She was no hunter, yet the Winchesters had known her for what felt like lifetimes. They came and went with the seasons—when danger loomed, or simply when the road felt too cold, too lonely. Her door was always open, her smile a quiet sanctuary. There was a gentleness in her that felt almost impossible. She was kind without cause, giving without question—pure in a way that made the world around her seem less sharp. And he… he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame he didn’t understand.

People, to him, had always worn blood on their hands. He had seen them at their worst—driven by violence, by greed, by hunger for something they could never name. But she was the exception. The crack in the pattern. The quiet proof that maybe not all was lost.

So when they visited again, the three of them—he stayed close, too close. His eyes followed her without permission, his steps lingered wherever she went. Long after the brothers had slipped into sleep, their burdens momentarily laid to rest, she remained—sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by notes and the pale glow of a laptop screen. She worked in silence, giving what little she had left to help them in their hunt, not for thanks, but for love—though she’d never call it that. She asked for nothing, needed no witness. Just the quiet knowledge that she could help—that she mattered.

And he watched her, quietly unraveling.

He stood at the edge of the room, a figure cut from stillness—stoic, expressionless. But his gaze betrayed him: it held her like a secret. Something was wrong, he could feel it in his bones. She should have been asleep—he had seen the fatigue in her eyes, felt the fraying edges of her spirit. And yet she stayed.

He felt it again—that pull, that ache. A feeling that had no name in his world. What was it, truly, that stirred in him?

He didn’t know. But it was hers.