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After Dean left Jo in a boathouse in Duluth, everything fell apart.
Sam—Meg—was bad enough, even if nothing happened.
Nothing happened. Nothing but heartbreak, and a fight, and-
My daddy shot your daddy in the head.
Nothing happened.
After Dean left her behind, Jo walked back to the bar. She cleaned up the broken bottle before she finished closing up. When she woke up the next day after a measly three hours of sleep, she wasn’t sure whether Dean had taken her heart with him or left it behind.
Jo’s boss gave her a funny look when she showed up to work the next day bruised and tearstreaked, but she saw the look in Jo’s eyes and left her alone.
Jo paid rent. Jo cleaned up after drunks. Jo rejected every proposition that came her way.
Once, her words weren’t enough and the man grabbed her wrist, and only a supreme act of self-control stopped her from breaking his. It all came back in a flash in that moment, standing with a tray of dirty glasses. Dim light, hair falling over hungry eyes, a hard tone under his chuckle.
Sam stood before her and didn’t let go, and Jo nearly dropped her tray and she nearly broke the man’s nose and she nearly cried and she didn’t do any of those things, just pulled away and went on with her day.
The demon wasn’t Sam. She hadn’t been Sam.
My daddy shot-
She hadn’t been Sam.
Sam was gentle. The demon had left a bruise on Jo’s forehead that didn’t fade for a month.
That creature hadn’t been Dean’s brother.
But John-
Jo didn’t call her mother to ask about John Winchester.
She called Bobby a few times. Once to ask for help with a creature that turned out to be a lamia. Three times because she was lonely and his name came first alphabetically.
A woman named Annie blew into town, making a special stop at the bar. Jo knew her from the Roadhouse, and once they both tested the other with holy water and silver, Annie bought Jo dinner.
“I know it’s cliché, kid, but your mother would agree you need fattening up,” she said, and stole one of Jo’s fries.
Jo couldn’t disagree. She’d lost some weight, and that was dangerous for a hunter. But too often these days she had to force the food down, some formless dread twisting in her gut until there was no room for her stomach, for life.
“Bobby sent you, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.
Annie didn’t get shifty-eyed. Good hunters didn’t have obvious tells like that. She just laughed.
“Nah, if I tell you who sent me you’ll run me out of town.”
“My mother, then?”
Annie went back to her food. “I’m not telling.”
Jo watched her carefully. “What happened between you and my mother, anyway?”
Annie gave her a long, considering look, chewing on her pasta, then nodded decisively.
“Yeah, you’re a big girl. Okay - y’know how some people fall in love and get married, and some people don’t?”
Jo nodded.
“You know how some people are in the middle?”
Jo hesitated for a breath too long, and Annie plunged into an explanation.
“I don’t know what it is about falling in love, but I never knew what the big deal is. Your mother thought it was something. I thought it was something else. That’s it.”
Jo couldn’t quite wrap her head around the idea. “So…you and Mom…”
Annie dropped her fork. “Oh, Christ, I didn’t realize you didn’t know at all.”
“I didn’t realize she…swung that way. Liked women.”
“It’s been a long time since William.”
And then Jo couldn’t remember what they were talking about.
You see, Bill…he was all clawed up.
Sam casually sunk the knife into the post above her head.
Praying to see you and Ellen one more time.
Laughter in his voice, a private joke between the two of them, but Sam would never have found it funny unless every second of gentleness had been an act, and it hadn’t, it hadn’t.
“Jo?”
Only Annie, across the table, snapped her out of it. Only Annie, who surely knew the truth.
“Did he?” Jo asked, her voice low.
“Jo, I swear, never when he was alive. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not the Other Woman.”
“Did John Winchester kill him?”
Annie opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Hunters talk, Jo. I’m sure whatever you heard, it was just that.”
“It wasn’t a hunter.” Jo stabbed her fries with a fork, more for something to do than out of any kind of hunger. “It was a demon.”
“A-”
“Sam Winchester. It wasn’t Sam. She looked like him, though.”
Annie nodded, slowly.
“Don’t know that I heard that.”
“I didn’t tell anybody.”
Annie whistled. “Kid, that’s a lot to hold on your own. You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Around them, the restaurant chattered on, but the silence stretched at their table, broken only by the sound of cutlery clinking and Annie chewing.
And then Annie’s phone rang.
“Sorry,” she said, glancing at Jo. “It’s Bobby. I gotta get this.”
Jo nodded, but Annie wasn’t looking at her anymore. “Annie here. If this is about the vetala, I got both-”
Her face fell.
“Oh, Bobby, no.”
There was a gentle tone to her voice, the same that had crept in when Jo mentioned the demon. “I know you were close to the boys…I- didn’t really know either of them, really, but I’m so, so sorry…he was lucky to have you…Yeah…thanks for calling. Stay safe.”
She let her hand drop to her lap and just stared at the phone for a moment.
“Who is it?” Jo asked. “Who’s dead?” She knew what death sounded like from every angle.
“Sam Winchester.”
Jo’s mind went blank.
The first thing she felt, impossibly, cruelly, was relief. Relief that she’d never see him again, never have to face the man who’d kidnapped her.
Who had also been kidnapped.
Who was dead.
Who had - of this, Jo had never doubted - stayed away from her on purpose, unable to face her over what Meg had done in his skin.
“Oh.”
The hunger in Sam’s voice.
The black filling his eyes.
His hand on hers, the gun aimed at Dean.
My daddy shot your daddy in the head.
And suddenly Jo couldn’t keep it back any longer, and she began to cry. Her father, a piece of him that wouldn’t slip away like the other memories no matter how much she wanted it to. John, maybe a killer and maybe a desperate man and maybe none of it at all, but she’d never know him well enough to say for sure because he was gone too. Dean, who somehow managed to look lonely in the middle of a crowded bar and who’d just lost everybody.
Sam, villain and victim and demon and dead.
Sam.
Something clinked against Jo’s plate and she looked down to see Annie extending a giant-size Caramilk towards her.
“Don’t know how you’d take a hug,” she said by way of explanation. “And Rowling may be full of shit, but she got one thing ri-”
It took two steps for Jo to get out of the booth and back in on Annie’s side. Jo had never seen her as a parent, but she spoke like Dad, and Mom had kissed her, and in that moment she was good enough.
Annie held her close, rocking back and forth and murmuring into her hair. Jo dimly realized she was crying too, that the two of them were causing a scene, but the world that mattered had shrunk to two women and their grief.
“Sorry,” Jo said shakily some time later, pulling away.
“For what?”
Jo took it as the you have nothing to be sorry for that it was, and pushed Annie’s plate away.
“Jo?”
“I’m sitting over here now.” Jo pulled her own plate in front of her and realized she was hungry.
One burger, a medium fries, and a large slice of chocolate cake later—Annie insisted on paying—Annie dropped her off at her apartment.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
It was a lie, but it was less of a lie than it would have been an hour ago.
Jo watched Annie drive away, her waving hand silhouetted in the streetlight.
She dreamed of her father that night. Not dead, not the nightmares she’d had for months, but coming home from work on any of a thousand ordinary days. Jo ran to meet him, hair flying, and when he picked her up and spun her around she felt like she was flying.
She woke with her eyes wet and a smile on her lips.