." Anna says carefully.

"Stuff about what?"

The girl sighs. "I think that if I was really interested in letting you know, I would have already specified."

"Okay, then," he says, raising his eyebrows to Dean.

Anna glares at him for a moment before speaking again. "I have a question. Why are there three people and two beds?" The question seems to catch them off guard. They probably didn't think it through all the way. "Right, I'll sleep on the floor, then."

They look at her, puzzled. "You're not sleeping on the floor." Dean says.

"Yeah, I am. Look, both of you, feel free to join me. But then these two semi-comfortable beds will just go to waste."

.

.

It's nighttime, and Anna is fairly certain that both the boys are asleep. She creeps past their beds and out of the door then slumps against the nearest wall, sliding into a sitting position. Suddenly she has her head buried in her knees and is sobbing uncontrollably. "Mommy," she whimpers.

.

.

Sam wakes when he hears the door open and close. When he nears the door, he hears muffled sobs and opens it to investigate. To his left, he sees Anna crying, and sits down next to her. She looks up at him. "She's dead, Sam."

"I know," he says, hugging her tightly. Her sobs are now muffled by his warm chest.

She lifts her head slightly. "It feels like someone ripped a hole in my chest."

"I know, I know," he says softly. "It's going to be okay."

"No it's not. It's never gonna be okay again."

"Shh," he soothes, stroking her hair. "You're gonna be okay."

"I'm cold, she says finally.

"Come on, let's get you inside."