Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's a cursed object, and she doesn't mean to touch it. Jo knows what curses can do, knows this curse has a history of vanishing people right out of existence.

The case is as documented as it can be, which is to say hardly at all. Just obits and article clippings that all add up to say something in this cave makes people disappear. There's a rumor of riches—buried treasure bullshit that she knows better than to believe. But between the rumors and the odd hiker caught in a storm in the woods, plenty of people have gone missing.

She also knows it's not the cave itself. There has to be something inside it, because sometimes people go in and still come out again.

So Jo investigates, carrying a full duffel on her shoulder—stocked with food and water besides her usual weapons stash—because if she's going to get vanished somewhere, she'd prefer to be prepared to survive wherever that happens to be. In her experience, people never just disappear. They go somewhere else.

The cave is wider than she expects, with smooth, steady footing beneath her. The flashlight sits warm and heavy in her hand, steady as she traces her path and then sweeps the beam higher along the walls of the cave.

She knows it the second she finds it: an ornate sculpture of a naked woman, gold and dancing and glinting brightly in the glow of her flashlight. It's beautifully crafted, and maybe treated with magic to make it even more appealing, because even knowing what it is she's tempted to touch it.

She knows better of course, and rational thought is enough to quell the urge. The statue is perhaps a foot tall, sitting atop a natural pedestal of flowstone, almost out of reach. It makes Jo's EMF meter go crazy when she gets close, not that she needed the extra confirmation. Which leaves her with the question of what to do now.

Because as far as she knows, there's no way to stop a curse. She can't dispel it or exorcise it or purify the statue until it's harmless. All she can think of is knocking the damn thing off its pedestal and burying it, so that's what she decides—very carefully—to do.

It will take time. Not the knocking it over part, but burying it. There's nothing in the cave but solid rock walls and the statue, nothing to bury it with. If she could touch it maybe she could find a nook for it, deeper in the cave—somewhere no one would ever stumble across it, maybe blocked off with crumbling stones and some cement. She could make a trip for cement. But she still can't touch the statue, which means she needs something simpler.

She's still thinking it through when the ground shakes. It's not an enormous tremor, not even out of the ordinary from what she knows of the area. But it's enough to upset balance—Jo's and the statue's—and in her peripheral vision she sees the flash of gold as it dives for the floor.

It's nothing but instinct as she dives after it, a flash of desperation and the need to keep it from being damaged. Maybe it's the spell or maybe it's just her, but the end result is the same, and for an instant the gold burns as it touches her hands.

She wakes disoriented, her head throbbing angrily behind her eyes. The air is blinding darkness, and her flashlight is gone. Her back aches where she lies half across the supply duffel she still wears over one shoulder, and some hard edge digs into her ribs through the canvas. She groans as she sits up, stiff and aching, and wishes she still had her flashlight so she could take in her surroundings. It's chilly and humid, and her skin tingles along her body like she's coming down the long end of an electric shock. For a moment she can't remember why that might be.

She thinks back and retraces, trying to work her memory back to now. She remembers Duluth, Minnesota—an empty bar and a Sam Winchester that wasn't really Sam. Patching Dean up and watching his headlights disappear and only learning later that things played out all right in the end.

She thinks harder and remembers a monster in a child's closet after that, never did learn what it was but the child lived and the monster burned and that was really all that mattered.

And finally she remembers a cave, a golden statue, an earthquake.

"Fuck," she says. Because even though that's not usually her word of choice, it's really the only one that feels right.

She's about to stand when a sudden cut of light across her vision blinds her in the settling darkness, ruining her night vision and making her squint in discomfort. She holds one hand out in front of her eyes, but the shielding effect is minimal.

"Who the hell are you?" comes a soft, dangerous voice, low and rumbling and a little bit familiar.

"Jo," she says without thinking. Then just in case identifying herself is a bad idea, "Jo Sanders."

"You shouldn't be in here," says the voice, followed by several approaching footsteps and then a visible hand to help her up. She cautiously accepts, repositioning her duffel across the other shoulder once she's back on her feet.

With the beam of the light no longer in her face, she can take in something of her surroundings—and with a jolt she realizes they're exactly the same. Same smooth stone walls, same humid air, and when she turns her back on the man with the flashlight, she sees the golden statue still sitting on the same jut of flowstone.

"Son of a bitch," she mutters quietly, then startles as a warm, authoritative hand closes around her wrist.

"Don't go near it," the man says. "Come on, let's get you out of here." He keeps a hold as he steers her out of the cave, and for a moment she's too stunned to argue. She keeps pace and stares at the dim outline of his hand on her skin until they're outside under an angry, wooded dusk. He's even more familiar now that she can see him—dark ruffles of hair and deep eyes, a warm face with pronounced smile lines that she somehow suspects haven't creased much for awhile—but she can't put a name to the niggling hint of memory. He doesn't let go of her wrist until the cave entrance is just a gaping maw behind them.

"Do you know your way out of the woods?" he asks, face calm but eyes impatient. Like he's addressing a child or someone that's in his way. He's standing nearer the mouth of the cave than she is, and Jo realizes with a jolt that he plans to go right back in once he's alone.

"Wait," she says instead of answering the question. "You can't—… There's something you should know about that statue."

His face closes off completely at her warning, and his eyes narrow into a considering stare. At first Jo thinks maybe it's greed—he's set on going after that treasure, wants to know if she plans to fight him for it. But as she looks at him she has to reevaluate. In one hand he still holds a heavy flashlight, and there's a rucksack on his back, stuffed to bursting with supplies of some kind. In a side pocket she can see a tall cylindrical container, and realizes with a start that it's not water but salt.

"You're a hunter," she realizes—and of course he is, why else would she recognize him? "You're here for the statue."

"What do you know about it?" he asks, voice even softer than a moment before. He takes a step towards her, expression intent, and she hears the snap of branches beneath his boot—startles as his hand closes hard around the same wrist he just released.

"It's cursed," she says. "I came to stop it, but something went wrong."

"You touched it," he realizes.

"Yeah," she says, and then because it feels somehow important that he not think she's a complete idiot, "It fell. But obviously I didn't disappear if I woke up in the same damn cave, right? And who are you, anyway?"

"Name's John," he says without offering a last name. She doesn't bother wondering if he's lying; John feels right with that face, so she accepts it as the honest truth. "Did you have a plan?" he asks.

"Bury it," she says instantly. "Make sure no one else finds it by mistake. There's nothing else you can do for a curse."

John nods, face relaxing into a more amiable expression, but the one-sided quirk of his lips makes her feel like she's being laughed at.

"What?" she demands.

"It's not a curse," he explains. Simple and unhelpful.

"Of course it is," she says, but suddenly she's not as sure. "There's no way that's just a spell. I did my research, I know what normal magic can do."

"You're right, it's not a spell either."

"Then what?" she demands, exasperation quickly catching up with her.

"Would you believe me if I told you there are some kinds of magic in between?" he asks. His hand, still wrapped around her wrist like he's forgotten it's there, is a loose hold now, a far cry from the threatening grip of moments before. When he finally lets go it's like an afterthought. "It's rare, but it's possible. I'm just here on reconnaissance tonight. Need more concrete information to figure out just what we're dealing with."

"Oh," she says, rubbing at her wrist right where his fingers had touched. "Can I help?"

He considers her for a moment, calculating appraisal, and she resists the urge to squirm under his stare. She waits him out, because even though this is her hunt, too, she has a feeling he could keep her out of that cave if he wanted to.

"Sure," he finally says. "Why not." He throws her a look over his shoulder as he heads back inside, an expression that's almost a smirk, and adds, "Try not to touch anything."

They trek back through the woods together an hour later, on the way to the road, and Jo tries to form a theory for why she didn't vanish when she touched the statue. There has to be a reason, but what little she knows doesn't give her much room for imagining exceptions to the rule.

The fact is she's still here and she shouldn't be.

She glances as discreetly as she can to the side, watching the confident gait of the man beside her. The familiarity needles at her, like the memory of his fingers circling her wrist, maddeningly close and just out of reach. She knows his face. She just can't place why.

The edge of the forest is an abrupt cutoff of trees, leaving a clear view of the road ahead, and Jo stops in her tracks and stares at the spot she could have sworn she parked. The sky is clear, starlight and a full moon illuminating the empty stretch of pavement, and there's no sign of her gray-green junker of a car.

"Look," says John, drawing her attention back to himself with a snap. "Thanks for your help, but I've got it from here. Got some contacts that can help me sort that statue out. Do you need a ride anywhere?"

"I… have a car," she says, but she must sound uncertain because he quirks an eyebrow at her as if she's a little bit nuts.

"Where is it?"

"I don't know," she says and takes a tall step out of the ditch and onto the road. "I swear this is where I parked it. Right at the bend in the road." She shifts the duffel on her shoulder, fingers twitching at the tingle of anxious apprehension she can feel building under her skin.

A shift of air and the crunch of gravel signals his presence at her side, following her gaze down the empty pavement all the way to the horizon. She can feel his eyes on her, heavy with thought, and his brain is probably tracing the same paths hers is.

"You said the statue fell," he murmurs, getting there just as she does. "It was still standing when I found you."

She turns on him with wide eyes, scrambling for the last pieces of the puzzle, and asks, "What year is this?"

"Nineteen eighty-eight."

"Oh hell," she whispers and suddenly wants to storm back into that cave and melt that damn statue into its most basic elements.

"Well," he says, stepping back and tucking his hands into his coat pockets. "That changes the landscape. You from the past or the future?"

"Future," she says. The word feels surreal on her tongue.

"Guess we'd better find a way to send you back," says John. "You'll want to lay low in the meantime. Who knows what mucking around with history might do."

She just nods, numb and disoriented and surprised at how quickly her newfound companion seems to be wrapping his head around this new contingency. He looks uncertain for a moment, trapping his lower lip between his teeth and chewing on it in a nervous gesture, like maybe he's about to suggest something he's not too comfortable with.

"You can come with me if you need a place," he finally says. "We're on the same hunt, and you seem like a good kid." The word 'kid' sounds wrong coming out of his mouth, because sure he's older than her, but not that much older. He obviously doesn't mean it as an insult, and it's even more obvious that he's worried—not necessarily about her, though that's possible too, but about what will happen if he leaves her here with the hunt unresolved. She decides to do the kind thing for him, and the convenient thing for her, and accept his invitation.

"Yeah," she says. "That'd be great."

"Good," says John, but he doesn't look any more relieved now that the decision has been made. "I'm parked a little ways down the road. Come on."

Jo follows in step and wonders if she should even hope for a way back. None of her research indicated that anyone ever returned: why should she be the first? There are crickets chirping in chorus from the forest edge, and a dry breeze dusting at her hair, and Jo feels nothing so much as stuck.

She freezes mid-step when she catches sight of John's car glinting in the moonlight. It must be John's car, it's the only thing they've seen besides trees for half a mile, and it finally drives the niggling memory home. She knows that car: black Chevy Impala, 1967. She knows it with another driver, but she knows it just the same, and this time when she turns to look at that distantly familiar face a name resonates in her head.

Winchester.

"You okay?" he asks, noticing her sudden hesitance.

"Yeah." She shakes her head and forces her expression back to something neutral, tries to remind herself that she can't very well hold this man accountable for wrongs he hasn't committed yet.

She's mostly successful.

"It's a really nice car," she says as she slides into the passenger seat. As the engine revs and the headlights flash to life, Jo is hit with the surreal reality that she's riding in a car with a dead man. There is no more John Winchester where she comes from.

She does her best not to think about it and settles in for the drive.

Somewhere between putting the cave and cursed artifact behind them and arriving at a large, rickety apartment building, John's attitude takes an inexplicable shift from amiable neutrality to a cold, blank wall. He's not hostile, not outright, but each successive attempt Jo makes at conversation just seems to shut him further down.

Jo doesn't know much about the man beyond the cursory—beyond the fact he's a hunter and his boys are following in his footsteps and he went and got her dad killed, maybe even delivered the killing bullet himself. She doesn't know if the change in attitude means she's done something wrong or if this is just the way he gets after a hunt, but she's not particularly inclined to find out.

She keeps her mouth shut for the last half hour of the drive, and climbs out with her duffle the second he puts the car in park. The apartment building is dim and ragged-looking, obviously occupied by some dozen tenants, but uninviting and grim. A fading bulb buzzes away above the front door, and Jo follows as John leads the way in and up the stairs.

She treads with quiet care on each step, aware that they're well into the middle of the night, cringing at a loud squeak beneath her foot at the third floor landing as she follows him down the hall.

The apartment itself is as dingy as the hallway, clean but crumbling with age. The main room—living room and kitchen barely separated by an uneven counter—is lit by a lamp in the far corner, and Jo jumps when she realizes there's a little boy asleep in the patchwork armchair beneath the lamp. He can't be older than ten, and Jo wonders which Winchester she's looking at.

John huffs a quiet sigh behind her, then Jo hears the soft clicks of him relocking the apartment before he moves across the room.

"Wake up, Dean-o," he says, kneeling in front of the chair and gently shaking the boy from sleep. "What are you doing out here?"

"Dad," he mumbles, eyes blinking in sleepy resistance. "Promised Sammy I'd wait up for you." Now that she's looking for it, Jo realizes she can see hints of the Dean she knows hiding in the child's features. It's a disconcerting comparison and a jolt of familiarity, and Jo manages to keep her face blank only by the power of her well-practiced poker face.

"Okay," says John, and Jo can't help feeling transfixed by the soft intensity in the man's quiet smile. "I'm back now, so you get to bed. Come here." He pulls his son into a hug, but it's brief, interrupted when Dean's eyes open wider and lock on Jo.

"Who's that?" Dean asks, small fingers tightening in his father's sleeves.

"That's Jo," John says softly. "She's a friend. She's going to be staying with us for awhile."

"How long?" Dean asks, and the suspicion in his little voice is almost enough to break Jo's heart.

"Until I figure out how to send her home. She's lost, kiddo. We're going to help her out."

"Oh," says Dean. And if he still looks a little skeptical, Jo can chalk that up to fatigue—it's well past bedtime for children, even a hunter's children. She watches wordlessly as he half-stumbles his sleepy way down the short hall and through the door on the right. He closes it impossibly gently, perhaps wary of waking the younger boy already asleep inside.

"You can have the other bedroom," John says, standing and immediately back to looking uncomfortable. He leads the way, all five steps of it, and opens the door on the other side of the hall.

"I'm fine with the couch," she tries to offer as he flicks on the room's light. It wouldn't be the first time she's crashed on a musty sofa with all of her clothes on, and it certainly won't be the last such instance, but John is already shaking his head.

"I won't hear of it. Take the bed and the privacy. I'm fine out here."

Jo thinks about protesting, but figures better of it and nods instead. Something tells her this isn't just chivalry in action. He wants to sleep where he can keep an eye on every door, and she can't blame him for that.

He nods back, wordless agreement, and pulls the door shut behind his retreat so that Jo finds herself alone in a tiny bedroom. The bed is perfectly made, looks like it's never even been slept in—and for all Jo knows maybe it hasn't. She's known enough hunters, knows about their lives on the road and the drive for the next hunt. It breaks her heart to think of Sam and Dean left behind while their father blazes forward on his crusade, but it's not the first time she's heard that particular story.

The only clothes in her duffel are a spare shirt and jeans for emergencies—no sleepwear to speak of, so she locks the door and strips down to her undergarments. It's warm enough, late spring as far as she can tell, and she barely manages to pull the sheet up to her chin before she falls asleep.

The next morning she puts on the spare shirt and yesterday's pants, and emerges to an awkward new day. All three Winchesters are already up, slouched around a chipping but sturdy kitchen table. Both boys are eating cereal, Lucky Charms if the box on the counter is to be believed, and John seems to be focusing all his attention on a steaming mug of coffee.

"Good morning," says Dean, polite and proper and detached. Jo knows from previous experience and an adult Dean that this particular tone signals a protective stance—he's evaluating her, and she's surprised at the revelation of just how little some things change.

"Morning," says Jo, and tries to give him her best smile. Sam watches her silently, jaw moving as he determinedly chews his breakfast.

"Coffee's on the counter by the fridge," John offers without looking up. "Mugs are in the cupboard above the sink."

"Thanks," she says, genuinely grateful. Caffeine is exactly what she needs right now.

She leans against the counter instead of joining them at the table—she's already intruding enough, and from this vantage point it's easier to observe discreetly. She's fascinated by this glimpse into the Winchesters' childhood, and her mind gets stuck on trying to find the resemblances to the Sam and Dean she knows in the young faces that watch her back just as covertly.

The kitchen is silent except for the continued crunching of sugared cereal. Jo sips at her coffee, bitterly strong and straight up the way she likes it, and tries to figure out what comes next. John said he's got contacts who might be able to do something about the statue. Jo wants to help but she doesn't know if it's really her place, especially now that John's attitude towards her seems to have shifted into a cold, stubborn indifference. She doesn't know the man, doesn't need his approval, thanks, but she doesn't like suddenly feeling like an interloper on her own hunt.

She's staring blindly into her nearly empty coffee mug when movement draws her attention back to the kitchen table. She sees Sam—Sammy—tilt his bowl to slurp up the last of his milk, then push the bowl away and stand up.

She watches in surprise as the boy—so small she can barely reconcile him with the giant of a man she knows—approaches her, head tilted back and back and back to meet her eyes. She flashes for an instant on a different approach, a dark empty bar and a bright, sharp panic and Sam Winchester's voice laughing threats in her ear. It's such a surreal juxtaposition, the images in her head as they crash headlong into what she sees here and now: a small, harmless child who looks like maybe all he wants is to be friends.

"Hi, Jo," he says when he's standing right in front of her, apparently already familiar with her name. "I'm Sam." He extends his hand towards her, practically raising it straight up into the air, and Jo's heart melts a little at the sight, the deliberate show of manners.

She shifts her coffee into one hand so she can accept the handshake, dropping smoothly into a crouch to put them on the same level. Her smile is nothing but genuine as she pumps their hands in an exaggerated shake and says, "Hello, Sam. It's real good to meet you."

When she raises her eyes, she finds Dean watching her with the same careful suspicion he showed her last night, but there's a small quirk right at the corner of his mouth that might be a smile. Jo smiles wider, just in case.

John still refuses to look at her.

John sticks around for three days—observing her without watching her—and she can't very well blame him for being cautious when it comes to letting some strange girl from the future near his kids. Apparently she passes the test, because on day four John packs up his things and announces that he's going to visit someone named Caleb.

"Can we come?" Dean asks, eyes wide and pleading and not quite hopeful.

"Not this time, son." John zips his bag closed and slings it over one shoulder. "I need you to hold down the fort while I give him some information."

"Yes, sir," says Dean, and from her seat by the window—pretending not to pay any attention to the exchange—Jo's heart breaks a little at the instant obedience. It rings familiar—a blind faith that she knows the grown man will carry well past his father's death.

She feels it like an electric jolt when John looks at her for the first time in three days.

"I'm taking him everything I've got on the statue. Is there anything you want to add to the pile?"

"It's all in the file I already gave you," she says. "Just warn him not to freak out about the data for dates that haven't happened yet, okay?"

John nods like that was the plan all along and heads for the door. He stops at the threshold and stands there long enough that Jo raises her eyes and finds him watching her. There's something intent in his expression, like a summons, and when he tilts his head towards the hall outside it drives the point home. Jo stands and follows, pulling the door most of the way closed behind her.

"Something else?" she asks.

"You could say that." He shifts his weight and stares her down, eyes glinting dark and a little bit threatening. "My gut tells me I can trust you," he says. "But you should know. If you do anything to hurt my boys, you'll have me and twenty of the best hunters I've ever known tracking you down. And you'll live just long enough to regret it."

Jo gapes at him, and doesn't know whether to feel insulted or relieved. On one hand the implication that she would even consider hurting the boys feels like a slap in the face. On the other it's nice to know that John isn't operating on some sort of blind, misplaced faith and confidence in her.

"You don't have to worry about me," she finally says. Maybe he doesn't expect a response, but she has to say something. He nods, cursory approval, and finally turns to go.

"I'll be back Saturday night," he says over his shoulder. "There's a spare key on the table."

Jo watches him retreat down the stairs and then steps back into the apartment, feeling completely out of her element. Like a babysitter no one meant to hire, as Dean herds Sam along their usual morning routine. Neither one of them carries lunch to school, Jo learned on day one, and she cringes internally at the thought of late eighties elementary school hot lunch.

"Bye, Jo!" Sam waves as Dean drags him out the door.

"Bye, guys!" she says, her own smile a forced pleasantry.

A moment's thought is all it takes for her to decide what to do. She's got the whole day to herself—Dean's in third grade and has class until 3, Sam's in kindergarten in the morning and spends the afternoon at some satellite program—and that's plenty of time for what she needs.

After four days living like a hermit, Jo's got some errands to run. She has no toothbrush, no sleepwear and no more clothes to spare.

Her wallet is buried in a corner of her duffel, stuffed full of cash—she was on a fresh hunt, after all, and her supply of tips from the last waitressing gig is still thick and new. But as she flips through it, looking for bills that go far enough back, she realizes none of it will do. She doesn't have a single dollar that should exist in 1988.

She thinks about it for all of ten seconds before deciding she'll resort to picking someone's pocket—just this once. Desperate times and all that. She just needs enough to tide her over for awhile.

The spare key is cool against her skin as she palms it, locking the apartment door behind her—she just needs the basics, and she can get enough money to make it happen.

The apartment is still empty when she returns, although she suspects it won't be for long. The clock on the wall says it's just after three, and it can't take more than fifteen minutes to hike the distance between the ragged apartment and the elementary school.

Jo tucks the bag of clothes and amenities just inside the door of her borrowed room, plenty of time to deal with them later. Back in the kitchen she dives into the other bag, odds and ends from the market down the street to try and make something of the apartment's sad, empty fridge. Jo's never been much of a cook, but she knows plenty about making do in a pinch. She's got sandwich fixings and eggs, a pile of fresh vegetables, and by the time the boys trail in the fridge is looking a lot more inviting.

She fixes grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, figuring—hoping—Dean's not allowed to use the stove. Seems like she guessed right as she watches the plate of sandwiches disappear in something like record time.

"Can we go to the park?" Sam asks as she and Dean clear the table.

"Sammy!" Dean gasps, absolutely appalled for some reason that Jo can't decipher. "You know we're not supposed to do that!"

"We're not supposed to do it without a grownup," Sam asserts, crossing his arms in what Jo's pretty sure is supposed to be an authoritative gesture. "We have Jo."

And now Jo gets it, like a kick to the kidneys—nine and five, she knows by now, and of course they can't risk going to the park alone. Bad enough they come and go from school by themselves—Jo doesn't know much about social services but she's got a feeling two little boys turning up on the playground unchaperoned one time too many would be a recipe for disaster. Even though it's none of her business—not her family, not her kids, not her life—Jo wishes John Winchester were here right now so she could slap him in the face for leaving his boys cooped up in a dingy apartment while he's off chasing his monsters.

Dean seems to have considered Sam's logic in the time it takes Jo to cool down, because now both boys are looking at her expectantly.

"Sure," she says, wondering how long she's been sitting on her cue to respond. "Let's go to the park for awhile."

Sam dashes forward to hug her, and Jo refuses to acknowledge the burn of tears behind her eyes.

When Saturday comes, it's a bright, cloudless day and Jo decides a picnic lunch is in order. It's nothing fancy, nothing special, but she throws some sandwiches and a tall bottle of juice into a bag and urges the boys out the door.

They head not for the park down the block, but the one all the way across town—because Dean insists it's got the coolest equipment ever, and why not. They certainly have the time for it. Dean carries the bag, and Jo—at the youngest Winchester's insistence—carries Sam. He's a little too big for it so eventually they compromise on a piggy back ride. As Dean chatters beside her, every word directed at Sam, Jo listens and settles reluctantly in to a rising and falling tide of constant déjà vu. She feels as much like an outsider as she did the first time she remembers the Winchesters wandering into the Roadhouse.

A couple hours after lunch—after some tag and some monkey bars and an enormous, dry moat dug into the sand—Jo finally sits back just to watch. She marvels at the care Dean takes with his brother, helping him climb and pushing him on the swings and generally following him around like a mother hen.

She thinks maybe she understands now, the blind devotion she's witnessed the half dozen times she crossed paths with the Winchester brothers as grown men. This is where it starts. This is a little boy whose whole world is wrapped up in one task—protecting his baby brother—and maybe it's not crazy at all that as he grew up that task didn't leave room for anything else. As far as catching the man's attention, maybe Jo never stood a chance at all.

As she watches the boys chase each other around the playground and the surrounding park, she thinks maybe that's for the best.

John doesn't come home until well after the boys are asleep—shuffled off to bed by a stern look from Jo, who seems to have graduated in three days from unwanted babysitter to actual authority figure—and there's not so much as a flicker of surprise on his face when he finds her waiting up.

Turns out Caleb doesn't know anything yet.

"He's never let me down before," John reassures, keeping his distance and focusing hard on hanging up his coat, taking off his boots, putting away his keys—anything he can do to avoid looking at her, it seems. "He'll figure it out and then we'll get you back where you belong."

Jo doesn't flinch at the word choice—where you belong—but it's a near thing.

Jo's never been fond of the domestic necessities. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, all those things her mom taught her to do with detached efficiency. But in the chaos of the Winchesters' life, she finds it easier to step up and take over than to stand idly by. The first time John comes home from a hunt to find the laundry done and dinner cooking, he almost smiles. Jo would swear to it. He's as cool and brusque as usual, saving all his warmth for Sam and Dean, but it's a small victory just the same.

Jo watches John with his boys, though she tries to be discreet about it. He's never around for more than a few days at a stretch, and most of that time is taken up with early training and exercise—a regiment that Jo wishes like hell she could protest, but knowing what's out there, knowing what she does about Sam and Dean Winchester and the life they're walking into like destiny, she can't bring herself to do it.

But she watches John with his boys, and the love she sees there threatens to take her breath away. It's completely at odds with everything she's ever heard about the man—cold, loner, driven John Winchester, blind to everything but his quest for revenge. She sees pieces of that man, too, of course. Glinting dangerously in his eyes as he leaves for his next mission, branded into him alongside the scars in his skin. But he's different with his boys. He trains them with a desperation born of fear—fear of losing the two things in his life that give him a reason to breathe.

They're a family, and Jo feels oddly lost as she stands on the periphery looking in; pretending to be engrossed in the pages of a local newspaper, watching out of the corner of her eye as John teaches Sam to tie his shoes or hands Dean the shell of a busted EMF meter to take apart and play with.

It's not that she wants in. She's not sure what she wants, but she's pretty sure she'd settle for a softening of the hard-edged distance in John's eyes.

It would definitely be a start.

On the last Thursday in May, three weeks since Jo fell into this world, John buckles Sammy into the front seat to drive to a meeting at the school.

"Parent teacher conference," he explains to Jo, leaning against the open driver's side door. "Sammy starts first grade in the fall. We're going to meet his new teacher."

It's so mundane—the sort of detail Jo suspects John would shirk outright if he could get away with it—but Sam is bouncing excitedly in the front seat, like he's waiting for some bright, grand adventure. There's a softness that settles across John's face as he climbs behind the wheel and revs the engine, sparing a glance for his son before backing out of the parking stall. Jo watches them go, and jumps about a foot in the air when she turns around and finds Dean watching her.

He's looking up at her with a new expression on his face. A serious intensity that looks somehow wrong on his young features. She's reminded of the look he gave her leaning on the edge of a bar, a half-drunk glass of beer in hand as she asked about the nursery fire and tried to assemble insufficient pieces into an understandable whole—cautious and evaluating and obviously not sure how far to trust. That Dean had a few extra years to learn distrust, though. She hopes this Dean decides she's worth letting in.

"Hey, sport," she says, hoping the nickname doesn't go amiss. She doesn't feel right calling him Dean-o. That name's not hers to use. "Want to help me make dinner?"

His eyes brighten a little at that, some of the intense focus lifting away, and he nods vigorously.

"Good," she says. "I was thinking something with pasta and vegetables." There's no meat in the fridge, because her store of usable cash is running low and she's not sure how to broach the subject to John—maybe she should look around for a waitressing job. There are some places nearby that look like they're probably always hiring. "You can help me cut the ingredients." For nine-going-on-ten, Dean is startlingly good with a knife.

They're done chopping, dumping everything in a pot on the stove to simmer into something like sauce, when Dean says, "I've decided you're okay."

He says it like it's a big, important newsflash, so Jo sets a pot full of water to boil and sits herself down across from him at the table.

"I'm okay?" she prompts, not sure exactly what she's supposed to get out of that.

"Yeah," he says. "You know. Dad trusts you. And Sammy likes you."

"And you?" Jo asks, surprised that she cares so much what he thinks of her.

"I think you're good," says Dean. "You can stay."

"Well," says Jo, oddly touched. "Thank you, Dean."

He stands when she does, watches as she moves to the stove and empties a package of bowtie pasta into the bubbling water. There's a fidget in his stance, an edgy intent that she can't place at first.

And then he hugs her, gangly little limbs wrapping around her middle with an endearing, awkward hesitance. She hugs him immediately back, and smiles as his arms tighten at the tangible reassurance. When she extricates herself to stir the things simmering on the stove, she thinks just maybe the boy's eyes are a little bit wet.

"Why don't you set the table?" she asks, gentle and distracting. "We can eat as soon as they get back."

"Okay," says Dean. If he sniffles as he gets to work, Jo pretends not to notice.

There's a place called Smokey's three blocks north, and Jo snags herself an afternoon shift, with an eye toward taking over the late shift when the boys get out of school in June. The bar is rough but homey, a dingy entrance just off of Grand, but inside is a warm atmosphere and a clean floor. It barely pays minimum wage, but the clientele are all friendly locals that tip well.

John takes off after a werewolf in Nebraska, and Jo knows better than to try and talk him into staying.

She sends Sam and Dean to school with sack lunches most days, comes back from the bar in time to fix dinner. Never gourmet, but better than the cans of spaghettios she can see stacked in the back of the pantry. It's a comfortable routine, and they spend the evenings outside whenever the weather permits. Jo tries to do more research on the statue, but stranded as she is there's just nothing new she can learn. She's got to sit back and have faith that John and his contacts can work it out. If only waiting were something she excelled at.

John calls just as she's getting back to the apartment on the last day of school. The phone is already ringing as she opens the door, and she picks it up with a brusque, "Hello?" It doesn't feel weird answering someone else's phone any longer, and anyway it's either John or one of his hunting pals. No one else ever bothers to call. Jo still wishes like hell for a time with cell phones—her own sits useless at the bottom of her nearly empty duffel—because this whole waiting on a land line to tell her if John made it through the hunt thing? It sucks.

"Jo," comes John's voice through the handset. He sounds tired but steady. "How're the boys?"

"They're good," she says. "Not back from school yet." Because it's the last day, and the kids are cleaning out their desks, emptying their lockers, probably running around the playground like it's the end of the world. Except for Sam and Dean, who will probably say their goodbyes and come straight home. Jo's noticed by now that they don't seem to make much time for other kids their own age.

"You okay?" she asks, because better safe than sorry.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm hitting the road in about five minutes. Should be home late tonight."

"Good," she says. She tries not to take it personally when the line goes abruptly dead without a proper goodbye. It's how every call ends when she's not passing the phone off to Sam or Dean. John will be home in a few long hours, and Jo can go back to feeling like an invader in a life that isn't hers. Until the next time he takes off and leaves Jo reassuring his boys that their dad will be home soon.

It's been gray all day, and by the time Sam and Dean come home, the sky has opened up into a hard, stubborn rain. The boys are drenched when they walk in, dripping puddles onto the floor and shaking water out of their hair. Jo doesn't know why she expected the excitement of summer vacation to be shining in their eyes, but she's still surprised at the lack of exuberant energy. It's more than just the rain, she realizes. Today is like any other, maybe even sadder than most because school ending probably just means another move to another town and a stretch of months without the excuse of school to leave the apartment when their dad is gone.

Still, they smile when they see her, wide and genuine. Sam runs forward on clumsy legs, arms raised in the universal pick-me-up-now gesture, and Jo obliges easily. She swoops the five year old up into a hug, heart practically creaking with warmth as he wraps his arms around her neck and hugs her right back.

Dean hangs back, playing it cool until Jo extends a hand his direction and says, "You coming over here or what?" It earns her a wide grin and an unanticipated running-tackle, and somehow they go from hugging to wrestling—five minutes later Jo finds herself breathless and laughing and pretty sure she'll have a baseball sized bruise on her ass from landing wrong on the hardwood floor.

"Okay," she says, and the boys finally let her sit up. "So it's summer vacation. What do you want to do to celebrate?"

"Pizza!" the boys both shout in unison, one excited, united will, and Jo laughs again.

"Pizza it is," she says. "What say we order it for pick-up and rent a couple of movies while we're at it?" The TV in the corner of the living room looks ancient, even for the eighties, and the VCR looks plenty shabby itself, but she's reasonably sure they'll both work.

"Yeah!" comes loud and bright, unison again, and Jo finally hauls herself to standing. She thinks about telling them John's on his way, but decides better to leave it a surprise—Winchester luck as she knows it says something can always go wrong, and why work the boys up unnecessarily when there's still a chance of John getting distracted en route?

They end up with a large, thick-crust pizza—half pepperoni, half plain cheese—and two movies: some smarmy Batman thing from the sixties and Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty because Sam insisted, and didn't change his mind even when Dean complained that it was a stupid, girly princess movie. Jo is secretly relieved Sam won out, because the runner up was Pinocchio—and she's always hated that movie. Creepy as hell if you ask her, not that she plans on admitting as much to the boys. She promises Dean a dragon battle by the end of the movie, which placates him enough that he stops grumbling.

The first movie's credits roll at ten o'clock, but Jo decides not to call bed time. There's no school to wake up to in the morning, and maybe John will get home while everyone is up. It will be a better surprise that way. So they put in Batman and let it play, ignoring the tracking lines that mar the top of the screen. Jo reclaims her post in the middle of the couch, with Dean leaning against her on the left and Sam drooping sleepily into her lap on the right. She doesn't figure Sam will make it through the movie, but Dean just might, and anyway she can wake them herself when John walks through the door.

Somehow things don't quite go as planned. She finds herself drifting as Batman gropes for shark repellant—Sammy asleep in her lap and Dean breathing a steady rhythm curled against her side—and then there's a fuzzy glimpse of a bomb and some ducks as the world fades away into unconsciousness.

However long she sleeps, it's at least the length of the movie. The tape has ended and automatically rewound by the time she blinks her eyes open to gray, empty static. She lets her head loll sleepily against the back of the couch, her fingers combing through Sammy's hair as a warm swell of affection fills her ribcage. Her left arm is all numbness seeping away to pins and needles where Dean's weight pins it down, and she shifts carefully so as not to wake either of them, freeing her arm and wrapping it around Dean's shoulders to pull the boy closer. She feels a surge of something new, a fierce protective instinct that makes her want to squeeze tight and never let go. She settles for pressing a kiss to Dean's forehead, smiling a little as he twitches in his sleep and burrows in closer.

She wonders what time it is—wonders when John will be back. 'Late tonight' could mean anything—could mean any minute now, since it's midnight at least, or it could mean just before sunup. She turns her head, neck stiff from falling asleep at an odd angle, to search out the clock in the dim light from the TV.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when the empty chair by the lamp turns out not to be so empty after all. John is sitting there, silent and watchful, and it's only years of training that keep Jo from jolting hard enough to wake the other occupants of the couch. John's posture is tired, his whole frame bowed forward and his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled together in front of his mouth.

Jo's startlement fades to anger, which fades in turn to something else when she notices the deepset, earnest intensity in John's eyes. She can't place it, can't read it, and he blinks it away quickly enough—leans back in the chair and drops his hands, face masking over with the calm indifference she's come to expect.

"Sorry," he says, and actually sounds like he means it. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"Yeah. Good job with that."

He cringes a little, and Jo feels a kick of irrational guilt at putting that look on his face.

"Don't worry about it," she tries to smooth over. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"Everything okay?" John asks, and now there's a hint of worry. His eyes dart back and forth between Sam and Dean.

"Sure," she says. "I just figured we should celebrate the end of the school year. My mama always let me stay up late the first night of summer vacation."

"Did she," John murmurs, and Jo wonders if that's the phantom hint of a smile.

Jo's words trail away to nothing and leave her with no idea what to say after that. His eyes are unreadable, locked onto hers in a staring contest she doesn't remember starting, and the moment feels almost electric. It leaves her frozen for what feels like an eternity, until she finally snaps out of it enough to avert her eyes.

"Hey," she says softly, gently jostling the boys in her arms until she sees them blinking reluctantly awake. "Look who's home."

No amount of sleepiness can dull the excitement that hits the boys at the unexpected sight of their father. Jo's heart flutters dangerously as she watches their eyes go wide, and they scamper off the couch, pouncing on him like they choreographed it. They hug him and cling and babble about the last day of school, as if it weren't the exhausted middle of the night.

Jo stands with sudden reluctance, instinct telling her to give them space to be a family. She pauses on her way past the chair full of Winchesters, and though she has no idea where the urge comes from, she sets a hand on John's shoulder. He looks up at her, eyes dark and expression warmer than he's ever worn for her. She smiles carefully, gets a hint of smile in return for her trouble—a quiet truce even as Sam rambles about how Jimmy let the class gerbil loose just before the final bell.

She withdraws slowly, and makes her way to bed.

The next day Jo discovers that maybe they haven't declared a truce after all. She doesn't expect John to wake up and hug her good morning or anything—she's still not family and it's not like they're going to suddenly be best friends in the span of a day. But a hint of improvement would be nice, some sort of step up from the impenetrable shield of disapproval he always seems to wear when she's around.

Instead she gets more of a cold shoulder than ever. He refuses to meet her eyes over coffee, barely grunts in response when she suggests Sam and Dean might like it if he took them to the park. She feels like she's being punished for intruding, when so far as she can tell there's not a damn thing she's done wrong. He can't possibly blame her for stepping up and giving a shit about his kids when he's too busy off on his crusade to do the job himself.

Those are angry thoughts, and she immediately feels guilty for them. Of course John gives a shit, hasn't she seen evidence enough of that in the weeks she's been stuck here? But he's also the living, breathing definition of absentee father, and Jo wishes she could give him a piece of her mind about that. She leaves for her usual lunch-hour shift at Smokey's, last one before she switches over to late nights, and reminds herself it's not her place to tell John Winchester how to raise his children.

It's only a matter of time before John barely comes home from a hunt gone wrong, and if Jo weren't so busy being scared shitless she would probably break his nose on account of the fury welling in her gut.

There's too much blood when he staggers into the apartment—any blood would be too much blood, but his shirt is in ribbons and saturated with dark, angry red. It's sheer coincidence that she's even there to help when he stumbles in. She's just getting home for the night, 2am and nearly running into him in the hall outside. The boys are asleep, thank god—tucked in before she left, with instructions to call her at the bar if they needed anything. The phone number lives on the fridge now, and so far they haven't had to use it.

But Sam and Dean are asleep, and Jo tries for stealth as she helps John inside, supporting most of his weight as she leads him over to the table and sits him in the closest chair. She's not thinking about him driving in this state, about the fading route he must have taken to get back here. She's in crisis mode, locking the door behind her and grabbing the big, rickety fan from the corner behind the TV. She plugs it in and turns it on high, hoping the loud, steady drone will be enough to drown out any sounds that might wake the boys.

"Get that shirt off, if you can manage it," she orders, already digging under the sink for the emergency medical kit. She washes her hands and digs through the supplies, and with a jolt realizes she doesn't know what any of these pills do—probably maximum strength pain meds, but she doesn't recognize any of these brand names and no way in hell is she doping him up with something she doesn't recognize. She grabs a bottle of whiskey instead and pours John a generous glass. "Drink," she says, handing it to him and pulling up a chair.

The blood is coming from a single wound so far as Jo can tell, a deep gash along John's side, and he hisses as Jo pokes at the surrounding skin, cleans the wound out and gets to work. Like father like son, she realizes, amazed by the similarities that echo in the small, detached part of her brain that's not completely focused on the task at hand. He and Dean could well be the same patient, the gruff curses in her ear now practically indistinguishable from the ones she remembers alongside digging a bullet out of Dean's arm and stitching him up.

"Drink faster if it hurts," she snaps, harsher than she needs to, as if he actually needs to be told. She stitches with quick efficiency, ease born of too much practice, and is somehow not surprised that he holds mostly still the entire time. She's known plenty of men that were just as strong and stubborn who still couldn't help but flinch away. John swears and stutters and downs the entire glass of whiskey, but he doesn't move from under her hands as she works. Just like Dean.

"There," she says when the wound is finally hidden behind bandages and gauze. "Fuck, John, what were you hunting, a rabid tiger?"

"You really want to know?" he asks, bleary-eyed and obviously drunk. Jo pushes the whiskey bottle out of reach with one hand, and realizes with a start that her other hand is still wrapped steady around John's upper arm. She lets go as casually as she can, but his eyes drop the point of contact and then watch her retreat.

"Not particularly," she admits, looking away and hoping her face isn't red. "Long as it's not a werewolf, I think I'm happier being left in the dark." She wants to say more. She wants to yell at him for being an idiot, because she knows a thing or two about deep cuts and how fast a man can bleed out and die from one, and how fucking dare he put himself on the line like that when he's got two little boys waiting on him—does he have any goddamn notion what it's like to have a parent never come home, and all the worse for the fact that he's the only one these boys goddamn have—

But even as the anger smolders in her chest she knows now isn't the time. John is already fading towards sleep, blood loss and alcohol taking their toll, and she mutters curses to herself as she stands and fetches him a glass of juice.

"Drink this," she commands, and knows it's a sign of just how out of it the man is when he complies without so much as quirking an eyebrow at her. He drains the glass mechanically in one long swallow, then sets it aside with a thunk.

"Come on," she says, grabbing the arm on his good side and helping him stand. She guides him past the couch and towards the bedroom, and says, "I think you'd better take the bed tonight. Don't want you aggravating anything in your sleep." Plus she's pretty sure Sam and Dean shouldn't see him like this. They're too sharp, will know in an instant something is wrong if they catch him before he can put his poker face back up.

"Yeah," John mutters, letting her lead the way and following her cue as she helps him drop to the edge of the bed.

"You going to be okay?" she asks, wishing there were more she could do. The anger in her chest has nowhere to go, but if there's work to be done she can at least channel it in a useful direction. He shakes his head, scrubbing a hand over eyes that shine with fatigue and lingering pain.

Jo straightens up, fighting the feeling of impotence as she moves. She'll crash on the couch tonight, let him sleep it off, maybe take Sam and Dean to the park to distract them from their father's return.

She freezes as John's hand closes on her arm, fingers circling her skin just above the wrist. She can feel his pulse beating in his thumb, quicker than she expects, and his eyes when she meets them are heavy with emotions she can't decipher. Even now, drunk and exhausted and losing cohesion, he's got enough of a wall up to keep her out. But his fingers are warm where they touch her, trying to tell her something, and Jo's brain shies away from trying to figure it out.

She doesn't know how to pull away so she waits instead, letting the moment drag out impossibly long as John's unsteady regard sets her further and further on edge.

When he lets go it feels like unfinished business, but all Jo can do is take a step back. She watches John shift onto the bed, not bothering to try and get under the covers as his head drops heavily onto the flat, faded blue pillow.

Jo closes the door as quietly as she can when she leaves him to sleep.

The next morning Jo leaves a note for John and drags Sam and Dean out to the park the second they've finished breakfast. She can't hide the fact that John is back—not with his boots by the door and the Impala out front—but she tells the boys that he's too tired to come with them right now. Sam pouts but goes along with her explanation. Dean gives her a knowing look that breaks her heart all over again.

She keeps them busy and away from the apartment as long as she can, giving the man as much time to himself as possible. It's not just for his sake. It's for her own peace of mind as well, because she'd rather not see him until she can keep from ripping him a new one in front of the boys. No reason for them to know just how close they came to losing their father last night, although the look Dean gave her suggests the boy already comprehends entirely too much.

Lunch is McDonald's by the park, and they feed the last of their fries to a flock of noisy birds. Sam tries to get close, but it goes poorly. He changes tactics, chasing them down the hill instead. Jo and Dean stand aside and watch him run, plopping down in the grass when it becomes clear that he'll be chasing the animals in circles for awhile instead of coming straight back. When Jo turns to look at Dean his expression is serious.

"Is Dad all right?" he asks, and his eyes are enormous with the question.

"Yes," Jo assures him instantly. "Oh, honey, of course he is." She wants to hug him, but he's got his strong-boy face on and she's not sure the gesture would be welcome.

"You swear?" he insists. "You're not just saying that so I don't worry?"

"Hey," she says, and grass tickles her skin as she covers his hand with hers. She waits until he looks at her, his eyes scared and blinking and begging to trust. "I will never lie to you," she says. "Your dad is fine." She waits him out, praying he can see the sincerity in her eyes—she would have hated telling him a less pleasant truth, but she would have done it. She's sure. Because Dean, young and innocent and trying so hard to protect his family, already knows too much. He knows enough to deserve the truth.

"Okay," he finally says, and turns his hand so he can thread small fingers through hers. "But you can lie to Sammy," he adds, looking like the words make him feel guilty. "You should lie to Sammy if it's something like that."

"Okay," she says, and forces a smile she doesn't feel. "I can do that." She wants to tell him she'll never have to, but she draws up short.

She already promised not to lie to him.

"Dean!" shouts Sam, short legs skittering beneath him as he rushes back up the hill. He's waving something in his hand, a pretty rock for all Jo can see, and she leans back on her elbows and lets the moment pass.

Her shift feels doubly long that night, though it's the same five hours it always is. She smiles and waves a tired goodnight to Tad behind the bar, grateful that closing isn't in her job description. It was a busy night, at least, and her back pocket is stuffed with her share of the tips.

She's not expecting to find John awake as she lets herself into the apartment, but she's not surprised either. Maybe the man's nocturnal, or maybe he's waiting up for her—maybe he just spent the whole day sleeping as his body tried to replenish itself, and now he's too wired to stay in bed. The reason doesn't matter when the result is the same, and Jo lets her glower shine from her eyes as she sets her rolled-up apron on the kitchen counter.

John actually looks taken aback by the force of her hostility, a surprised blink betraying his reaction before the same familiar shields slam back into place and leave her staring at a brick wall.

She knows if she opens her mouth right now she'll regret it. She's tired and she's angry and it's too goddamn late for this bullshit. It can wait until tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow she'll be able to sort through the layers of her own frustration and have a civilized conversation.

But not tonight. Tonight she's going to keep her mouth shut and try to sleep the rage out of her system.

As she moves past John at the kitchen table, he grabs her wrist and draws her up short. Opens his mouth to say something, maybe to ask what's got her so wound up, but before he can get a word out she winds up and slaps him hard with her free hand. It's instantaneous instinct, and it startles her almost as much as it obviously does him. He doesn't let go as they stare at each other in mutual shocked silence.

"I'm figuring I deserved that," he says, carefully considering.

"Fucking right you did," she hisses. She shakes easily free of his hold and doesn't care if he misinterprets and thinks that the touch itself offended her—she's not even thinking right now about how far that is from true, but she's got other things on her mind.

"You plan on telling me what for?" he presses, calculated caution in both his voice and his face.

"No," she says, tamping down on the urge to just vent and be done with it. "No, we're not talking about this tonight. I'm tired. You're barely standing. Let's just… not do this right now."

But as she turns for the hall he gets in her way, stepping right into her path and standing close enough that she'd have to take a decided step back in order to slap him again.

"Something tells me it's waited long enough," he says, and something in his tone tells her there's no avoiding this conversation. They're doing this now, or ten minutes from now after arguing about it some more, but either way Jo knows she's not putting it off until morning.

"Fine," she snaps, adrenaline surging unexpectedly. She darts a glance over John's shoulder to the closed door leading to the boys' bedroom and says, "But not here." The last thing either of them needs is for Sam and Dean to wake up and investigate what may quickly dissolve into a shouting match if Jo's protective instincts have their way.

"Follow me," says John, words clipped short as he leads her into the hall outside, locking the door behind them and then leading her up the stairs instead of down them. Just two floors to the roof of the five story building, and the crisp night air does nothing to cool Jo's temper.

"So," says John, crossing his arms as he turns to face her. "You going to talk or are we just going to stand up here glaring at each other?"

And suddenly she doesn't even know where to start. How is she supposed to explain it to him if he doesn't get it already? How can he be this dense, that Jo has to explain to him what a disaster it would be if he died.

"Does it not even occur to you that you almost made your sons orphans last night?" she demands, and there it is—the burning wick of her anger as she finally pins it down.

"Of course it occurs to me," he says. That answer is almost worse than the willful cluelessness Jo was starting to suspect.

"Then you're a selfish son of a bitch," she informs him, and the step she takes forward is all but involuntary. "You. Almost. Died. What the hell happens to them with you gone?"

"It won't come to that," he says, but his eyes shine with the lie, bright from the moon and the sidelong glimmer of a safety light.

"You can't know that," she snarls. "How many times have you cut it this close? How many more times before you just don't come back?" What if the fact that she's here changes things too much and he dies before his time? What if Sam and Dean lose their father now and it's her fault?

"There's always a backup plan," John says. "I never leave without at least three people ready to take them in if something happens to me."

"You think that's good enough?" All this conversation is accomplishing is to make Jo angrier, and she wishes John would rise to the fight. He's just defending so far, just dodging away from her accusations when by now he should be shouting back about how it's none of her business. "You don't get what it's like to have a parent take off on a hunt and never come home. Do you have any idea what that would do to them?!" And now not only does John not look angry, there's something infuriatingly close to pity in his eyes, and Jo realizes she just let on a hell of a lot more than she meant to.

"Don't look at me like that," she growls, taking a step closer still. "This isn't about me. This is about you being a revenge-obsessed asshole who'd just as soon dump his kids on a stranger's doorstep as spend time with them, because all you care about is the next goddamn hunt."

"That's not fair," he says, and finally his ire is rising. Jo is just aiming to sting now, crossing into territory her rational mind knows better than to believe, but the words are cutting and harsh and they feel damn good to say.

"No?" says Jo. "Then where are you? Huh? Where the fuck are you when you should be here?"

"It's not that simple," says John, voice a dangerous growl as it rises in volume. "Don't tell me how I should be doing things, girl. You have no idea what the score is."

"I know kids need a father who doesn't disappear on them for weeks at a time and then turn up nearly dead!"

"They are my children," John shouts, and when he takes the last step of space between them all Jo can think is 'fucking finally'. "They are my family," John bites out. "Not yours."

"Is that it?" she asks, choking on a humorless laugh. "You're upset I'm stepping on your territory? Is that why you can barely put together two civil words for me when you're here?"

"What?" he asks, and through the lingering mask of confrontation Jo catches a glimpse of genuine surprise.

"I'm not an idiot," she plows on. "You don't like me, that's fine. But at least have the balls to tell me why. If you don't like the fact that I'm taking care of your kids, then step up and do the job yourself."

"I like you fine." The words are grudging and gruff, but whatever angry response Jo managed to stir up is already drifting right out of his sails.

"Bullshit," she says, and her own fury shows no sign of abating. "And so not the point."

"Look," he says, calm enough but with patience fraying into fatigue. "There are things I can't explain to you, but I can't protect Sam and Dean the way I need to just by keeping them close. All of this is for them."

And though there's a tingle of recognition at what he says about protecting Sam and Dean—she knows enough about the Winchesters from her own time to know their world is more of a mess than John's actions alone can come close to accounting for—the last thing he says makes her snort.

"Right. Hunting werewolves and witches and changelings is for them. And the fact that you've almost died enough times to have a dozen nearly-fatal scars to show for it, that doesn't matter."

"Sometimes hunts just go wrong," he says.

"So I hear," she retorts, and before she can stop herself, "Funny how I hear it so often about you."

Her words stop both of them up short, and Jo mentally kicks herself as she watches John's eyes widen. He's connecting enough dots in his head to be troublesome, working her words through past the bare accusation and into the premise beneath.

"You've been here less than two months," John says. "You haven't talked to anyone else in that time." He says it with conviction, though she's not sure how he can sound so sure. She could have called someone up. Maybe. If she weren't so worried about mucking up history.

"Forget it," she says, praying he lets her brush it aside. She turns as if to go back inside, ready to drop the entire thing, her frustration and all, as long as he doesn't ask any more questions.

"No." He grabs her by the shoulders instead of letting her go, holding her steady and secure, not letting her retreat. "You tell me what you meant by that."

"Just a slip of the tongue," she tries, not really believing it will work.

"You already know me," he realizes aloud, and the comprehension is fast followed by suspicion. "You know me from your own time. Why are you really here?" His fingers dig suddenly harsh into her sleeveless arms, threatening pressure that demands the truth.

"I know of you," she clarifies. "We've never really been acquainted." She doesn't mention that she knew him when she was a tiny thing with pigtails, or that she wishes she could hate him for taking her father away, or that he himself is long gone by the time she's trying to get back to—a revelation that she reconsiders every once in awhile, but that hits her suddenly harder now.

"What are you doing here?" he asks again. "And don't lie to me."

"The only lie I've ever told you was my name," she says, and prays he believes her. If he doesn't trust the sincerity in her eyes then there's nothing else she can do to convince him, and the thought of leaving drags her heart to a reluctant standstill. She tries to picture this Sam and Dean, waking up to find her gone without so much as a goodbye, and her heart creeps up to lodge in her throat. "What was I supposed to say?" she chokes out. "I didn't know who you were at first. By the time I did I had no idea what it was safe to tell you. Time travel, John, remember? What if I screwed something up permanently by telling you too much?"

The logic finally sinks in, or maybe it's the intensity in her eyes that hits him, but either way his grip loosens, and then falls reluctantly away.

"I love my boys," he whispers. Like a secret.

"I know that," she says. "But John, you can't keep leaving them behind to go looking for trouble. You're all they have."

"They have you," he points out, but both of them recognize it for the dangerous temporary balance that it is.

"I'm not enough," she says. "And I'm not staying. You're going to find a way to send me back where I…" She swallows hard and says, "Where I belong."

"I know it's hard to believe," John says softly. "And I can't tell you anything to prove it. Too dangerous. But I really don't have any choice. There's more going on here than you realize. It's big, Jo. And my family's stuck right at ground zero."

"Couldn't you hide?" she tries, although she already knows what the answer will be.

"Tried that," John admits. "It doesn't work."

Jo breaks off to stare at the ground between them, the scuffed toes of his boots and the grass-and-dirt-stained white of her own worn-in tennies.

"So your name's not really Jo?" he asks, one hand reaching for her before falling away at the last second.

"My name's really Jo," she assures him. "It's just not Smith or Sanders or whatever the hell I said it was back in that cave."

"I talked to Caleb," John says, and when she looks at him again John's face is a careful, measured blank. "He's got some solid theories on that statue. Trickster magic. But he can't find a damned thing on how to dispel it, beyond the odd text claiming it can be done."

"Oh," she says, and tries to school her own features into an expression as neutral as his. She's pretty sure she fails spectacularly.

"Come on," he says, stepping around her towards the door. "We should get inside. It's late and cold."

"Yeah," she agrees.

Her footsteps feel numb as she follows.

John steers as far clear of her as he can while he recuperates—an impressive feat given the minimalist confines of the apartment. Jo doesn't really blame him after their brief confrontation on the roof. Everything feels off all of a sudden, even more so than before.

He tries to move to the couch and give her back the bedroom after two days of nothing but sleep, but even though he looks about a hundred times steadier Jo puts her foot down and says no. She hopes he stays grounded for another couple weeks at least, but there's only so much guilt she can bring to bear on him once he gets it in his head to leave.

June is creeping its way into July, but Jo finds herself not minding the lack of progress toward sending her home. It gives her more time with the boys as Sam and Dean settle stubbornly into a corner of her heart and take up residence. It's dangerous territory, especially when this life is borrowed and temporary and completely fleeting, but she suddenly can't imagine a world without these two little boys that are gradually but surely coming to eclipse her memories of the two grown men echoed in their features. It's like a dream threatening to edge out reality, and she focuses on the day to day and tries not to think about a tomorrow that will see everything change.

Dean insists more and more on helping in the kitchen, avid attention and an eagerness to learn every meager scrap of cooking know-how she can teach. Usually Sam sits at the table behind them coloring, battered coloring books and a box of crayons that's down to half its colors, all of them stumpy and worn with the paper torn away.

They could almost be hers, in a different world, and Jo wonders if this is why Dean drew up short of making that pass at her when they first met—why he looked her over once and then never again, relegating her to a hands-off corner where she never had a shot of regaining his attention. Too much of a maternal image if he remembers her at all.

It's quiet afternoon, John reluctantly napping after Jo chewed him out for pushing himself too hard, when she finds Dean alone at the kitchen table with a thick leather journal in his hands. She's got Sammy balanced heavily on one hip as she steps into the room, and she takes in the sight of worn leather and scrawled pages with curious eyes.

"Whatcha got there, kiddo?" she asks, setting Sammy to perch on the edge of the table as she moves to look over Dean's shoulder. She approaches slowly so he has time to tell her no—she knows how to back off when something is none of her business.

But Dean just says, "It's Dad's," and all it does is pique Jo's curiosity even further.

Her eyes sweep along handwriting so rough it might as well be code, but what draws her attention is the photo paper-clipped to the bottom of the page. It's a family photo, a candid in front of a bright blue house, and the smile on John's face is wide and genuine, easy and utterly foreign. She recognizes Dean, probably as young as Sam is now if not younger, and a baby in a woman's arms. The woman is smiling, too, bright and happy and golden in the crisp autumn light.

"That's Mom," says Dean, small fingers tracing the bottom edge of the photo with careful reverence. Sammy is quiet where he sits, still and patient and staring at Dean, and Jo can't take her eyes off the photo.

"She's beautiful," Jo says, and Dean nods almost imperceptibly.

"Yeah," he says. "Beautiful."

Hours later when the apartment feels empty—Sam and Dean asleep in bed and the sky cloudy-dark outside—Jo comes back to that photo. The leather of John's journal creaks in her hands, the corners rough with wear and the rest already softening with age, and she stares at the tangible evidence of a time when this family was ordinary and happy and whole. She flips the photo over with careful fingers, reading the caption on the back. 'Mary,' she mouths, and tries to remember if she ever knew that name. She knows the story, sure—who in the hunting world doesn't know some fragment of how the Winchesters fell into this life—but this is different, and she can't stop staring at the image. It feels like a secret she can't decipher.

"Dean show you that?" comes a deep, rough question from behind her, and Jo startles in her seat, turning a guilty look over her shoulder. She finds John watching from the hall, shoulder leaning heavily on the corner where the wall ends.

"Yeah," she says, no point in denying it. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He takes a step toward her, and she turns back to the picture, no longer mesmerized but not sure she can look at John when his face is showing her so much. He's standing just behind her when he says, "Her name was Mary."

"I know," she says quietly, then inwardly curses herself for saying something so useless. John doesn't bother to respond, doesn't add anything, doesn't say a damn thing to indicate he's offended. Instead he sets a hand on the back of her chair, not touching but so close, and Jo's eyebrows rise as a new thought occurs to her.

"I remind you of her," she realizes, voice soft with shock.

"A little," he admits. The silence is a little bit awkward and a little bit painful as Jo processes that.

"I'm sorry," she finally says, again, because she can't think of anything else to say.

"It's not your fault," he points out, and the inadvertent brush of his knuckles against her back sends a shiver along her skin. "And it doesn't excuse the way I've been treating you. You were right. I've been a complete asshole."

"John—"

"I'll do better," he interrupts. "I promise."

"Okay."

His withdrawal is abrupt, accompanied by a mutter that sounds something like "Well goodnight, then" as he retreats from the kitchen, throwing one last, strange look at her over his shoulder.

That night she sleeps in restless surges, and in the morning she doesn't remember her dreams.

Jo takes the boys to the library the next day, just to get out of the apartment for an extra couple of hours. She watches Sam hop his way along the sidewalk, carefully avoiding every crack and crevice with each step, and a smile twists her cheeks high.

She startles a little when Dean falls back to walk at her side and slips his hand into hers. His eyes when he looks up at her are bright in the sunlight, his smile oddly tentative. She smiles back at him, squeezes his hand, and turns her attention back to Sam.

She reads to them until later than usual that night, able to stay home and let them stay up because Tad made her take the night off. Sam falls asleep two chapters in to the book he chose, but Dean insists that she keep going until finally Jo says five chapters is enough and anyway it's past his bedtime. He grumbles but drags Sammy with him through the process of brushing teeth and donning pajamas, and both boys hug Jo long and hard before climbing into their respective beds.

John walks in the front door five minutes later with a soft click and silent footsteps, and Jo is too tired herself to be annoyed even as she asks, "Where've you been, anyway?"

"Supply run," he says, and grimaces a little as he sets a huge, heavy paper bag down on the kitchen table. "Haven't restocked ammo and salt since… well, since that thing you don't really want to know about."

Jo nods and doesn't press further, because she still really doesn't want to know. John is well on the mend from his last hunt, but the grimace says he could still be taking things a little easier. Jo doesn't bother pointing it out. It's nothing the man doesn't already know.

She wanders over to stand at his side instead, and starts poking through the bag. It's exactly what he said it was, not that she doubted: cases of ammo in half a dozen different sizes, and enough rock salt to circle the whole damn apartment building. She takes the items out of the bag one at a time and sets them on the table, figuring it's a whole lot less likely he'll try to pick up and carry the whole lot once she's willfully disassembled it.

"Where do you store it?" she asks, intent on helping. She picks up the biggest box of rock salt and turns for the cupboards, figuring them for the most logical choice. John's hand closes warm and heavy and familiar on her arm, stopping her before she's taken so much as a step—just enough guiding pressure to make her retrace her trajectory until she's looking him right in the eye and realizing just how close she's standing.

"You don't have to do that," he says, and with his free hand reclaims the box and sets it on the table.

"Well someone's gotta take care of you," she says, quiet tease and she's got no idea where the words came from. But they make him smile—a slow, subtle grin that sets the air buzzing with unspoken potential. The smile drops from his face just as slowly, a gradual drift to more somber intent, and Jo barely breathes as he takes a step further into her space—the only step there was left between them—and suddenly his breath is warm and immediate on her skin, his eyes staring at her mouth.

This is the moment Jo hadn't even realized she's been waiting for, and now that it's here it's as if neither one of them knows what to do with it. Her eyes drift halfway closed and she sways forward, tilts her head just so, just a little bit closer, but can't quite close the distance. She needs him to do it.

He's going to, the unmistakable glint of intent in his eyes tells her that much. He's going to kiss her, and Jo can't remember how to breathe.

"What are you guys doing?" comes a question in Dean's voice, and Jo and John turn their heads in unison to find him watching from the other side of the table. His eyes aren't confused or curious or even sleepy. They're wide awake and entirely too knowing, and it strikes Jo as surreal that he would deliberately interrupt the moment, even a moment as off-balance and inevitable as this one. She's relieved and disappointed herself, and doesn't know which feeling to credit.

"What are you still doing up?" John asks in a soft, humoring voice. His hand still rests on Jo's arm, and when his thumb starts brushing back and forth along her skin, Jo finds it suddenly difficult to focus.

"Sammy wanted a glass of water," says Dean.

"Well," says John, already moving. Jo's breath stutters in unevenly when his hand falls away, and she listens without watching as he grabs a clean glass from the cupboard and fills it at the tap. "Here you go, buddy. Now both you and Sam get some sleep, okay?"

Jo looks up in time to catch Dean's nod, and to see a hug that almost spills the water between them before Dean disappears around the corner and a soft click signals the boys' door closing again.

John's eyes are glued to the empty patch of floor right where Dean had been standing, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets and face heavily pensive. When he finally turns to look at her, Jo can tell he's trying to gauge her reaction. She has no idea what he's looking for, if he's hoping to recapture the fallen moment or trying to decide how badly they nearly fucked up just now.

"Jo," he says, voice cautious.

"You should get some sleep, too," she says, and hates herself for taking the coward's way out. "You're still healing."

"Yeah," he says. And with one last, lingering look turns and walks away.

Jo's brain lingers on the photo for the next couple of days, stuck on the image of a family. Slowly, perhaps inevitably, an idea she's been resisting for weeks asserts itself in her head. It's all kinds of disaster waiting to happen, and she knows if she asks John what he thinks he'll just talk her out of it like the Bad Idea it is.

Besides, she and John aren't doing much more than catching each other staring lately. They're not doing a whole lot of talking, too busy dancing around each other from a distance.

She takes the weekend off of work, leaves a note when the apartment is quiet with the pre-dawn lull before the morning chaos, and hops a bus to Nebraska.

The Roadhouse is still new in 1988—open for all of a year but already collecting a specific clientele. Jo stares at the building from the outside for some twenty minutes without being able to pick up her feet and approach. It's been months since she was home, and seeing the place again—new even—is a knee in the gut and a bright burst of bitter nostalgia and she doesn't know if she can bear to walk inside.

She does eventually. Jo Harvelle isn't one to walk away from a mission, even a completely personal one that might do nothing but break her heart. The floorboards creak invitingly as she steps through the door and into warm, familiar noise, dozens of conversations and the jukebox playing away in the corner as the evening patrons spend their money. Her eyes drift across the room aimlessly until they find their target: William Anthony Harvelle stands laughing behind the bar, serving pints of the beer on tap and shooting eyes at his wife across the room every once in awhile.

Jo barely spares a glance for her mom, idle curiosity no match for the direct intensity that's drawn her focus to her father's smiling face.

She shakes herself and tries to don a mask of nonchalance as she approaches the bar and climbs onto the stool at the end.

"What'll you have?" comes the immediate friendly question, and Jo means to answer—casually if she can manage it—but all she can do is stare.

"You okay?" he asks, concerned by her lack of response.

"Yeah," she hedges, giving him as close as she can manage to an easy smile. "Fine. Sorry. Long day."

"You new around here? I don't think we've seen your face before." But he's looking at her like maybe she's familiar and he can't quite place it, light brown eyebrows drawing closer together on his forehead.

"I'm Jo," she says without thinking, and can't take it back a second later when it hits her just how bad an idea that is.

"My little girl's name is Jo," he says, face softening into a smile. Then setting aside the towel he's been cleaning with, he extends his right hand and says, "Bill Harvelle."

"Pleased to meet you, Bill," she says, accepting his handshake and swallowing past a brand new lump in your throat.

"Now," he says. "What can I get you to drink? Nothing like a good beer to improve a bad day."

"Surprise me," she says. "Something dark."

She stays late into the night, and she must look more pathetic than she thinks because Bill keeps coming back to check on her, top off her beer, chat with her about any stupid topic under the sun. He tells her about remodeling the bar, and the truck he's fixing up out back, and the Hawaiian shirt his wife bought him as a joke last week. He tells her about his family, and his little girl, and politely pretends he doesn't notice her eyes watering red behind her smile. Ellen stops over a couple of times too, friendly and concerned and offering her own warm, reassuring smile.

It's well past midnight when Jo finally pays and leaves, closing her eyes and breathing deeply a lungful of cool night air. Her taxi won't be here for some ten minutes, but that gives her a moment to do nothing but breathe.

When she opens her eyes she sees a familiar car with a familiar silhouette leaning on the hood, and John's eyes are warm as they watch her through the dim light of the parking lot.

"Need a ride?" he asks.

"You followed me," she says, steady crunch of gravel under her feet as she steps closer. She doesn't ask how, because she's probably happier not knowing.

"Your note was pretty vague," he hedges. "Dean was worried."

"I'm sure he was," she says, and if she were feeling a little less wrung out right now she's pretty sure she'd be fighting a smile. As it is, her eyes feel scratchy and dry and her heart is a tight lump in her chest.

"What's this all about, anyway?" John asks, and the concern in his voice is a palpable force. His eyes dart to the Roadhouse, dark and curious.

"Family," she admits. "It's about family." Honest, because for some reason she can't fathom lying to him. 'Do me a favor,' she wants to add. 'Stay away from them.' But her throat closes up around the words, and even if the plea shows in her eyes there's no way John will be able to make sense of it.

He moves suddenly, so unexpectedly she doesn't see it coming as he reaches for her and pulls her close, wrapping her up in a protective hug. She makes a sound that isn't a word, just a guttural gasp that's as close as she'll let herself come to crying. She grabs him back and holds on tight, face buried against the leather collar of his jacket. Her taxi probably comes and goes in the time they stand there, but the only thing Jo hears is John's heartbeat.

"Come on," John murmurs when she finally pulls back. "Got a place. You'll have to share a bed with Sammy, though."

Jo laughs, brushing the last stubborn remnants of moisture from her eyes. "You brought them with you?"

"Hell yes. We were worried about you." Then, with a conspiratorial smirk, "Dean threatened to steal a car and follow me if I left them behind, and I'm not entirely confident he doesn't know how."

Jo laughs again, genuine and unexpected, and climbs into the passenger seat.

"Want to talk about it?" John asks, hands steady on the wheel as they drive the bright, sunny road trip home. Sam and Dean are noisy behind them, singing some apparently endless song that Jo has never heard before.

She keeps her voice pitched low enough to avoid carrying beyond the front seat as she says, "My dad died hunting. A long time ago."

"I'm sorry," says John. Then so softly Jo almost doesn't hear him, "That how you got into it?"

"Yeah," she says. Then, "Maybe. Mom wanted me to finish college and get a normal job, but it never felt right. Maybe if he'd still been around I would have tried harder."

"Maybe," John agrees. "Or maybe not. It's got to be difficult, holding onto normal when you know what's out there."

"I guess."

"How'd he die?" John asks, and Jo feels the question lodge tight in her chest—dangerous territory.

"He was working with another hunter and something went wrong. Other guy screwed up and Dad never came home." She doesn't dare say more—there's such a thin line holding her back from telling him every detail she knows and begging him not to let it happen. No good can come of the plea. Maybe the world will implode because she tried to mess with history, or maybe she'll ruin everything and it won't make a damn bit of difference.

But she's not strong enough to keep her mouth shut entirely, and she says, "John, you have to be careful." The look he throws at the backseat via the rearview mirror confirms that he took it to mean his own habit of throwing himself into danger. She doesn't correct him.

Because she means that, too.

The next couple days aren't any busier than normal, but somehow she ends up with her hands full of Sam and Dean and doesn't see much of John as the week rolls through and turns over. He's in and out on errands, but so far not taking off on any new hunts—a fact for which Jo finds herself exhaustedly relieved. She's taken to stealing and hiding the obituaries section of the paper every morning. Not that John won't find it. But she figures it gets her message across better than a stern look and a quirked eyebrow.

It's another night off of work and a bedtime story, and when she steps back into the hall and pulls the boys' bedroom door softly shut behind her there's a new edge of energy rustling in her veins. She can't put a finger on it until her steps land her in the small kitchen and her eyes find John leaning against the counter, nursing a pale blue mug that's probably coffee but could be anything—the dishes have piled up for a couple of days, and it seems like all they have left are coffee mugs.

"You've got a real way with voices," he teases, a light spark of amusement in his eyes. "Especially for rodent characters. I can never read in quite that pitch."

"Shut up," she says, but she can't help the slow smile that spreads across her face at the backhanded compliment. "It's called artistic license." She's not really thirsty, but she crosses the kitchen anyway, opening the cupboard that's bereft of glasses but still full of coffee mugs. It puts her right at his side, and her skin thrills at the heavy focus of his eyes following her.

"I know it's selfish of me," he says as she takes out a mug and closes the cupboard. "But I can't help hoping there's no way to send you back." She freezes up and almost drops the mug, heart taking off in a ragged rhythm. She sets the mug down slowly, too carefully, and in her peripheral vision catches John doing the same with his own.

"John," she says, but she's got nothing coherent to follow it up with.

When she finally raises her eyes to meet his, she realizes they're standing too close together. He's inched closer, or maybe she has, and he's looking down at her with wide, wanting eyes, his whole body inclined towards her like Jo is his new center of gravity.

"You've gotta tell me if I'm overstepping," John says, and Jo's heart snaps loose from its fragile mooring. She reaches for him on instinct, feels his stubble scrape rough along her palms as she pulls him down to meet her in a hard, hungry kiss. Not coffee, she realizes as his tongue traces her lips and slips right past them. Apple juice.

John's hands are needy pressure, eager heat, sliding and grasping and pulling her close, and she gasps into his mouth as he lifts her right off the ground and carries her two steps to set her on the edge of the sturdy kitchen table. She parts her knees to let him closer, let him press right up against her and take the kiss deeper, and somehow her hands go from touching his face to clutching wherever they can get a hold—fingers tightening in the fabric of his t-shirt as she whimpers into the kiss.

It's John that finally pulls away, and it's all Jo can do to blink her way back to some semblance of rational thought. She's still too aware of the line of heat where their bodies press together, the broad hand at the small of her back sneaking up just under the tight fabric of her tank top, the rise and fall of John's ribs where her legs are wrapped around him. She barely remembers what oxygen is, and John's other hand is so, so gentle where it rests against her cheek, thumb slipping back and forth over the high swell of her cheekbone.

She realizes he's evaluating again. Gauging. Trying to decide if this is okay, if more might be okay, if this is really what she wants—and god, of course it's what she wants.

Just in case her eyes aren't making the point clearly enough, Jo leans back in, just shy of kissing him.

"Take me to bed, John," she says.

She's not sleepy after, her heart still a fast, unsteady rhythm in her chest as John presses warm against her back and pulls her close. Her thoughts are a messy murmur of chaos, and the revelation that she loves him feels somehow inevitable, as her eyes track the bedroom walls, the crumbling ceiling, the locked door.

"Talk to me," John says, his voice a low rumble in her ear, and even that is enough to catch her breath in her throat. "If you're going to freak out, might as well do it out loud."

"This was probably a mistake," she breathes, shifting and pressing closer even as she speaks.

"Maybe," he concedes. He drops a kiss to her shoulder and adds, "Maybe not."

"How do you figure?" she asks, trying to keep her tone light but knowing he hears the question as the plea for reassurance it actually is.

"It's going to hurt like hell when you leave, one way or another. This doesn't change anything."

'Or maybe it changes everything,' she wants to say. Because she's in too deep and she knows it. So many ways to get crushed, and she knows she's not supposed to have this, doesn't get to keep it, and maybe she would have been better off keeping her distance from the start.

Even as she thinks it, she knows there's no other way things could have gone.

"Something else is bothering you," John murmurs, and his thumb brushes back and forth where it rests against her stomach.

She swallows hard and doesn't want to say it. Doesn't even want to be thinking it, but it's there and he's asking, and Jo draws a shaky breath.

"John, I'm not her."

His hand stills, and the silence is almost too much. It lasts a handful of heartbeats before John pulls away, hand trying to guide her into following, trying to pull her around for eye contact.

"Hey," he says, and finally she shifts until she can see him. His eyes are warm and sad, and his hand is still a steady weight, sliding up her arm as he murmurs, "You really think we'd be here right now if I hadn't figured that out?"

"I don't know what I think," she whispers. "You miss her."

"Of course I miss her. That doesn't make you some kind of substitute. Christ, girl, why do you think I spent so long running the other way?"

"Because I remind you of her. You said so." And god, why is she still arguing when all she wants is to take his words at face value and let the subject drop?

"True," he quietly concedes. "But that's got nothing to do with this, sweetheart. I'm looking at you right now, and no one else."

"Promise?"

He gives her a small, sad smile, but the weight of truth in his eyes is unmistakable as he says, "Cross my heart."

Jo doesn't expect to sleep through the night, but she wakes in the morning to bright sunlight and the sound of chaos on the other side of the bedroom door.

"Sam, calm down!" she hears Dean's voice, the rapid thud of footsteps chasing Sam towards the hall.

"Daddy!" yells Sam, pounding on the door in such a panic that Jo sits instantly up. "Daddy, Jo's gone!"

The words sink in slowly, but fortunately John seems to be quicker on the uptake.

"Jo's fine, Sammy," he says, loud enough to carry over the noise. "She's in here." The pounding stops abruptly.

"Told you she was okay," says Dean, the words a muted mumble through the door. "Eat your cereal before it gets soggy."

When Jo turns she finds John watching her with laughter in his eyes, the tight press of his lips barely concealing the grin threatening beneath.

"Oh, shut up," she says, climbing out of bed and searching the room for her scattered clothes. She dresses quickly, her heartbeat still ramped up with adrenaline.

"Hey," he says, and when she turns to quirk an eyebrow at him she finds him halfway to dressed, jeans pulled up but unbuttoned and a new shirt in one hand. "Breathe." He steps into her space and drops a kiss to her forehead, leans in for a quick press of lips.

Sam hugs her hard around the knees when she emerges into the kitchen: so hard it takes some serious coaxing to get him to let go so she can pick him up, and then he wraps her up tight in his little arms like a very protective octopus, face buried against the side of her neck. Dean doesn't move from his spot at the kitchen table—his eyes are calm when they meet hers, and he shrugs without smiling.

"Do you love Dad?" Dean asks her later, and Jo is struck again by the maturity she sees shining in his eyes. His face is somber, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he waits for her answer, and the otherwise empty apartment feels too quiet for the early afternoon hour. She can see so much of the Dean she knows in the tense hunch of his shoulders and the failed attempt at a poker face.

"Yeah," she says finally, dropping to sit next to him on the lumpy couch. "That okay?"

Dean nods and suddenly won't look at her, eyes stubbornly staring at his shoes where they kick against the hardwood floor.

"Hey," she says, ducking her head lower to try and make eye contact. "What is it?"

"Nothing," he says with a shrug.

"I thought we didn't lie to each other," she says, knowing it's a low blow. Even though all she ever said was that she wouldn't lie to him, no promise requested in return, she's got a feeling the words will catch him anyway.

He doesn't deny the question again, but he doesn't answer either. Keeps refusing to raise his head and look at her.

"Honey, you know I'd never try and replace your mom, right?" It's a shot in the dark, but it's all she can think of. And she has to say something. She knows she's looking at a heartbroken little boy, and every instinct tells her she has to make it right.

The look of surprise on his face says she guessed wrong, but at least he's looking at her now. Blinking wide, startled eyes, and his hands clasped together in his lap.

"I know that," he says.

"Then what?"

He shrugs again, dodging the renewed line of questioning.

"Dean," she says, gently cajoling.

"You'll laugh," he says. It's all Jo can do to stay on her side of the couch as he curls in on himself, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

"I promise I won't." He's silent so long that Jo has almost given up, hopeless to think she can get him to tell her what's wrong.

"I was gonna marry you someday," he says, and oh. That's definitely not one she saw coming. And maybe it would be funny, but Dean looks even tinier than usual, wrapped all in on himself like this is the biggest, scariest confession of his life. "When I grow up, I mean," he adds, and Jo's heart goes out to him like a tidal wave.

"Oh, honey," she says, and even though he's still sitting there stiff and unapproachable, she drags him onto her lap into a hug that probably squeezes the breath right out of him. He doesn't return the hug immediately, but the shivering, nervous tension dissolves quickly enough and he wraps his arms around her neck and shakes a little like he's trying not to cry. "Baby, I'm not going to be here that long," she says, the threat of tears clogging her throat and making it hard to speak.

"Please stay," says Dean, and his voice is high and unsteady. "Please? You can marry Daddy if you want, I don't mind."

Jo's arms tighten around the boy, her eyes burning with the swell of tears and her throat going tight. "Honey, I wish I could." When Dean tugs away enough to meet her eyes, she sees that he's crying—quiet tracks of tears along his cheeks—and it's all she can do to keep it together.

"Why can't you?" Dean asks. "What do you hafta go back for?"

'Nothing,' Jo realizes. Nothing at all that means half as much as this.

"Caleb called," says John when Jo comes home from the bar after her Friday shift. She toes her sandals off and sets her keys and wallet on the kitchen counter, softly mindful of the fact that the boys are asleep.

"And?" she prompts, skin itching with how badly she doesn't want to know.

"And he's got a spell that can burn the curse off that statue. But nothing for sending you home." John fidgets where he stands, shifting his weight between his feet and looking like he feels guilty as hell for the hope in his eyes. "I told him to keep looking. Once we undo the magic it might be impossible."

But Jo shakes her head, resolved and suddenly determined, and says, "Fuck it." She's too on-edge to smile when John's eyes snap wide.

"Excuse me?" he says, stepping close like that will make it easier to understand.

"Fuck it," Jo repeats, letting the stubborn weight of intent carry her words. "I'm not going anywhere. Let's uncurse the statue and be done with it."

"You're serious," says John, the slow light of revelation lifting his face. "Jo, you might never be able to go home if we do that."

"This is home," she says, and there again she feels the itch of tears imminent behind her eyes. She swallows hard and fails to dislodge her heart from where it's stuck in her throat. "John, I can't leave. I don't want to."

She can't tell what he's thinking. The man's face is a mask of surprise, his eyes wide as he processes and tries to catch up to the curve ball Jo just threw.

"You mean that?" he finally asks. "You'll stay?"

"Yeah," she says. Not a second's hesitation, and her trepidation evaporates into the air when John steps forward and wraps her up in his arms. The embrace is firm and desperate, crushing and intense, and Jo clutches back with a relieved gasp of breath. Her heartbeat feels ragged in her chest, her ribs aching from the swell of so much emotion all in a fast, heady rush.

"Good," says John, voice shaking just a little. "That's good."

John starts planning for his next hunt less than a week later, a haunting on the East Coast that they can pack up and head for as soon as the statue problem is squared away. Sam won't get to start first grade with the new teacher he met, and his face is a surly pout when John tells him, but then John tells the boys Jo is coming with them to North Carolina and Sam stops pouting instantly.

"I thought you couldn't," says Dean, and Jo smiles on a shrug.

"I can't," she says. "But I'm going to anyway. We talked about it and I'm staying." John smiles at her, a bright, intimate expression, and Dean smiles, too. The relief in his eyes is tangible, and Jo hugs him because it seems like the only proper thing to do.

"I've got to hunt down some supplies," says John. For the ritual. He gives her a warm, knowing look and a conspiratorial nod. "Why don't you take the boys out, wherever it is you're always disappearing to."

"What do you say, guys," Jo asks, scooping Sam up onto her hip. "Want to go the park?"

"The one with the tire swing!" says Sam, and the question is decided.

The afternoon passes slow and calm, warm with sun and a little bit windy, and Jo feels at ease for the first time since she woke up in a dark, not-so-empty cave.

"Push me!" says Sam from the swings.

"Dean's already pushing you," Jo points out from where she sits at the edge of the sand, bare toes wiggling their way to buried.

"You push higher!" Sam insists.

"Push me, too!" Dean chimes in, and then she really can't say no, and the swings creak and click as she stands up and gives them her all.

They don't talk about the statue over dinner, or as they watch science fiction reruns on the rickety TV, or as Jo and John tag team to put the boys to bed.

They wait until the apartment is sleepy-quiet, as they slide under the covers on either side of the bed behind the closed bedroom door. It's been the easiest habit to slide into, already their bed if Jo is going to be honest with herself, and she always sleeps easier with the steady sound of John's breathing for accompaniment.

"We can do it tomorrow," John says. "I've got everything we need in the trunk, it shouldn't take more than a couple hours."

"Good," she says, hopeful flutter of nerves in her chest. She wants to have it done and over with, a door she can rest easier knowing is closed behind her.

"C'mere," says John, an understanding smile in his voice as his hands urge her closer. "Only ten hours until morning. The boys will be awake in no time."

Jo laughs as she moves, laughs against his lips as he kisses her.

The laughter tapers off into a gasp as he presses against her in all the right places, and the world is as right as it can be.

"So how does this work?" Jo asks. There's a ridiculously complex spread of roots and herbs and candles—blessed water in an ornate bowl and an extra box of matches just in case. The walls of the cave flicker in the subtle spread of candlelight, barely illuminated and shadowed in strange, natural textures. The statue sits atop its pedestal of flowstone, and Jo keeps her distance. In the event of an unexpected earthquake, she'd rather not be close enough to touch it this time.

"You handle the incantation," John says, handing over a thick bound tome. The pages are dusty and ancient and make Jo sneeze as she opens it to the page John has left marked. "I'll deal with the ingredients."

"Anything I should know?" she asks, trailing a finger down the jagged wall of text.

"Once you start, don't stop. Caleb wasn't a hundred percent sure, but we might have only one shot at this."

"Okay," says Jo.

"Oh, and," John adds. "Don't touch the statue."

He says that last with a cheeky, pointed smile, eyes mischievous in the minimalist flicker of the light. Jo sticks her tongue out at him before settling onto her knees. She spreads the book out onto the floor of the cave so that she can read it in the shifting dance of candlelight. "Say when," she says.

"When," says John, and Jo starts reading. It's nearly Latin, easy enough to pronounce, and the words flow steadily from her tongue. John is a constant movement in her peripheral vision, but she doesn't look up—doesn't want to interrupt the incantation, and John will stop her if something goes wrong. It reads almost like an exorcism, a banishment of the forces buried in the statue, and her skin prickles uncomfortably as a swell of power starts to build, like electricity in the confined air of the cave.

She doesn't stop. When a wind twists in out of nowhere, the candles hold their flames but Jo has to lay a steadying hand on her page to keep from losing her place.

As the last words pour off her tongue, she raises her eyes and finds John watching her. His hair is whipping around in unnatural wind, his eyes glittering in the chaotic spin of flames, and she can tell this is it. The counterspell is twisting itself into a frenzy, the air growing thicker and heavier as the wind picks up, and Jo's skin feels like fire, and like ice and like someone is closing a vice around her on all sides. When she looks at the statue, she sees it glowing where it's sits, a bright expansion of light that hurts her eyes.

She opens her mouth to speak, to ask if this is how it's supposed to go, when everything goes suddenly dark.

She opens her eyes to more darkness, and to a sick swell of disorientation that makes her stomach turn over unpleasantly. The wind is gone, and the silence feels wrong and hollow in her ears.

"John!" she shouts, suddenly terrified. Her heart freezes to nervous stone when there's no answer.

There's a flashlight in her back pocket, tucked there once the last of the candles were lit and she didn't need it anymore, and she takes it out and clicks it on with shaking hands. Her heart sinks with dawning revelation as she sweeps the beam around an empty cave. No book, no candles, no herbs and roots and water.

No John.

"John!" she shouts again, even though reality is a stubborn force trying to fight its way in.

She freezes as the beam approaches the flowstone, staring at the only ground that isn't empty. The statue lies there, and next to it a second flashlight. It's the one she carried her first time in this cave.

"No," she whispers, a sick, churning horror settling in her gut. "No-no-no-no!" She dives for the statue without even thinking about it, bruising her knees as she lands too hard, grabbing it and waiting for the burn of magic as she yells, "Send me back!"

Nothing happens.

"No," she whispers again.

The statue drops numbly from her hands, clanking against the smooth stone floor, and all Jo can do is stare.

Five hours later she finally stands, picking the statue up with unfeeling fingers. She carries it out of the cave on unsteady feet, and the world outside is purple with sunset as she emerges. Her car is at the bend in the road, right where she left it, and she pulls her spare EMF meter out of the glove compartment—her duffel and everything inside it are long gone, and all she has on her are her keys and the handful of cash in her pockets

The EMF meter is silent when she turns it on and scans the statue. No surprise there. She buries it anyway. Real gold probably, and she couldn't care less. She'd melt it to nothing if she could, but she doesn't want to lug the damn thing with her that long. She dumps a generous amount of salt on it before she refills the hole, just in case.

Her first order of business is to replace her phone—and then to hope John got rid of her old one when he found it in her stuff, but there's not much she can do about that and she doesn't want to think about John right now. It sets off a dangerous ache in her chest that threatens to dissolve the protective layer of numbness she's been wearing since she got back.

She calls her mom as soon as her new phone is active, but Ellen's voice doesn't make her feel any better.

"Everything all right, honey?" her mom asks, worry and caution coloring the words.

"Yeah," says Jo, and feels a piece of numbness chip away. "Yeah, fine. Just… finished a hunt. I'm tired."

"You sure?" Ellen asks, and this time there's fear in the question. "Jo, honey, you're not hurt, are you?"

"No," she says. 'Yes!' her heart screams. "Mom, I've got to go. I need to… my phone's almost dead. So. Love you." She hangs up before Ellen can say another word.

The next call she makes is practically an accident. It's some sort of autopilot, dialing a number she used to be embarrassed to have memorized. Her old phone would have blinked the name 'Dean' at her as it connected, but this new phone with its blank contact list just shows her the number as the call rings through.

"Hello?" comes a familiar voice from the other end of the line, and the words Jo hasn't even chosen yet die unspoken in her throat. "Hello," Dean says again, sounding worried this time. Jo pulls the phone away from her ear and closes it, cutting the call and drawing in a shaky breath. The wall of numbness shudders unsteadily, creaking and threatening to give out, and she shores it up with stubborn force of will—it's the only glue she has.

She startles when her phone rings in her hand, and isn't surprised when Dean's number flashes to announce the incoming call.

She doesn't answer it.

Three days pass with a resounding emptiness, food an afterthought and her hotel paid for with the short stack of bills from her back pocket and the emergency cash from her car. It's a hotel that didn't exist in 1988, halfway across town from an apartment building she already knows is still standing.

She buys three different newspapers a day and searches the obits, but it's a pale gesture and she knows it. She's in no shape to hunt.

But it's better than doing nothing, and a hell of a lot better than thinking, so she does it anyway.

On day four she startles awake to a loud pounding at the door, an insistent knock that shatters the quiet and won't be ignored. She shouldn't be surprised when she finds Sam and Dean standing on the pavement outside, both tall and grown and staring down at her with open concern on their faces.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, and pretends the sight isn't peeling her shields away a layer at a time.

"You called me," says Dean. There's something searching in his eyes, a question hiding behind the green as he stares at her with disconcerting intensity.

"Wrong number," she tries, instinct already telling her neither one of them will buy it.

"I don't think so," says Dean.

"Can we come in?" Sam finally pipes up behind him.

"Sure," says Jo, even though she's pretty sure she's never felt this fragile before in her life. She's spun like glass, a barely stable chemical compound about to bubble away to nothing, and she bites her lip as she stands back to let the Winchesters step inside. The door clicks heavily behind them.

"So what's this about?" she asks, ready to call their bluff because the alternative is to shatter.

"I think you already know the answer to that question," says Dean. His eyes are bright with challenge, with warmth, with memory, and of course he remembers. He's just trying to decide if all of this means what he thinks it does, or if it's just too much coincidence.

Jo looks away in a rush, turning to level an unseeing gaze out the window. Her throat is tight and dry, rough when she swallows, and her eyes skip back and forth along the horizon without finding anything to land on.

"Haven't been to Utah in years," Dean admits, voice a little too pointed to be casual.

"Since you were kids?" Jo asks, and the words feel soft and shaky.

"Yeah, well." Dean steps closer, visible in her peripheral vision as she holds her ground. "We lost someone there. Dad never really wanted to go back."

Jo's breath hitches tight in her chest, her lower lip trembling so strongly that she has to catch it between her teeth—except all the gesture does is make her realize the rest of her is shaking just as badly. The world feels suddenly unreal, oppressively heavy and too full with the loud ringing in her ears, and she can't do this.

"Hey," says Dean, and his hand on her arm is warm and almost familiar.

"Don't," she says, the word escaping on a gasp, but she can't follow through on the instinct to jerk away. All she can do is stand there as Dean ignores the demand and drags her in against his chest, wrapping her up in his arms and holding her through one unsteady breath after another until the wall finally crumbles and leaves her sobbing into his shirt.

Some corner of her mind is embarrassed, doesn't want him—either of them—to see her like this. She's an absolute wreck, and her breath is coming in hitching gulps of air. But the pulverized mess of her heart is too far buried in loss to give a shit that Sam and Dean are watching her fall apart. She clings to Dean like a lifeline, barely notices as he lifts her and carries her somewhere, except that then she's not standing anymore and she's able to hold on tighter, hiccupping and gasping with the force of her grief.

Hours must pass that way, but time is barely a blip on her radar. When she pulls herself together enough to breathe—and to sniffle noisily and wish she had a kleenex—there's still plenty of light outside. Late afternoon light that stabs in through the window and makes her pounding head and scratchy eyes feel even worse.

She shifts to sit up, bleary-eyed and not really seeing anything, and realizes she's on the bed, Dean's arm still draped protectively around her shoulder and his eyes bright with unshed tears of his own. His shirtfront is a soggy mess.

Jo sniffles, loud and congested, and just as she's longing again for a kleenex, one appears before her eyes. She finishes sitting up, a stiff, awkward shift of limbs to lean against the headboard, and finds Sam sitting to her other side, the tissue an offering in his hand.

"Thanks," she says, and her voice sounds gravelly and absolutely shot. Dean scoots up to lean against the headboard beside her, and what a sight they must make, the three of them all in a row with Jo a snotty, disheveled wreck right in the middle. She blows her nose, loud and disgusting, and gladly accepts the second tissue Sam hands her when the first isn't enough to finish the job.

"Fuck," she whispers when she can almost breathe again, and thumps her head back against the wall. Sam and Dean exchange a look over her head, but neither one speaks.

"So you guys really remember?" she asks. The words are a sore pressure in her throat. "You knew all this time?"

"We weren't sure until we got here," Dean admits. "Not like we ever had a proper photo of you, and Dad was never too talkative on the subject. But here? Now? That'd be way too much of a coincidence."

Jo nods, feels the surge in her chest of tears trying to start back up, but she's finally cried out. Empty.

"It wasn't supposed to go like this," she whispers, not daring to look at either brother. "I was going to stay. Dean." And now she does look, locking him hard with a desperate expression. "Dean, it wasn't a lie, I swear I was going to stay." Because it matters so much that he understand, that he believe her. She swore she would never lie to him, and what if he thinks she did? What if he thinks she never intended to stay?

"We know," says Sam, his voice low and steady from behind her. "We have Dad's journal."

"Good," she says, and the word rings high and manic. "Good. That's good. That's. Fuck." She's shaking again, but still too wrung out to cry any more, and she scrubs her hands over her face in a miserable gesture.

"I didn't say goodbye," she whispers. "It happened too fast." Then softer still, hollow and blank, she says "He's really gone, isn't he." The echoing silence tells her neither brother knows what to say.

Somehow she falls asleep, guarded on each side by a wall of stubborn, protective warmth.

When she wakes it's to the smell of Chinese takeout and the sound of a car chase playing low from the television. Sam and Dean sit muttering quietly between themselves at the small table by the window, but Jo has barely blinked twice before both of them focus in on her and drop silent.

They all watch each other for a moment, the silence drawing out longer than it should, like none of them are exactly sure how they're supposed to relate now that everything is out in the open. Looking at them in the dim light of one lamp and the TV screen—looks like the sun has long since set outside—Jo aches at the new familiarity. She can see both of them as lost little boys, and even now she just wants to take care of them, but here they are taking care of her instead, and she's got no idea what to say.

"Your choices are pork fried rice or beef lo mein," Dean finally says. "We got egg rolls, too, but Sasquatch here got greedy and finished them all."

"I did not!" Sam protests, kicking Dean under the table. "You ate four of them!"

The exchange is so easy, so warm and teasing, that for an irrational moment Jo almost feels like an intruder.

"Fried rice is fine," she says, feeling like maybe this is a moment she should try to smile, but those muscles don't seem to be working right. She scoots down the length of the bed, perching on the end within reach of the table. Both Sam and Dean look just about ready to stand and offer up their seats, but Jo just reaches for the nearest carton and a set of chopsticks, not even caring if it's the rice or the lo mein she's just grabbed.

"So," she says, only realizing as the first noodles touch her tongue—lo mein, then—that she is absolutely starving. "You guys were in the area?" She chews and swallows and knows full well that of course they weren't just in the area.

"We were on our way to San Francisco, actually," says Sam. "Werewolf, we think. Bobby said he could get someone else to handle it."

"Oh. That's. Good then." She shifts a little, feeling guilty and a little uncomfortable. "You didn't have to give up a hunt for me."

"Of course we did," says Dean, and the stare he hones in on her is nothing but open honesty. "You're family."

And there it is again, the lump in her throat that tells Jo she can't deal with this right now. Her appetite dies as quickly as she discovered it, and she sets the takeout carton back on the table as she stands.

"Where are you going?" Dean asks, guilty apprehension shining in his eyes— trying to figure out what he's done wrong.

"Walk," she says. "I… I need to take a walk. Alone."

Neither Winchester looks happy about it, but when she pulls her shoes on and heads for the door, neither one makes a move to stop her.

She wakes the next morning to find Sam and Dean conspiring by the window again, leaning towards each other across the table to keep their voices hushed, so close their noses are almost touching. Dean's hand rests on Sam's wrist, holding tightly as if to emphasize a point, and Sam nods an agreement Jo can't interpret.

Dean draws his hand away slowly when they notice she's awake, watching her with the same worried eyes he wore every moment of the day before.

"Morning," says Sam, eyes somehow harder to read than Dean's.

"Yeah," Jo mutters, still feeling tired and gutted, her own eyes gritty and sore.

Both Sam and Dean are already dressed, probably been up for an hour already for all the awareness Jo can muster, and she moves mechanically through her own morning routine. She'll have to do laundry soon, running low on clean just-about-everything, and when she finally steps back into the room she finds both boys standing at tall attention, waiting for her.

"We're going to Bobby's," says Dean without preamble.

"Oh," says Jo. His words don't want to register, and she turns them over and over in her head and finally says, "Tell him 'hi' for me."

"Noooo," says Dean, voice gently cajoling as he steps forward. He picks her duffel up from the floor and sets it on the bed. "We're going to Bobby's. Get packed. You can decide which of us you want riding shotgun in your car, but I should warn you. Sam? He is one gasy dude. So you probably want to pick me."

"You're an asshole," Sam informs his brother matter of factly.

"And you're a special snowflake," Dean shoots back, a knowing smirk twisting his features. "You gonna go buy us coffee or what?"

Sam leaves, muttering something about entitled jerks and caramel mochas.

"Dude!" Dean calls after him. "You better get me a manly coffee!" Jo catches a glimpse of Sam flicking his brother off just before the door slams shut.

"I don't need someone to ride shotgun," Jo hedges, already moving on autopilot as she ducks around the room gathering her things. She's not usually one to spread out and make a mess—better to have everything precisely in order in case of unexpected retreats—but she hasn't really been sticking to her usual strict regiment for the last few days. "I'd kind of rather drive alone."

"Sorry," says Dean, and the soft sympathy in his tone is unsettling. "Can't let you do that. But I promise I'll behave. No spilling or snoring or making fun of your radio stations. I can be good."

"Dean," she begins, and doesn't know how to finish.

"Hey," he says, taking a cautious step forward. His fingers are a steadying anchor of reassurance when they close around her upper arms. "One day at a time, okay? Let's just get to Bobby's and figure it out from there."

"I don't know if I can do this," she whispers. She's not even sure herself what 'this' is supposed to mean.

"Sure you can." He looks like he wants to hug her again, but maybe the fragile stability behind her eyes dissuades him.

Because he takes a step back instead, and she's grateful for the space to put herself back together. She doesn't want to spend another day like yesterday, a shaking useless wreck that can barely stand let alone drive to Bobby's. Better to be moving—doing something—so she draws a slow, determined breath in through her nose and says, "Okay. Let's go."

When they step out of the reception office after checking out, Sam is waiting by the cars with three coffee cups in hand. He hands one to Dean, and Jo watches as Dean takes a tentative sip and twists his face up into a glare.

"God damn it, Sam—"

"Pretend all you want that you don't like it, dude, but you're not fooling anyone. Now shut up and drink your double whip caramel mocha."

Dean rounds the car and climbs into Jo's passenger seat, grumbling all the while.

"Here," says Sam, handing Jo the cup in his left hand. She accepts it and takes a sip, raising her eyes in surprise when the unsweetened bitterness touches her tongue.

"How?" she asks. Because Sam was five and how the hell can he possibly remember that she likes her coffee straight up and strong?

"It was sort of a guess," he admits, somehow managing to look sheepish and sad and a little pleased with himself all at the same time. "I don't ever remember you adding milk or sugar or cream, even when we actually had those things in the kitchen."

"Thanks," she whispers, and for a second she could swear she sees him at five years old, smiling shyly up at her through the thick fringe of bangs. Only he's not smiling up at her, he's smiling down, broad shoulders hunched as he stuffs his hands in his pockets.

"You're welcome," he says, and turns to climb into the Impala.

Bobby greets them from his front porch, his face obscured by a long line of shadow as the sun falls directly on the bill of his cap.

"Boys," he says. "Jo."

"Hi, Bobby," says Sam. "Thanks for having us."

"It's no trouble," says Bobby.

He gestures them inside, pulling the stubborn, creaky door shut behind them.

"It was a werewolf, by the way," he adds, herding them towards the kitchen and four cold beers already sitting out on the table. "Two werewolves, in fact. It's all been taken care of, so far as I know."

An awkward silence settles around the table, a heavy atmosphere that leaves them all glancing around the room and picking at the labels on their beer bottles. It's exhaustion mostly. Jo has nothing to say, and she wouldn't be surprised if she's sucked all the energy out of Sam and Dean in the past couple of days. She wonders suddenly what Bobby is making of all this.

She glances at him—tries to be surreptitious about it, but finds Bobby already watching her. His eyes are bright and pensive—nothing like the confused curiosity she expected to find in the man's expression—and Jo realizes with a start: he knows. She wants to ask him how. It's entirely possible that Sam and Dean have filled him in, but Jo's instincts tell her that's not it.

Which leaves plenty of questions and an aching throb of curiosity in her chest, and she doesn't try to hide the surprise widening her eyes as she meets his gaze head on. He inclines his head just slightly, just enough to read as an acknowledgment if she wants to see it, and then turns his attention across the table to Sam and Dean.

"How long you staying?" Bobby asks.

"No idea," says Dean, faking an easy shrug that's almost believable. "Maybe until you kick us out."

"Keep the beer in my fridge stocked, and you can stay as long you like," Bobby mutters with a smirk. "I've got the guest bedroom set up for Jo, and you two clowns can fight over the couch."

"Thanks, Bobby," says Sam.

"You don't need to thank me." Bobby stands from the table with a heavy scrape of his chair. "The longer you stay under my roof, the less time I have to spend driving halfway across the country to save your sorry asses."

"He doesn't really save our asses that often," Dean denies, but the warm gratitude in his eyes as Bobby retreats from the kitchen is enough to tell Jo otherwise.

Most mornings while they're at Bobby's, Jo wakes up to the smell of bacon or eggs or pancakes, and coffee—always coffee—wafting up the stairs to the guest room where she sleeps. Those mornings it's Dean at the stove when she comes down to the kitchen, Sam always a close presence at the table or leaning against the counter by his side. She's never long without a cup of coffee, and it seems like not a minute of the day goes by without one or both of them hovering close. It's stifling but sweet, and almost worth it for the cringing sympathy she catches from Bobby whenever the Winchesters' doting proximity threatens to drive her out of her mind.

At the same time, their constant presence eases something in her chest. She still aches somewhere too deep to measure, but most of the time she's too exasperated to think about it.

Somewhere in the second week, instead of the usual morning aromas, she wakes to the smell of something burning, a charred scent drifting unpleasantly through the air. She dresses quickly, just in case it's actually Bobby's house burning down, but there's no such disaster waiting for her. Just Sam in the kitchen, which she now knows might be its own sort of crisis, but the house isn't in any danger.

She sees the shell of the smoke detector laying carefully disassembled on the counter by the sink, which explains why she woke to the heavy smell of smoke instead of the shrill warning beep of the device. The window above the sink is open, and Jo watches with barely contained amusement, struggling to hold her silence so that her presence isn't discovered, as Sam swears and panics and destroys one thing after another in the frying pan on the stove.

"You want some help with that?" she finally asks, when she's pretty sure the question won't startle him into throwing anything on the floor.

He tosses her a wry look and then turns off the burner. "No," he says. "That was the last egg. Looks like it'll just be peanut butter toast today."

"Fine by me," she says, making straight for the coffee maker. She pours herself a mug and takes a grateful sip, sighing at the bitter warmth as it slides across her tongue. "The coffee's great, anyway."

"Bobby made the coffee," says Sam. When he hangs his head like that he looks so much like a kicked puppy that Jo can't goddamn take it—he looks disappointed and dejected and like an all too familiar little boy.

"Hey," she says, setting the coffee aside and crossing her arms as she steps closer. "I happen to like peanut butter toast." When that doesn't work she goes with her gut instinct, dragging him down by the neck so she can hug him as she says, "Come here already, god." There's an uncertain moment where she's not sure if he'll hug her back, his hands twitching surprised and confused as his sides, but finally Sam's arms come up around her and all Jo can thinks is, 'jesus he's huge.' For some reason it doesn't make her feel threatened—not like maybe it should, considering the last time she and this Sam Winchester crossed paths. All she feels is protected, and she swallows hard, dissuading the threatening tears by sheer force of will.

Sam is fidgety when he lets her go, like he doesn't quite get where the hug came from and doesn't know how to react now that it's over, and the self-consciousness leaves Jo smiling in unintended amusement. He's a little boy all over again, trying to figure out how to make proper introductions, and she'd help him along if she had any idea how. Then Sam's eyes shift to the side, glancing over her shoulder, and his expression instantly brightens.

"Dean," he says, a smile spreading across his face. "How are you back from errands already?"

"I, um." Dean has an armload of bags and boxes, all carefully and precariously arranged, but the wide stare on his face makes Jo wonder how long he's been standing there. "I'm just that awesome," he finally says. "Anyway, I knew you'd probably be making breakfast, so um. I bought doughnuts. Just in case." The words are spoken without any hint of taunting or malice—just straight up, basic, familiar truth, and Sam gives his brother a grateful smile that lights up the whole damn kitchen.

"Jo, you like doughnuts?" Dean asks, and she darts forward to help him unload without upsetting the delicate balance of parcels in his arms.

"I love doughnuts," she says, taking the heaviest bag and setting it on the table. "Dibs on the chocolate sprinkles."

Jo can't sleep that night, and after three hours of tossing and turning she decides two a.m. is a perfectly reasonable time for a quiet walk.

Turns out she's not the only one turning insomniac, as she descends the stairs with quiet steps and finds Dean pulling on his boots by the front door. His surprise at the sight of her is quickly replaced by a soft smile, and he tilts his head in invitation, waiting while she finds and dons her own shoes.

She catches the look he throws towards Sam as they leave, asleep in a sprawl across the couch. Jo closes the door with a careful click and takes a deep, steadying breath, filling her lungs with the chilly night air.

She zips her sweatshirt up against the breeze and moves off of the porch—no destination in mind, but she's in a mood to meander. Bobby's got plenty of property for wandering.

"Sorry about breakfast," Dean says, but he obviously doesn't mean it. There's a soft smirk on his face, a warm light in his eyes visible in the dim glow of stars.

"Whatever," she says with a shrug. "Didn't I say I love doughnuts?" She tries to smile reassuringly, to reclaim the easy, distracted humor that the morning brought with it, but the expression feels brittle on her face. Maybe it's the crisp, empty nighttime taking a toll, leaving the ache in her chest too close to the surface and too pronounced to ignore.

They walk in silence for awhile, through the frames and skeletons of dozens of cars. They rise in stacks and sprawl in debris fields, a hundred unfinished projects and collections of parts. Jo almost trips over a low, lonely bench seat that sits abandoned out in the open. There's no sign of the vehicle it came from.

She recovers her balance and, after a moment's consideration, and takes a seat on it, stuffing her hands deep in the pockets of her sweatshirt. Dean follows her lead, and the seat creaks under their combined weight.

Jo watches his profile in the moonlight, takes in his strangely delicate features, smoothed and sculpted from a younger, rounder face that still comes too readily to mind when she looks at him. It hurts knowing she let him down. That she swore she'd never lie to him and then turned around and let the universe dump her ass all Back to the Future after making a promise she couldn't keep.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I am. I wish like hell we'd never told you I was staying. I should've known better than to assume things would work out."

"You didn't know," Dean says, turning to face her and making the shadows shift along his skin.

"But I should have," she insists. "A hunter is supposed to plan for every contingency. It was stupid to get my hopes up. It was stupid to get your hopes up."

He just looks at her—wide sad eyes without a hint of resentment.

"You really have forgiven me," she says softly, and maybe it shouldn't still feel like a revelation. Sam said they knew. But knowing and feeling it, Jo's well aware those are two different problems. She's got no doubts that she broke Dean's heart when she disappeared, but there's no bitterness lingering behind his eyes.

"Yeah well," he shrugs and drops his head back to stare into the sky. "Sure, it messed me up for awhile. But it wasn't your fault. I figured that out eventually."

"Dean, I'm sorry."

"Stop that," he says, locking her with a stubborn look. "I feel like I should say something about a bridge and water here, but I never really understood that metaphor anyway."

"All I wanted to do was right by you guys."

The night is empty-quiet around them, nothing but the creak and rustle of junkyard bits and pieces rattling on the wind, and Jo feels the silence like a personal failure all her own. Water under the bridge or not, it still feels like there's so much more to say, and she can't find a single word with which to do it.

"It means a lot, you know." Dean's voice sounds thick with memory as he breaks the silence. His hands are clasped tightly in his lap, and he says the words like a confession. "Now, I mean. It means so goddamn much knowing you would have stayed."

"Dean," she says, and she's getting so sick of feeling like the world is spinning out of her control. Seems like every time she breathes there's the useless sting of tears waiting for her, and the choking weight of her heart in her throat.

"You meant a lot to us," he adds, the words so earnest and tangible that Jo thinks maybe she could reach out and touch them.

"I know," she whispers, barely audible past the lump in her throat.

"Good," says Dean. He hugs her when they finally stand, quick and hard and gruff, and he keeps his arm around her shoulders the entire walk back to the house.

She dreams of John more often than not, and reality is a jarring force every time she wakes up. The dreams aren't always pleasant, but they feel real enough to the touch, and the sense of loss hits her like new every time her eyes blink open in the middle of the night, shaken from sleep and incapable of reclaiming whatever dream is already fading so quickly away.

She watches Sam and Dean spar on a Tuesday, fast and sweaty and oddly graceful, but as fascinating as the sight is she doesn't stay to observe. It's been weeks since she had a moment to herself, and the pure, explosive focus the Winchesters have trained on each other seems like her best chance to escape their worried attentions for a little while. They don't notice as she stands slowly and edges away towards the side of the house, leaving them the back yard to themselves.

She finds Bobby on the front porch, sitting on the stoop and nursing a beer in the bright, early evening sun.

"Hi, Bobby," she says, smiling nervously. She knows Bobby, but not well. Even in the weeks she's been here, as they've developed a comfortable familiarity, she still wouldn't say she's gotten to know the man.

"Hey," he says, greeting her with a nod of the head. When she oscillates somewhere between saying more and moving on, he lifts his bottle her direction and says, "Grab a beer and join me."

Jo smiles a tentative smile and does as she's told, ducking inside just long enough to snag a bottle from the fridge and then dropping onto the top step beside him on the porch. It's a twist-off cap, and she bends the metal between her fingers and sets it beside her, meaning to throw it away later.

From here she can still hear the grunts and yells and impacts of Sam and Dean out back. Some garbled shouting about how Dean is a cheater and Sam is a total girl.

"I'm not very good at this whole sharing and caring thing," Bobby admits, giving Jo a sidelong glance and taking a slow pull from his beer. "But if you needed to talk—you know, to someone other than those two overprotective knuckleheads—I'm here."

"Thanks," says Jo, almost smiling at the warm tone Bobby uses to color the word 'knuckleheads'. She takes another sip of her own drink, eyes scanning the bright, warm horizon. It's not that she doesn't want to talk, exactly. It's all just a little too much to put into words, and anyway she's tired of choking up and getting teary and feeling weak—logically she knows there's no weakness in grieving, but it doesn't make her any less frustrated or any less hurting in the meantime.

"How is it that you know, anyway?" she finally asks. Force of will keeps her tone human at least, if not light.

"John told me once. Don't know if he even remembered doing it the next day, he was so drunk at the time." He looks at her, his eyes sad and sympathetic beneath the brim of his cap. "It was right after your daddy died."

"Oh," Jo whispers, and fights down the uncomfortable rush of memory. She imagines John visiting her mom after it happened, imagines the guilt on his face and the burn of regret in his eyes, and it's the first real confirmation she's gotten that he ever figured out who she really was. She gave him enough clues, certainly, led him straight to the Roadhouse, and she wonders for one sharp, stinging minute if he ever would've ended up on that hunt with her father if she had kept her distance like a good little time traveler. Probably, she tells herself—the Roadhouse was as close to a nerve center as the hunting world ever had—but a corner of her heart can't decide if that's solid reasoning or just a desperate, irresistible hope.

"What…" Jo swallows hard and stares at the ground. "What did he say?"

"You really want to know?" Bobby asks, skeptical but considering.

She nods as vigorously as she can, her mouth setting itself into a stubborn line, because Bobby doesn't get to say shit like that and not spill. She feels greedy, downright desperate for whatever he knows.

"He explained about the time travel best he could. Mind you, the only reason I believed him was because it sounded way too far fetched. It had to be true. You can't make that shit up." Bobby's smile is sad, careful, heavy with consideration. "And he told me about you. Talked for hours about you and the boys and how he never should have let you go. He said if he'd known it was him that got Bill killed, he would have stayed away."

"I never told him," Jo confesses, voice raspy-soft in her throat. "I couldn't… I didn't know how much I could say. Fucking time travel."

"Probably best you didn't," Bobby reassures her gently. "I've done some research since then. You probably would've unraveled the whole damn universe if you'd changed history that much. Then we'd all be dead, and you and I wouldn't be sitting here drinking fine beer and listening to those boys kick the crap out of each other."

Jo actually laughs at that, a short, sharp burst of sound. There's something freeing in Bobby's words, in knowing that she didn't make her choice for nothing. Her expression falls tired and somber again soon enough, but for a moment she feels just a little bit lighter, knowing she couldn't have saved her father anyway.

"He also told me he never would have completed the ritual if he'd known. He would have left the statue cursed." Bobby darts his eyes to the road, rubbing a hand along his forehead. "Said he'd've burned the instructions and the book they came in."

Jo swallows hard and says, "I wish I could say I would've been strong enough to do it anyway." Because leaving the statue cursed was never an option, but the truth is there's no force on Earth that could have made Jo part with that family willingly. She hates this world she's come home to, with John dead and a Sam and Dean she never got to watch grow up—she's grateful to have them now, but it's not the same. If she could turn around and do it over, she's pretty sure that statue would still be standing in that cave.

"Bobby, how did he die?"

"That's not really my story to tell," he says, looking like he genuinely wishes he could. He waits a beat, watching her carefully, and finally stands. "Come on," he says. "Let's go see if there's anything worth eating in that fridge. By the time they're done knocking each other around those boys will be ravenous."

Jo follows, picking up her discarded bottle cap on her way inside.

"Enough," Jo says when the second week threatens to tick over into a third and they're still at Bobby's. She's got her best stubborn face on as she crosses her arms and stares at the brothers Winchester. "I can't just… sit around like this. Either find me a hunt or get me a straight jacket."

The look the boys exchange could be humorous, and it's like watching an entire conversation that Jo can barely follow. There are eyebrows and headshakes and finally Sam gives an enormous shrug and Dean turns a bright, clear look on her. Neither of them bothers to ask her if she's sure she's up to it. They know by now that if she's asking, she's ready.

"There's a case in California," Dean says. "Los Angeles, actually. Haunted movie set."

"Bullshit," she says. Because no way is she letting them drag her on some farce of a hunt that's going to turn out to be a publicity stunt. She wants a real challenge, thanks. But Dean is shaking his head, like he's serious, and Jo glances at Sam for confirmation.

"We thought it was bogus at first, too," says Sam. "All we could find were internet rumors and some mentions in the tabloids. But yesterday a studio exec died on set. Hanging. It could just be suicide, but it could also be legit."

Jo considers that for a moment, catching her lower lip idly between her teeth, and finally concedes. "Okay. I'm in."

Bobby makes them sandwiches for the road, which is about the sappiest thing Jo has ever seen the man do. She hugs him tight before they drive away.

"You take care of those idjits," Bobby tells her. "They can find trouble like you wouldn't believe."

"I will," she promises.

She finds Sam waiting in her passenger seat, and she makes a point of gunning the engine as she follows Dean's taillights out onto the road.

It turns out the deaths aren't publicity stunts. Well, one of them was. They track the guy, Frank, down to his flat, and he only lets them in because of the gleeful glint of excitement in Dean's eyes.

Leave it to Dean to know this guy from a string of bad movies, but it gets them in the door. Sure, the guy doesn't have anything useful to tell them, but they get a coupon for pepper steak out of the deal and at least it's one person that's not dead.

They don't solve the case fast enough to save the producer from getting sliced to gooey pieces by a giant fan, because who ever heard of multiple ghosts working together? But sniffing around the set is easy with everyone assuming they're just bottom rung grunts that are supposed to be there. People keep assuming Jo's got something to do with makeup, and that's downright annoying, but the sound guy thinks she's cute and is all too happy to show her the weird voices that keep overdubbing his sound takes.

It's a different sort of experience, watching the Winchesters in the context of a hunt. Dean settles right in to the part he's playing—sometimes a little too far—but he's got a natural way with people that gets under the skin of everyone on set. Even the pretty lead actress—Tara something, not that Jo pays much attention to cinema—who's making meaningful eyes at Dean by day three. Dean seems to be paying too much attention to the food to notice the looks.

Sam doesn't dive into the role of P.A. the way Dean does, just maintains a high-intensity focus as they search for information. Jo catches a particularly exasperated look on his face more than once, a thin press of lips that tells her even from a distance that Dean has just stepped on a nerve.

It's Sam that catches on to the authentic summoning ritual buried in the movie script, after hours of dailies in an empty trailer, but the guys unanimously vote Jo in charge of talking to the writer.

"Why me?" Jo demands, not quite following their logic. Besides, from what she's seen of the writer—Martin, she thinks his name is—he's slimy as hell.

"He likes you," Sam says with a shrug.

"He doesn't even know my name," Jo points out reasonably.

"Yeah well, he is always staring at your ass," Dean helpfully supplies. "I mean, like. Always. Seriously."

"And that means I should be the one to go talk to him why, exactly?"

"Maybe he'll tell you more if he's trying to impress you?" Sam at least has the good grace to look guilty, like maybe he'd rather not fob off interviewing the sleezy L.A. screenwriter on her, and Jo finally sighs and nods.

"Fine," she says. "But when we get back to the motel? You are finding me a slice of mint-chocolate cake, and you are delivering it to my door." Then she points to Dean without taking her eyes off Sam and says, "And don't you dare let him sample the goods."

Martin is about as slimy up close as he is from a distance, all syrupy façade and patting himself on the back, and it's all Jo can do to smile and nod and tell him how much she loved his script.

"It's all just so authentic," she gushes. "The language and the summoning rituals."

"What, you mean that Latin crap?" says Martin, and the self-satisfied look falls from his face so fast Jo almost feels guilty. "No, that garbage is all Walter. Walter Dixon, the original writer."

"Walter the P.A.?" she asks, suddenly confused.

"No, he's not a P.A." says Martin. "He's just got a clause in his contract that lets him come on set."

"So… Walter wrote the invocations?"

"He wrote a wackjob screenplay," Martin helpfully clarifies. "There's no pace, there's no love interest… it's all whackadoo exposition. I had to cut like ninety percent of it to make it readable, another ten percent to make it good."

"Well," says Jo, smiling too brightly and shifting uncomfortably where she stands. "You did a great job with it."

"Hey, thanks," says Martin, and his tight expression eases as the praise placates him. Then a smile spreads across his face, one that's more like a leer, and he asks, "Listen, what are you doing later? I'd love to take you out."

"I can't," Jo blurts too quickly. "That is… I'd love to. Really, really love to, but. My boyfriend. He—"

"Doesn't have to know."

Jo clears out quickly after that, talking Martin's secretary into giving her a couple copies of the original script on her way out the door.

In the end they save the sleazy writer, but they can't save Walter from his own idiocy. Jo sneaks up on him, flanks him while Sam's got him distracted, but he still shatters that damn talisman on the pavement before either one of them can get close. Jo catches a glimpse when Martin raises Sam's camera phone, but the sight of Walter coming apart under invisible forces is plenty for her. She doesn't need to see what's actually happening.

Martin makes another pass at her when they escort him to his car, and it's kind of adorable how Sam and Dean both step forward and a little bit in front of her—just enough to present an impenetrable wall of Don't You Fucking Dare.

"Cute," she tells them after they watch Martin's taillights disappear. "Come on," she adds, tugging them both by the arms. "You owe me cake, and I'm starving."

The next morning they stop by the set to run one last EMF sweep. It's the closest they can come to sure the ghosts are all really gone, and Jo circles the perimeter of the set, relieved when the EMF meter in her hand doesn't flare up with any hot readings. She can see Sam in her peripheral vision, chatting with Martin as the director calls cut.

They don't finish until the whole crew has been released for lunch break, and Jo stops up short when she finds Dean and Tara having a private conversation behind a wall of fake trees. She doesn't interrupt, but she doesn't leave either—curious to see the look on Dean's face when he finally takes the time to notice the way his favorite actress is looking at him: like an expensive steak dinner at a fancy restaurant.

"Wow," Dean is saying, hand rubbing through his hair—it's a discomfited gesture that Jo recognizes but doesn't understand. "That's… really fucking tempting is what it is. But I can't. I'm sorry."

And Jo might have lost her mind somewhere along the line, because she's pretty sure Dean just turned Tara down.

"Someone else?" Tara hazards with a small smile.

"Yeah," Dean sighs, only he looks wistful and not as discontent as he should. Plus so far as Jo knows, Dean isn't dating anyone. He's a little too wrapped up in hunting and his brother for that, and Jo would know—she tried once upon a time.

"Well if it's that blonde girl, I think you're good together." Jo almost gives herself away by snorting, but Dean gives a surprised bark of laughter himself at the supposition and the sound covers perfectly. She supposes she could feel insulted, but it's not like she's interested. Not anymore. That ship has well and truly sailed.

"No, not Jo," says Dean.

"The tall guy?" Tara presses, and this time Jo's glad she was on her guard, because she manages not to make a sound despite the ludicrous suggestion. Dean smiles but doesn't even waste his time denying it—what does it matter what some actress in Hollywood thinks, after all—and Jo feels her lips quirk up in a small smile of amusement.

"Look, I have to go," Dean says instead. "But it's been great meeting you. It really has. Good luck with the rest of the movie." They part on an amiable handshake, and Jo waits for Dean to make his retreat around the scenery, quirking an eyebrow at him when he notices her and freezes.

"Would've figured you'd be all over that," she teases him gently, falling into step beside him as they move through a fake forest towards the exit. "It's not every day a celebrity crush offers to take you for a ride."

"You heard all that?" he asks, eyes searching her from the side.

"Some of it," she says. "Don't worry, no judgment here."

She decides not to ask him about the 'someone else'. From the look of that conversation it's either not true or it's complicated, and maybe it's none of her business anyway.

They're still on the outskirts of L.A. the next day, searching out another hunt—there's no reason to move out until they find one. The obits keep coming up dry, and Sam apparently can't find anything on the internet that doesn't smell bogus. Jo's desperate for the distraction of somewhere to focus her energy, and when she tosses her seventeenth newspaper aside in frustration she finds Sam already has his computer shut and Dean is staring out the window.

"I'm going to go for a run," Sam announces, and without further preamble drags a pair of sweats and a t-shirt into the bathroom to change.

"Don't mind him," says Dean, waving him off when Sam emerges just long enough to duck out the front door of the room. "He just gets antsy when he doesn't have a monster in his sights. Makes him nervous."

Jo nods and flops back on the bed, and the quiet is almost overpowering.

For the first time since they got here she can feel her mouth going dry, the low thrum of hurt squeezing threateningly in her chest. She's got nothing but the sound of Dean's breathing to hold her attention, and the air around her is suddenly stifling with the things she's trying not to think about.

"You wanna get out of here for a couple hours?" Dean suddenly asks into the silence. "There was a pub just a couple blocks down, I bet they've got something worthwhile on tap."

"Sure," says Jo, instantly grateful. She sits up and brushes fingers through her hair—can't quite be bothered to find a comb when all her stuff is in the room next door, but she can at least follow the pretense of making herself presentable before going outside.

She watches Dean leave a note that says, 'Hey jerkface, went for a beer and a burger. Text if you want me to bring you something,' then gathers up her wallet and follows him out the door.

The walk is short and pleasant, cool evening air ghosting across Jo's skin as she keeps a slow, easy pace beside Dean. An amiable silence holds steady between them, and Jo is glad for it. There's still a lump in her throat, swallowing her words up before she even thinks to say them.

When they're finally seated in a corner with good beer and decent food, she finds her appetite minimal, but forces herself to eat some of her fries. The last thing she needs is Dean giving her one of those looks, all vulnerable and worried and overprotective.

Halfway through her glass of beer she finds the lump in her throat isn't enough of an obstacle to the question she's been trying not to ask, and she sets the drink aside as she locks Dean hard with an intense look.

"I want to know how he died," she says, and Dean freezes in the middle of chewing. She feels awful as soon as the words are out of his mouth—for ruining his meal and for bringing it up in public and for putting that wide-eyed hurt back on his face—but she can't take it back now.

Dean swallows and coughs and suddenly won't meet her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "Fuck, Dean, I didn't… it doesn't have to be now, okay?"

"No," says Dean, and when he looks at her his eyes are wet. "You've got every right to know. I just… you went so long without asking, I thought maybe you didn't want to."

The quiet stretches painfully, shared hurt clouding the air between them as Dean pushes his food aside.

"Dad ever tell you anything about a demon?" he asks.

"No," she admits. "He never really told me anything. Said it was too dangerous. All he said was that there was something big going on, and your family was stuck in the middle of it."

"Yeah, well." Dean runs a hand through his hair. "That's definitely the truth." He's quiet for awhile, picking his words—maybe deciding how much to tell her—and finally says, "Anyway, there's a demon. And near as we can tell, it's been after Sammy ever since the fire. Not just Sammy, though. Other kids, too. Kids with special abilities."

"What kind of abilities?" asks Jo, because she's starting to see where this might be going.

Dean chews on his lower lip for a moment and finally says, "Psychic abilities." He doesn't have to tell her it's a secret. Just for family. She can tell from the soft, somber hint of fear in his voice. "We got our hands on this gun. A Colt that can kill anything. We were going to use it to take out the demon."

"It didn't work," Jo guesses. Her skin prickles unpleasantly and the air feels too thick to breathe.

"Yellow-eyed bastard out-maneuvered us," says Dean. Jo's never heard of a demon with yellow eyes. "Hit harder than we could take. I was in a coma and… No, I was dying. Sam and Dad were okay. But we, uh. We lost Dad right after I woke up." Dean isn't crying, but it's a near thing—Jo can see tears in his eyes mirroring her own, threatening but not quite spilling over as Dean continues, "His heart gave out. There was nothing the doctors could do to revive him."

"But that doesn't make sense," Jo protests. "You said he was okay!"

"He made a deal, Jo." And this time a tear does fall, then a second one, two slick trails down his face, but Dean blinks hard and raises his eyes to the ceiling, forces himself to stop crying before he's really gotten started. "At least we think he did. His soul for my life." Dean seems to barely see her as he says, "I wasn't supposed to wake up."

Jo can see self-loathing shining in Dean's eyes, but she can't process that right now. Can't process anything beyond the chorus of 'no, no, no, fuck, please god, no' in her head. Because knowing John was dead hurt plenty for one lifetime.

This is so much worse.

She stands from her chair and takes a step back from the table, stumbling when her legs don't quite want to hold her upright. She feels lost and un-tethered, her pulse roaring uselessly in her ears, and she thinks she might fall, except Dean is already there. Catching her and holding her steady, and yes, definitely crying now.

"But you can't be sure, right?" Jo asks, groping for whatever hope she can find.

"Not a hundred percent," Dean admits, hand warm at her elbow. "But there are only so many ways it could have gone down, Jo. I was terminal. Dad wasn't even in the ICU. And he had Sam bring him summoning supplies the night before it happened. We haven't seen the Colt since."

"Fuck," Jo whispers, closing her eyes as her vision wavers.

"I'm sorry," Dean whispers. And when Jo blinks at him, she sees that he means it in every way possible. There's so much guilt there, and the loathing again, hard hatred turned inward, and it hurts so much to look at.

"Don't," she says, because even through her own private vortex of regret, she can't stand to see that look on his face. "Dean, don't you dare." The words feel like choking, small and brittle in her throat, but she has to make him understand. She takes his face in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye as she says, "He made his choice. Don't you dare think for a second that he could have done any differently, or that you aren't worth it.

"It's my fault he's gone," Dean chokes.

"No," says Jo, and it feels like being stabbed through the heart. "It's John's fault he's gone. You don't get to blame yourself for someone else's choices."

He doesn't believe her. There's a hard-edged, stubborn look in his eyes that says her words are barely sinking in, and she's got no idea how to make him see.

Then Dean's phone rings and the sound jolts them both, guitar riffs cutting through the tense air of the pub, and as Dean takes it out and answers it Jo glances around—realizes the other patrons are staring at them, probably have been since Jo first stood up looking ready to pass out or run.

"Yeah," Dean is saying, voice somehow sounding clear and dry for the phone. "Yeah, sure. Bacon cheeseburger okay with you? I barely touched mine."

Sam's going to know from that alone that something is wrong, of course. Jo waves down a waiter and boxes their leftovers, tosses a couple twenties on the table and drags Dean out of the bar.

She hesitates at the door to her room, feeling scared and empty and more than anything not wanting to be alone right now.

"Come on," Dean interrupts as she's digging for her key. "We can make room."

She crashes on the bed nearest the bathroom, curled in on herself and putting all of her focus into remembering how to breathe. Dean sits against the headboard beside her, not touching her but offering the warm reassurance of his presence.

She falls asleep to the murmur of quiet conversation, and prays for the world to look better in the morning.

Jo expects her period on a Tuesday.

She's always been regular—maybe not clockwork regular, but still, regular for a given value—so when she finds herself stumbling into the next weekend without that monthly milestone, she's got a pretty good idea what it probably means.

She doesn't say anything to Sam or Dean at first. It's not because she's scared or embarrassed or any of the other dozen reasons she could maybe put her finger on. It's more that it feels wrong to say anything before she can prove it.

And even though she's already sure—no reason for her certainty beyond a strange, steady feeling that something is different now—she keeps her mouth shut as a few days stretch into a full week, into more like two weeks, and tells her that her instincts are correct.

She's gearing up for the big reveal when they tell her about a job she can't come along for. And even if that were something she might stand for in the first place—which, hell no, not in this lifetime—she likes it even less when they tell her what the job is. Get caught and go to jail, all so they can investigate a haunting on the inside.

It's a bad idea in itself, because Sam and Dean are both a little too pretty to make it in and out of jail intact, but all the worse given their criminal records. They've filled her in along the way, and with the FBI always so damn close behind them, they must be out of their crazy Winchester minds to think this hunt is a good idea.

She can see from the look in Sam's eyes that he, at least, doesn't think it's such a hot plan—but Dean is adamant that they owe Deacon. That Deacon was a friend of Dad's, that they have to do this. It's obvious from the stubborn glint in his eyes that logic isn't talking him out of this one.

So Jo doesn't hesitate to pull out the big guns.

"I think I'm pregnant," she says.

Which drags the argument to a stop in a predictably wide-eyed instant, as Sam and Dean both stare at her like she's suddenly speaking in tongues. She can practically hear their heart rates picking up, see the startled disbelief in their eyes—not that they think she's lying, but this is so far out in left field they can't wrap their heads around it.

"I'm late," she explains, and okay, now she's a little uncomfortable. "Really late. I haven't done a test or anything, but… anyway, I didn't want to say anything until I was sure."

They're still just staring at her, and neither blinks as she waves a hand in front of their faces. Which is just great, because it means she broke them, only she's got no idea how to reset and start over.

"You going to say anything?" she asks, because now she feels edgy with tension, nervous with no idea why.

"Holy crap," is all Dean has to offer. Sam still doesn't seem to be able to speak.

"I've got a bad feeling about this job," says Jo, and the wide worry in her eyes isn't an act, isn't just for show. She doesn't want her boys taking this hunt, because she's pretty sure that if she loses them now, the world stops. "You guys are… I don't know what I'll do if you go in there and don't come back out again." And god damnit but her eyes are tearing up now, burning and embarrassingly wet as she blinks and does her best to keep the moisture in check. She hates feeling weak, but if Dean puts himself back together and tells her they're still going she's pretty sure she'll fall apart right here.

"Don't go," she says—tries to make it sound like an order, but it comes out a whole lot more like a plea. "I mean, there's got to be someone else you can pass it on to, someone who likes a challenge and isn't wanted by the feds." And then softer, tight and a little bit desperate, she says, "Please."

Sam snaps out of it first, and he's already yanking her into a tight hug as he says, "Okay. Okay, we won't go." Jo can't see anything from here besides a close-up view of Sam's shirt, but Dean's silence tells her the poor guy is probably still too shocked to process, let alone answer. She imagines if he could form a response he might still be arguing the point—he's stubborn that way—but the discussion is closed, because Sam made the call and Jo knows Dean won't make his brother a liar. Not about this.

"Good," she breathes, and if she holds on a little too tightly, well that's just because she's relieved.

They do an actual test before the day is up, and it's no surprise when the test confirms what Jo already knows. It means she probably ought to get in to a clinic, get checked out by some proper medical staff and make sure everything's okay. Maybe tomorrow—Jo's not sure she has the emotional energy for that right now.

"Are you okay?" Dean asks her later that night, feet propped on the bed next to her as he settles into a chair by the window. Just the two of them right now, Sam off on a mission to find them dinner that doesn't consist of hamburgers or pizza. Jo watches Dean carefully, tries to figure out where on the scale of freaked he is—Jo's feeling pretty freaked herself, but more than anything she needs things to be okay between them.

"I could ask you the same," she finally says, shrugging in deliberate—if unconvincing—nonchalance.

Dean laughs, dry and a little scared, and says, "Nah, I think this one's about you." Then he drops his feet and leans forward, fixes Jo with a heavy look as his expression slips to something more somber, eyes bright and intense. "It's just big, you know? I mean… Sam and me, we get a new baby brother out of the deal. But you? Jo, you're gonna be a mom."

It doesn't seem to have occurred to Dean that there's another option—that Jo could end it now and be done with it—and something about that blind show of faith warms her heart like nothing else. Because she knows for herself that that was never an option. Motherhood sounds like a big, scary mess of it's own, but she wants this baby.

Besides, she knows already that she won't be doing it alone. Not if she can keep her two favorite boys from running off and getting themselves killed. Easier said than done, maybe, from what she knows now about the yellow-eyed demon and his mysterious plans. But Jo is stubborn, and neither one of her boys is dying any time soon. She needs them too much.

"Oh hell," she says as Dean's words sink in and a new thought occurs to her. The word 'Mom,' echoes in her head on repeat, and she whispers, "I have to tell my mother."

Dean has the foresight to look even more terrified, and that's when Sam stumbles in with food.

"Hey guys," he says, then catches sight of his brother's face. "Um. What'd I miss?"

Much as Jo might like to send a text message and then hide in a cave until her mom's reaction blows over, she knows this is something she has to do in person. She makes Sam and Dean promise to wait for her at a motel across town, so she can drive to the Roadhouse alone and have this conversation in private. It's going to be surreal enough without onlookers.

She times her visit for about ten in the morning, because she knows the Roadhouse will be empty at that hour except for her mom, Ash and whatever hired hand is helping set up for the lunch rush. Though she hopes Ash is sleeping in his room this morning and not crashed out on one of the pool tables. She'd rather have an army of Winchesters looking on than Ash's curious eyes.

Jo takes comfort in the familiar crunch of gravel as she puts her car in park and squints through the sun all the way across the lot. Her steps are noisy and gritty, and the metal handle of the front door is sun-warm against her palm. Ellen stands behind the bar, wiping it down with a damp checkered cloth, and when she catches sight of Jo she sets her work aside and crosses the room with wide, hurried strides.

"Hi," Jo says dumbly, and once again she has to stubbornly blink back tears when her mom sweeps her into a commanding hug, tight and warm and protective.

"Jo, what are you doing here?" Ellen breathes, the question making Jo's hair flutter and tickle against her ear. "I was starting to think I'd never see you again."

And if Jo wasn't already feeling off balance and guilty, those words send a stab of remorse through her heart. A handful of postcards here and there is hardly enough to assuage a mother's worry, and she's all the more culpable considering how very close she came to making her mom's fears come true.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Ellen asks when she finally pulls back to let Jo breathe. Her hands rest warm on Jo's arms, holding on with open concern. "When you called, I didn't know what to think, and then weeks without any word… I heard you've been hunting with the Winchesters."

There are so many emotions clouding Ellen's face: worry, fear, love, anger. Jo understands all of them, especially the anger. She knows how her mom feels about the idea of her working with Sam and Dean, and at the moment that problem is barely the tip of the iceberg.

A boy Jo doesn't recognize bustles in just then, a broom in one hand and a washcloth in the other, but Jo barely registers as her mom orders him to go clean the back storeroom instead.

"Talk to me, Jo," Ellen says when she finally turns her attention back to her daughter. "Tell me what's wrong."

"It's… sort of a long story," says Jo. "And you're really not going to like it."

"You dying?" Ellen asks with a forced nonchalance.

"No."

"You get someone else killed?"

"No."

Relief settles light across Ellen's shoulders, and she says, "Then what's not to like?"

"Maybe you should sit down," Jo says, and then once they're staring at each other across a table by the window adds, "Don't freak out, okay?"

"Jo, if you don't get to it—"

"I'm pregnant."

For a moment there's nothing but silence. Smothering, unambiguous, edgy silence. And Ellen blinking at her, startled and disbelieving.

"Come again?" Ellen says.

"Pregnant," says Jo.

"I don't think I heard you right. I could've sworn you just said you were—"

"Pregnant, Mom." Jo embraces the exasperation she feels bubbling up in her chest, because it's a whole lot easier to deal with than the alternatives. "As in, a baby. I'm having one."

And then there's silence again, taut and considering, and Jo fidgets under her mother's gaze. Ellen is staring straight through her, like she's about to call a bluff or ground Jo for life, not that either response will have much effect.

Ellen's eyes go suddenly wide, and Jo's got no idea why until her mom says, "It's one of those Winchesters, isn't it."

"Yes," says Jo. Might as well get the easy answer out of the way first.

"Well go on, then. Don't keep me in suspense. Which one's the father?"

"It's sort of complicated."

And if anything, Ellen's eyes get even wider. Jo's pretty sure she's never seen her mom so surprised.

"Joanna Beth, what have you done?" Ellen asks. It might be dawning judgment Jo sees in her eyes, but it's hard to tell through all the shock and disbelief. "Oh, Jesus, you're sleeping with both of them."

"No," Jo is quick to reassure. "Mom, no. I'm not sleeping with both of them. I'm not sleeping with either of them."

Which earns her a new look, one that's too confused to leave room for anything like judgment.

"You can't be having someone's baby if you're not sleeping with them, honey," Ellen explains with a forced calm.

"Clearly," says Jo, rolling her eyes. "Look, I'm not explaining this well. But it's going to sound crazy pretty much no matter how I say it, and… and I really don't want you to freak out, okay?"

"Is it some kind of curse?" Ellen asks, leaning forward with new intensity. "Maybe we could give Bobby Singer a call, see if he can—"

"It's not a curse, Mom. It's just biology. But I never said the father was Sam or Dean."

"Yes you did," Ellen counters. "You said—…"

The way she cuts herself off and then stares tells Jo her mom is finally connecting the dots.

"You can't be saying what I think you're saying," Ellen insists, but the dawning weight of comprehension is unmistakable and heavy on her features. When Jo doesn't answer, Ellen's brow knits and she says, "That's not possible. Joanna Beth, you'd best start talking sense."

"I told you it was a long story," Jo says with a helpless shrug.

"Honey, you know as well as I do that John Winchester is dead. Has been for going on eight months now."

Jo thought she was ready for this conversation, but hearing those words cuts straight through her. Her eyes burn and a painful lump settles into her throat—tears threaten so fast that it's all she can do to avert her gaze and try to blink them away. She's not doing this here. She's not going to cry in front of her mom.

"Talk to me, Jo," Ellen whispers, and Jo breathes out on a gasp when her mom's hand closes over her wrist where it lies on the table. "Honey, you're scaring me. What happened? Just tell me how." Except from the way she says the words, Jo can tell her mom doesn't believe her. Not that Jo can blame her. She knows it sounds nuts. But she's having a little trouble organizing her thoughts, which doesn't leave her well equipped to explain.

"I know he's gone," Jo says, and the only thing keeping her lower lip from trembling is force of will. "And I know it doesn't seem possible. But I'm not crazy." Her voice feels stronger now that she's started, but she still can't look her mom in the eye. "That last hunt I went on solo, it didn't go exactly to plan. I wound up stuck twenty years in the past, and there was another hunter working the case."

"John Winchester," Ellen fills in the blanks easily enough. "That son of a bitch."

"Mom, don't," says Jo, and the surge of angry irritation is enough to ground her. She raises her eyes and delivers her most defiant look. "He didn't do a single damn thing wrong. He never even knew who I really was. But I was there for months, and things got… complicated."

"Complicated," Ellen snorts.

Jo doesn't have the heart to tell her mom how close she came to not coming back.

"The last time you called me," says Ellen, more revelation shining in her eyes. "That was. Honey, why didn't you say something?"

"Like what?" Jo asks, incredulous. Her mom concedes the point with a shrug, and Jo wishes like hell they had a couple beers between them right now. She'd kill for a sip of stout and a bottle to fidget with. Except for how she doesn't get to drink right now. Fuck.

"Do those boys know?" Ellen asks, when Jo lets the silence persist. "About any of it?"

"They know everything. Turned up on my doorstep right after I got back, and they haven't let me out of their sight since. They're a little overprotective." She swallows past the lump in her throat. "As for, you know… I only just figured that out myself."

She doesn't know what she expects to find in her mother's eyes after that. More confusion, certainly. Maybe some judgment and disapproval, maybe the discontent edge of anger.

What she finds instead is quiet, shadowed sadness and something too close to pity.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Jo asks, and her voice doesn't feel as strong as it did a second ago. Mostly she just feels like a lost little girl as she says, "Shouldn't you be yelling at me or something?"

"Oh, honey," says Ellen, taking both of Jo's hands between her own. "You've got enough things to worry about right now without adding me to the list." Jo's eyes are already red and wet by the time Ellen adds, "You just tell me what you need, sweetie, and I'll do whatever I can to make sure you have it."

"Thank you," Jo whispers.

And this time she lets the tears fall.

It's such a relief having her mother to talk to about the baby, a fact that never occurred to Jo before. But suddenly she's got someone who can answer all her stupid, worried questions—someone she can pick up the phone and call at all hours of the day or night, because Ellen's been there. She knows what it's like, and she knows just what Jo needs to hear.

Jo talks to Sam and Dean at length about what comes next. Hunting is dangerous—it's a world Jo can't afford to wade too deeply into now, not when she's got someone else's fragile life in her hands.

But it's also a world they can't just walk away from. Even if they wanted to—and Jo's got serious doubts about whether the boys want out in the first place—there are still too many questions hanging over them unanswered. There's a yellow-eyed demon out there, with an agenda and a gun that can kill anything, and Jo can't pretend he'll leave the Winchesters alone if they try to walk away.

"We'll be extra careful," says Dean, because it's the only compromise they can reach. "We'll pass the worst hunts on to someone else, we'll keep you out of the line of fire, and we'll watch out for that yellow-eyed son of a bitch."

"Okay," Jo reluctantly agrees. She wants to argue that it's impossible to tell which hunts are bad until they're in the thick of it. She wants to point out all the obvious flaws in Dean's supposed 'plan'. She wants to wrap both of her boys up in her arms and never let go. But Jo knows inevitability when it's looking her in the face, and she bites her lip and keeps her mouth shut.

She wonders how long it will be before her stomach starts showing, visible evidence that she's vulnerable—that she's got someone to protect besides herself.

In Illinois, Dean goes in after a Djinn half-cocked, and for six heart-stopping hours, Jo is sure he's dead.

Sam tries to make her stay behind while he searches. Tries to convince her that he can handle it, that it would be better for her to wait at the motel.

"It's not safe," he tries to insist. "I'll find him, I promise, but you can't come with me."

"Fuck you," Jo snarls, feeling lightheaded with all the panic and terror and rage—she's not angry at him, but her reactions are all spilling over and ending up aimed at him anyway, and she doesn't have the spare focus to feel guilty about that right now. "And fuck 'safe'. You need me, and I'm sure as hell not waiting here for some cop to call and tell me they found your bodies."

"Jo, we agreed—."

"I don't care. And the longer we stand here arguing about it, the more dead Dean gets, so give me a goddamn knife and let's go." Desperation flares up hot in her chest, protective instinct and an overpowering roar of blood in her ears, and they need to be moving. They need to be out there searching, before it's too late, might be too late already, fuck, Jo can't lose them.

"Okay," Sam finally agrees, voice a rush as he hurries to comply.

They're out the door in minutes, and Jo touches her stomach when she settles into the passenger seat, her mind circling in a silent prayer for someone, anyone, to keep them all safe.

When they find Dean, the first thing Jo feels is the shattering certainty that they're too late. He's just hanging there, bound at the wrists and ashen like death.

She can't speak, can't move, can't do anything but watch as Sam dashes forward and feels for a pulse.

"He's alive," Sam gasps, and Jo edges closer, watches as Sam shakes his brother, tries to wake him up.

Dean doesn't wake.

The minutes stretch, hopeless and sharp, become five and then ten and then more, and Jo feels the fragile edge of hope in her chest start winking away. She's not even listening anymore as Sam's voice rings higher and higher with panic. She clutches the knife at her side—it's silver and sharp, and the handle is warm in her grasp. The Djinn will be back, and the second it shows its face, Jo is going to make it pay.

" Dean!" Sam shouts. "Dean! Oh, god. Come on, hey. Wake up. Wake up, damn it!" Jo's fingers tighten around the knife, despair and rage slipping like tendrils into her chest.

And then the impossible, a grunt that sounds like it comes from Dean, and Jo's skin prickles with anxious anticipation—she holds her breath in her chest, tight and motionless, and she waits.

Dean's voice is weak but unmistakable when he says, " Auntie Em…there’s no place like home." The relief hits Jo so hard she nearly loses her footing.

She's there beside them in an instant, pulling the long, painful-looking needle from Dean's neck while Sam struggles to cut through the ropes binding Dean's wrists. There are more words exchanged, Sam to Dean and back again, but Jo's not listening. She can't hear anything through the noisy roar of her pulse in her ears, the relief singing through her veins.

"Look out!" Dean shouts, voice suddenly sharp and loud, and that Jo hears. She turns in time to see the Djinn rushing towards them. Without thinking, she puts herself in its path—the only way it's getting at her boys again is through her.

She has the knife ready, her knees bent in preparation for attack. She's going to make this thing pay in blood.

She's not expecting it to dodge aside, right around her, and she screams a hoarse, "No!" when she turns just in time to see Sam go flying, knocked across the room by the force of a heavy blow. He hits the wall hard, and when he slides to the ground he doesn't get back up.

Jo's fury catches in her throat, overpowering even her terror that Sam could be seriously hurt, and she turns on the Djinn. She lunges left first, feints at the last minute, gets her knife up and perfectly angled for the killing blow—

And gasps as the air knocks out of her lungs, the knife clattering noisily out of her hand as she flies backwards. Her back feels like fire on impact, the sharp press of wooden steps burying bruises into her skin. She scrambles for the knife, but the Djinn is already there, pressing her down and reaching for her face. Its eyes glow, bright and dangerous and powerful, and all Jo can feel is disbelieving rage. It doesn't get to end this way.

She can't struggle free of the thing's hold, can't escape under her own power. She can see Sam from here, still slumped and unconscious, and there's nothing she can do.

"No," she breathes, eyes clenching tightly closed.

And then the Djinn screams.

Jo's eyes fly open as its weight drops aside, and suddenly she can move—she scrambles further up the rickety wooden stairs, and the first thing she sees is Dean. He's got her knife in his hand, and it's wet—dripping with the Djinn's blood. Jo's eyes scan to the side until her gaze finally finds the monster's crumpled form. Death settles over it slowly, and Jo feels dark satisfaction like a lump in her throat.

She doesn't waste time with that feeling, though. She steps over its body and rushes to Sam, feels for a pulse and stubbornly resists the urge to shake and shake and shake him until he wakes up. His eyes blink open at the touch, thank god, even more reassuring than the steady heartbeat Jo feels under her fingers, and she helps him to his feet.

A glance over her shoulder confirms that Dean is still standing—helping a girl that Jo hadn't even realized was hanging beside him—and finally Jo remembers to breathe.

"What did you see?" she asks him later, changing the bandage on his neck. He turns heavy eyes on her, sad and open, and doesn't answer. The silence could be awkward, but it's not, and Jo is the first to look away. "Never mind," she says. "It's none of my business."

She sleeps in Sam and Dean's room that night, claiming the bed furthest from the door. She thinks about offering to share with one of them this time—it hardly seems fair that they have to share space every time she needs a little extra moral support—but they fall into bed so tired and easy that she doesn't even get a chance.

She's out pretty much instantly herself, her whole system exhausted and beaten down. Her back aches with deep, settling bruises—only bruises: they stopped for x-rays before they came back to the room, needed to be sure—but the discomfort isn't enough to keep her awake. She dreams thunder storms and floodwaters, and doesn't wake until the darkest hours of the night.

There's moonlight creeping in through two windows, bright and low, and her eyes are already adjusted to the darkness. She can see almost every detail of the room around her, including the lump of both boys on the other bed.

She blinks, confused at the fact that Sam and Dean comprise only one silhouette on the other bed. The details she can make out create a strange picture. Dean is facing her, sleeping on his side with his head pillowed on one arm, both hands wedged beneath the pillow. Sam is a shadow situated too close, and as Jo's eyes trace the outline of his form, she realizes Sam's arm is draped across Dean's stomach, simultaneously sweet and possessive.

It's a bizarre image, a sleepy embrace that Jo's rational brain tells her immediately must be an unconscious accident. The boys can't be used to sharing a bed with anyone, of course they're going to fall back on different habits—Jo knows Sam used to have a steady girlfriend. Back in college when he was playing at normal. Even if neither one of them will tell Jo any details of that time.

But a nagging voice in the back of Jo's head warns otherwise. It says there's more going on here than she knows.

She narrows her eyes to imperceptible slits when Sam shifts in his sleep, watches as Dean shifts right along with him. It's just a tiny sliding of limbs, changing positions—looks just as unconscious as before. But then a soft murmur of voices reaches Jo's ears, too quiet to decipher actual words but obviously a conscious exchange, and she realizes the nagging voice in her head might just have a point.

When Sam leans in to press a soft kiss to Dean's mouth, the darkness of the room isn't enough to disguise the movement, and Jo's brain finally, grudgingly puts two and two together.

'Oh,' she thinks.

She should probably feel horrified and scandalized, but she's too tired for all that. She's too stuck on her relief that they're all alive.

She doesn't have it in her to pass judgment on the two men lying together on the other bed.

Jo falls asleep again more easily than she would've expected, and this time she sleeps until morning.

At a diner just outside Columbus, Sam disappears.

It's even worse than the Djinn.

Jo is stretched across the back seat of the Impala when it happens—left her car at the Roadhouse last time she visited home, because what was the point of driving two cars around for three of them—Dean humming along to music as they wait for Sam to come back with the food, extra onions and all.

When the radio stutters with static, Jo sits up, instantly alert.

Inside the diner there's nothing but death and the smell of sulfur. There's no sign of Sam.

They're already en route to the Roadhouse when Jo calls Bobby, and she watches the flat, dusk-lit pavement disappear beneath them while she fills the man in.

"We'll meet you there," she says. "Just hurry, okay?" She ends the call and slips the phone back into her pocket, dropping her hand unconsciously to rest over her stomach. She imagines she can feel a difference, an extra roundness beneath her fingers, even though logically she knows it's probably still too early.

"Is he on his way to the Roadhouse?" Dean asks.

"Yes," says Jo. "He might even beat us there. Sounds like he's pretty close." As far as Jo is concerned, they can't arrive soon enough.

She's dozing against the passenger side window when she hears Dean's soft, horrified, "Fuck," and for a moment she thinks she dreamed it. But the car is slowing, and the rustling crunch of gravel beneath the tires is too familiar a sound. She opens her eyes slowly, squinting against the sun, and jolts upright at what she sees.

"No," she breathes, unbuckling even before the car is at a complete stop. "Jesus fuck no!"

"Jo, wait!" Dean calls when she throws the door open, but she barely stumbles when her feet hit the dirt. She doesn't close the door behind her—just staggers forward towards the wreckage, on legs that don't want to carry her.

The Roadhouse is kindling. The fire obviously burned out hours ago.

She makes it to the ashen periphery and can't bring herself any closer. She hits her knees hard, scuffing them in the ash-dusted gravel, but the sensation barely registers. Every neuron in her body is distracted by other things, drowning in a tsunami of disbelief as the wreckage before her gradually registers. She can't breathe, can't feel her face or fingers, can't see through the sudden, sharp sting of tears. She feels numb and sick and shattered, and barely notices when Dean drops to his knees beside her, dragging her against his chest.

She can't even muster the strength to cling to him, and when the sound of another car pulling up reaches her ears, she hears it only in a disconnected space at the edge of her awareness.

There's the sound of a car door slamming shut, more footsteps, and then Bobby's voice utters a low, horrified, "Jesus Christ."

Jo stares at the ground while Dean and Bobby check for survivors. She can't bring herself to look.

As the numbness fades away, the first feeling that settles into her chest is guilt. She should have been here. She belongs here. Maybe if she hadn't been off gallivanting with Sam and Dean she could have stopped this from happening.

Or maybe she'd be dead, too.

She tries to shut off that line of thinking—all the useless ifs and maybes—and almost succeeds.

Jo raises her eyes when she sees Dean's shoes approaching, and she lets him guide her to her feet.

"Your mom's not here," says Dean. "Ash is… We can't help him. Any of them. But it looks like your mom wasn't in there when the place went down."

Jo doesn't dare believe it. "Really?" she asks, clinging to him now like she couldn't a moment ago. He could just be playing her—just telling her what she needs to hear. But she wants it to be the truth.

"We don't lie to each other," says Dean, earnestness shining in his eyes. "Remember?"

Jo nods, vigorous and uncoordinated, and swallows the panic back down into her chest. Her lungs respond grudgingly to her commands, letting her drag in harsh breaths, out and in again, until she feels lightheaded from the oxygen but steadier on her feet. She'll mourn Ash and the others later. Right now her mom's alive and they've got more important things to worry about. Like Sam.

She still feels numb when they walk back to the cars, can't quite bring her attention to focus in as Dean and Bobby try to plan some sort of strategy.

Her attention hones in like a sniper sight when Dean groans and tips forward.

She's at his side in an instant, grabbing him by the arm and knowing she won't be able to keep him upright. But Bobby is there on his other side, offering extra support that Dean doesn't even seem to notice as he contorts beneath their hands, making pained noises and grabbing at his head.

"Dean!" Jo shouts, noisy panic unlocking low in her chest and setting her skin tingling. "Dean, what is it?"

But he doesn't answer, probably can't answer, and it's long minutes before the tension finally drains from his body and leaves him slumped over the hood of the Impala, shaking beneath Jo's fingers.

"You okay, son?" Bobby asks, heavy concern darkening his voice.

"I saw him," says Dean, pushing unsteadily upright.

"Who?" asks Jo, blinking confusion.

"Sam," says Dean. "I swear, I saw him."

"Like a vision?" Bobby asks.

"Yeah," Dean mutters, nodding. "I don't know how, but… yeah. Jesus, that was about as fun as a kick in the jewels." He's already trying to laugh it off.

"What else did you see?" Bobby presses, and Jo stares at Dean. He's still shaking, and his skin is terrifyingly pale.

"Uh," says Dean. "There was a bell?"

"What kind of bell?" says Bobby.

"Fuck, I don't know. A big bell. With… some kind of engraving on it. An oak tree, maybe."

Which means fuck-all to Jo, but she gives Dean's arm a reassuring squeeze anyway. When she turns her attention to Bobby, the man is wearing a dark, determined expression.

"Bobby, what is it?" she asks, brow crinkling with concern.

"I know where Sam is."

Cold Oak, South Dakota is their new destination, and they drive as close as they can get before foliage and rough terrain finally stop the Impala up short. Jo has left her mom three voicemail messages by then, not one of them returned.

"Looks like the rest of the way's on foot," says Bobby.

Jo heads straight for the trunk of the car and props it open as Dean and Bobby move in beside her. One grabs a shotgun, the other a knife. Jo goes for her favorite gun, a .45 she picked up for herself when she started hunting solo. She clicks the safety off and keeps it in her hand, at the ready. She doesn't trust these woods, and she's not wasting time tucking the weapon away. If she needs it, she'll probably need it fast.

The foliage is thick and rough beneath their boots, difficult to maneuver through, and they walk through darkness and brambles for what feels like an hour. When they finally hit flat, bare dirt Jo is actually surprised.

She raises her eyes from the flashlight-illuminated circle of light at her feet and ahead of her sees the shadowed contours of a rough, rickety frontier town. Eerie and abandoned, and so empty her skin crawls.

Dean is already shouting for Sam, voice strong and commanding. Jo mirrors his efforts, and her own voice sounds shrill and brittle to her ears.

Jo sees Sam the same second Dean does—he's rounding the corner of a wooden building and delicately supporting one arm like it's injured.

She holds to the same slow, steady pace as Dean rushes toward his brother—giving them space. This isn't her moment. There will be time enough for her later. Her eyes drift along the shadows behind Sam, trying to give the boys an illusion of privacy—futile, sure, especially with Bobby there, but she does it anyway—and the second flash of movement is so sudden that for a second she has no idea what to make of it.

Her brain catches up soon enough, figures out that's a man running towards Sam, and there's a glint of metal in his hand. Dean is running now, too, yelling a furious, "No!" into the wind. He's not going to make it in time.

Jo hears the gunshot before she even realizes she's raised her weapon. The figure hits the ground hard, a cloud of dirt flying into the air and swirling with the shadows, and Jo doesn't lower her gun. She needs to be sure he's not getting up.

"Nice shot," Bobby mutters, stepping up beside her. Jo doesn't miss the shaky quaver in his voice.

"Thanks," she says. Sam and Dean are standing there hugging, clinging to each other with a desperation that should make Jo uncomfortable considering what she knows. Without taking her eyes off the fallen figure on the ground, Jo nods to Bobby and says, "You wanna make sure he's really dead?"

Ellen doesn't call back, but they've been at Bobby's for less than a day when she appears in the scrap yard.

She gawks a little at the mandatory shot of holy water, but Jo doesn't blame her. After everything they've been through, it does seem a little ludicrous. But it's also necessary. Better safe than dead. She wills her mom to cooperate, and when Ellen downs the entire thing in one slug, Jo finally surges forward to catch her in a relieved hug.

"Thought you were dead," she whispers, and Ellen hugs her back. Holds on tight and rocks her back and forth like a scared child, which is exactly what Jo feels like now that she's calm enough to process everything that's happened.

She doesn't particularly want to get down to business—doesn't want to get back to reality when reality is such a shitty place to be right now—but the most strapped resource they have is time. Jo's eyes burn, watering just a little, when Ellen explains that the only reason she escaped the fire was that she had to buy pretzels.

"Ash called while I was out," she explains, looking as numb as Jo feels. "Sounded panicked as hell. He told me to look in the safe. By the time I got back, the flames were sky-high."

"What was in the safe?" Jo asks. She's got no doubt that whatever it is, her mom has it in hand.

Turns out it's a map of Wyoming. A map showing a devil's trap a hundred miles wide, constructed out of churches and railroad ties, and Jo leans forward in her seat for a closer look. The nape of her neck prickles with apprehension.

"I don't believe this," she says.

"Believe it," says Bobby. "I've been tracking all kinds of omens lately. All around the edges of the state."

"Like the demons are circling and can't get it," Ellen whispers.

"Exactly."

"When do we leave?" Jo asks, glancing around the table. Everyone is staring at the map, wearing expressions that match her own—wide-eyed surprise bordering on disbelief—everyone but Dean, who's eyeing her pensively. Jo quirks an eyebrow at him, not bothering to voice her curiosity aloud.

"There's no 'we' here," says Dean. "You're not going anywhere near that place."

"The hell I'm not!" Jo exclaims, shoving up from her seat. She keeps her hands planted on the table, her expression fierce, but it doesn't make Dean back down.

"Jo," says Sam, the soft voice of reason from her other side as he stands and lays a hand on her arm. "You know we can't put you in the line of fire like that."

She's going to protest. She's going to argue so loudly and insistently that they have no choice but to let her come along. But then Sam's eyes drop from her face, lower, until it clicks and Jo realizes where he's looking. Her right hand drifts from the table to her stomach, unconscious gesture, and the protest dies in her throat.

"Am I the only one missing something here?" Bobby asks. "Not that I got any particular problem with keeping Jo safe, but ain't she a hunter same as the rest of us."

"Oh," says Dean, and after an awkward pause he actually laughs. "Shit, Bobby. There's something you should probably know."

Jo helps them pack up the cars the next morning, and still hates it. She can't stand the thought of sitting this one out—can't stand to picture her family walking into that cemetery without her. She sees visions of the incinerated Roadhouse flash before her eyes, a disaster that happened while her back was turned. Her mom made it out, sure, but that was pure dumb luck. What if this fight goes south and Jo could have done something? What if none of them come back, and she spends the rest of her life wondering if she could've made a difference?

Sam is quieter than usual while they work, nervous energy blanketing his every movement, and Jo takes advantage of a quiet moment to stop him in the hall.

"You okay?" she asks, setting a worried hand on his elbow. The touch just seems to make him even more tense, but she doesn't take her hand back.

"Fine," says Sam, false brightness in his voice. "Just… weird dreams."

She lets him get away with that, because she's not sure what else to say.

The moment of departure creeps closer, like a ball of lead in Jo's gut, but it's not until she sees Sam and Dean heading for the Impala's front seat that she finally loses it.

"No," she says, and everyone stops dead in their tracks. All eyes turn to Jo. "I can't do this," she says, strength carrying her voice in the hot, still air. "I can't just watch you guys drive off while I sit here on my thumbs."

"Jo," says Ellen. "Sweetie. You know why you can't come."

"Yes," says Jo. "But I also know that this won't work. You want me to stay behind, fine. Knock me out, or tie me up, or, god, something. But I won't make it five minutes before I'm hotwiring a car and following you, so you might as well count me in right now."

The way they're all watching her, Jo thinks for a moment they might actually be considering her ridiculous alternatives. She doubts they'll knock her unconscious, but she wouldn't put it past them to lock her in the attic. At the same time, she knows they can't do that. The Roadhouse burned down out of nowhere, demonic attack near as they can tell. Who's to say Bobby's place is any safer?

"This is a bad idea," Dean points out, but the certainty has drained entirely out of his voice.

"I know," says Jo. But the determination on her face says clearly enough that she's not backing down.

"Fine," says Bobby, making the call for all of them. "But can we please get on the road sometime today?"

They make the drive in just under ten hours, and when they arrive at the edge of the easternmost railway, the night is heavy and oppressive around them. Sam is a barely contained collection of anxious energy, and as they unload weapons from the trunks of both cars, Jo finds herself watching him, worry spreading through her chest.

When they're ready to go, Sam finally drops the bombshell he's obviously been sitting on since Sioux Falls. "I need to do this alone," he says.

Everyone stares at him in surprise.

"Funny," says Dean. "Comedy gold. Now can we please get moving?"

"I'm serious, Dean," says Sam. "I know it sounds crazy, but it needs to be me. You guys, just… wait here. I'll take care of it."

"Is this about your weird dreams?" Jo asks. From the surprise on Dean's face, she'd guess Sam hasn't mentioned them to his brother.

"You could say that," says Sam. His eyes glance dodgily back and forth between them.

"Sammy," Dean growls, low and warning.

"Dean, we don't have time for this!" says Sam, exasperated. "Would you please just, for once in your life, trust that I know what I'm doing?"

Everyone is quiet as they watch Sam step over the rail line and disappear into the distance.

"We're not really letting him go in there alone, are we?" Ellen asks.

"No," snap Jo and Dean in perfect unison.

"Let's give him a head start," says Bobby. "Who knows, maybe he's not talking crazy."

But they don't find Sam in the cemetery. The place is deserted, the doors to the crypt dusty and moldy with neglect. There's no sign that anyone has been here in years, let alone the last five minutes, and it seems impossible that this is the center point of so much chaos and demonic activity.

A rustle of leaves makes them all startle, spinning towards the approaching sound. But even from a distance, through trees and bushes, Jo can tell the approaching figure is Sam. The intimidating height and broad spread of shoulders are too distinctive to be anyone else.

The night is clear and bright from the full moon shining overhead, and when Sam gets closer Jo notices two things. First, he has a gun in his hand—an antique-looking thing that Jo has never seen before. Second, his shirt is spattered with blood, some of it speckling his face and arms.

"Sam, what did you do?" Dean asks before Jo can find the words to do it herself. "Where the hell did you find the Colt?"

"The yellow-eyed demon gave it to me," Sam says flatly. "And then I shot him in the head. I don't think he expected me to do that."

'Clearly not,' Jo thinks, but her voice isn't working right now, and anyway that wouldn't be a particularly constructive contribution.

"You. Wait. The demon is dead?" Dean's voice rings with disbelief, an incredulous tone laced with terrified hope.

"Yes."

"Was it possessing someone?"

"Of course it was."

"Sam, there was an innocent person in there."

"Fuck you, Dean, if you think I don't already know that," says Sam, but the words fall flat and exhausted. There's no anger in them. Just a heavy fatigue that seems to be weighing Sam down to the very soul. "But maybe he wasn't so innocent, or maybe he was already dead. I didn't exactly have time for complicated strategy and moral dilemmas. It was either kill him or let him kill us."

"Why did he give you the gun?" Ellen interrupts, stepping closer and breaking into the exchange.

"For that," Sam says, nodding towards the crypt. "That's not just a tomb. It's a gateway to Hell."

"And what's the Colt got to do with it?" asks Bobby.

"It's the key," says Sam. "We have to destroy this gun, or anyone capable of crossing the rail lines could use it to open the gate."

"Okay," says Dean. "Great. And now that the crisis is over, maybe you can explain. Why did it have to be you?"

"Can we not do this right now, Dean?" Sam asks tiredly. "Please? I need a long, hot shower and a stiff drink first."

For a moment it looks like Dean might protest. His face is twisted into a scowl, and his brow is creased in stubborn disapproval. But finally his shoulders slump and he gives a slow, frustrated sigh.

"Fine," says Dean. "Later, then. Let's get the hell out of here."

'Later' ends up being in the quiet of the next morning, a heavy silence weighing down the room as Jo, Sam and Dean consider each other over steaming, bitter motel coffee.

"You just wanna start talking, or should we ask questions?" says Dean. His eyes are half-lidded, a wall of feigned disinterest, but no one's buying it.

And Sam talks. He spares no detail, tells them exactly what happened in Cold Oak, tells them about the yellow-eyed demon visiting him in his dreams. About the challenge and the other special children, the front row seat he got to the night of the fire. He tells them about the demon blood and Mary's moment of recognition, and then he tells them that the yellow-eyed demon came to him one more time.

"At Bobby's," he clarifies. "The night before we headed for Wyoming. He tried to convince me to open the gate. I let him think he had succeeded."

"Jesus, Sam, and you couldn't have told us?" says Dean. Jo cocks her head to the side and pierces Sam with her gaze, tacit agreement with the sentiment Dean just voiced.

"I'm sorry," says Sam. "But I couldn't risk that he might be listening somehow. I still didn't know how the gate was supposed to open, but I knew the demon was our best link to the Colt."

"Sam, for all we knew before yesterday, he could just as well have destroyed the damn thing!" says Dean, adamant and angry. Jo still doesn't speak.

"Look, I know it was a risk," says Sam. "But what other choice was there?"

Silence reigns again, stifling for a moment, and finally Jo has to concede that he's right. It's not like they could've done anything against the demon without the Colt, though they would've died trying their damnedest. She inclines her head in something like a nod, hoping it's enough to let him know she understands.

Dean's silence says he's reached the same conclusion, but isn't happy about it.

That should be it, Jo figures. Now that the cat's out of the bag about Sam and the demon, there should be no more surprises. They all know the score now. They just have to decide how much to tell the others.

But Sam doesn't look any calmer. If anything, he looks more agitated, shifting his weight where he sits on the bed.

"What is it?" Jo asks, the first time she's spoken all morning. "Sam, there's obviously something else. Tell us."

"It's about Dad," he says, looking like it pains him to do so.

"What about him?" Dean asks, and Jo's glad she didn't have to prompt Sam herself. She's pretty sure she couldn't form more words right now if she tried—she's even more sure she wouldn't be able to find the air to speak them.

"The demon told me what happened to him," says Sam. Then, in a voice gone quiet and hurt, "He made a deal, Dean. We were right."

"You mean he's—"

"In Hell."

Jo doesn't know how he can say the words. They sound almost clinical, detached and cold and nothing like the flushed anguish Jo can see in Sam's eyes. She sees the same look reflected in Dean's face, and she wonders what her own expression looks like. She can feel a wave of hysteria bubbling up inside her, threatening to erupt from her chest and send her shaking to her knees. It would be so easy to fall apart right now, and it's all she can do to force the sensation back, to force her lungs to take in air one slow, painful breath at a time.

They knew. They knew right from the start. But that doesn't make the tangible, unmistakable reality of it any easier to swallow.

"We'll fix it," says Dean, determination and steel in his voice. He's suddenly there in Jo's space, fingers closing tight and reassuring around her arms. "You hear me? We'll find a way to get him out of there."

"Okay," says Jo, feeling the numbness sweep away in a wave of hope. False hope, maybe, because what can they hope to do. But it's hope just the same, because the look on Dean's face says failure is not an option.

Besides. They don't lie to each other.

"Okay," she says again, more strongly this time. She meets Dean's eyes for another moment, then turns to lock gazes with Sam. "Let's do this," she says, and knows they'll succeed.

They have to.

The ritual is a long shot. Jo's not even sure she can wrap her head around how it's meant to work—Sam seems to have things well in hand, and Frankly Jo has more immediate distractions on her mind right now. Like the fact that her due date is all of two weeks away and she is beyond ready to have this baby.

She feels bloated and exhausted and ridiculously uncomfortable, and if her boys have other important matters under control, well then. She's content to let them hold the reins.

Sam has reassured her several times that there's no dark magic in the ritual. Which makes Jo more nervous than not, because it leaves her wondering what sorts of books they were looking in before they stumbled across this particular answer.

But there's no guile in Sam's eyes—and no dark worry in Dean's—which tells her that, long shot or not, they're in the clear.

"We'll do it tonight," Sam tells her on a Friday. "Dean's getting the last thing we need—this relic from a church in Phoenix. He'll be back with it by sundown, and we can start right away."

"Okay," says Jo. "Good." Her heart beats a ragged, hopeful rhythm inside her chest. It looks like the twenty-some failed attempts they've made in the past few months haven't been enough to teach her cynicism. The anticipation feels as fresh and overpowering now as it did the first time Dean closed a book and said, '" think I might have something."

But something feels different this time. Jo thinks maybe tonight really will be the night they succeed.

The sun sets, brilliant and blinding, and Jo sits on the curb outside their room, watching it go. It seems more orange than usual, or maybe more pink. Different, anyway, and she blinks and squints into the light until finally the last of it vanishes beneath the horizon.

The Impala pulls into the space in front of her at ten minutes past nine, and Jo doesn't even have to say anything before Dean is out of the car and there at her side, helping her to her feet.

"You ready for show time?" he asks her, eyes bright.

"God yes," Jo breathes, and her fingers brush curiously over the crinkled paper bag in his other hand.

"Come on," he says.

They set up in a clearing. It's not too far a hike—they picked a motel on the outskirts for a reason. It's a complicated set of preparations: a circle of stones in identical sizes, a fire in the center into which Sam sprinkles an endless array of herbs in exactly the right order, and outside the circle sits Dean. He has their most recent acquisition balanced reverently in his hands.

It's a cross, sharp and bulky and ornate. Gold, Jo thinks, though it's hard to tell in the fire-lit darkness that surrounds them. It looks like something from the front of an old chapel, and she idly wonders how soon someone will miss it. They'll return it when they're done, of course.

Jo has a small, sharp knife in her hand. The handle is ornamented with green and purple gems, but the blade is sleek and simple. It feels heavy in her grip, then even heavier when Sam begins to chant. Unfamiliar syllables, exotic and powerful, and Jo's bangs blow into her eyes.

The clearing wasn't windy a second ago.

She stands as still as she can, her breath feeling full and uneven in her chest, and she waits.

"Now," Sam orders after what feels like an eternity, and finally Jo steps forward.

She's mumbling prescribed syllables herself now, lips forming a subdued mirror to the words Sam just finished speaking. She steps over the stones and into the circle, and the wind ceases as quickly as it started. She doesn't let the sudden shift distract her. She keeps up her well-rehearsed mantra as she approaches the fire.

The flames burn higher now, and she raises both the knife and her empty hand to hover in the smoke above.

"My blood," she says, switching into English. "My plea. I ask that these gifts be accepted."

She slices lengthwise across her palm with the knife—always the palm with these rituals, the most inconvenient place, though Jo suspects that might just be design. She clenches her hand shut, feels the belated sting of the wound, and watches as her blood drips from her fist into the writhing, expectant fire.

For a moment nothing happens.

'Did it work?' she wants to ask. 'Did we do it right?' But she knows better than to open her mouth yet. Besides, there's still magic in the air.

When her eyes find Dean, he looks every bit as quiet, confused, expectant as she feels. The clearing is eerily silent, not even the quiet pulse of crickets chirping.

When Dean's eyes go suddenly wide, Jo spins around so quickly her head spins.

The figure moving towards them doesn't look like a ghost.

It doesn't look like a man, either.

Shimmering gold, like the ripple of sunlight directly on unsteady waters. The light approaches them, casting a glow in every direction, a wandering light that swirls and threatens to engulf the clearing.

When the figure is closer the light fades, and Jo's legs feel suddenly shaky at the sight that remains.

"Dad!" says Dean, shattering the quiet but thankfully not the spell. He dashes forward, Sam at his side, and Jo will follow in a minute. Just as soon as she can remember how to move. Her chest burns with the overpowering rush of relief.

John Winchester doesn't speak—can't speak, maybe, for all Jo knows about the ritual they just performed—but he reaches out to his sons. Sets a hand on each boy's shoulder and gives a squeeze, offers a sad smile that trembles around the edges.

Jo forces herself forward, one foot steadily in front of the other, and when she reaches the Winchesters, Sam and Dean step aside.

John's eyes find her, and the look in them makes Jo's breath lodge in her chest. She never knew it was possible for so much joy and so much sorrow to coexist in the same moment, but there they are—shining simultaneously in John's eyes. Maybe reflected in hers as well.

She takes a step closer, and John does the same, and then she stops. There's barely a foot between them, but she doesn't dare close the distance. She's too afraid if she touches him, the illusion will shatter. He'll be cold, or worse, her hand will pass right through him. Either one would be enough to destroy her.

But when John reaches for her, Jo doesn't try to step away. He raises just one hand, hesitant and cautious, like he's asking permission, and when his palm comes to rest on the wide swell of Jo's stomach, her breath escapes on a ragged exhale.

John's touch feels warm and almost real.

She covers his hand with her own, leaning closer despite herself. He kisses her, and even if the press of his lips is too light, he still feels solid enough. She closes her eyes and focuses on the sensation, trying not to let the inevitable end of the moment invade on the quiet relief she feels here and now.

"I love you," she whispers when they part. He nods, his smile brightening. When he takes a step back from her, it's all she can do to let go his hand instead of clinging to it like a lifeline.

John's eyes sweep across all three of them—all four of them, Jo corrects herself, hand dropping unselfconsciously to her stomach—and his gaze is bright and intense, like he's trying to memorize the sight of them.

Then the air around him shimmers, and the gold is back. The light engulfs him, piercing and swelling, brighter and brighter until it's an impossible glitter of whiteness that threatens to drown out the entire clearing.

Then a hiss of wind, a swoosh of air, and the light blows away like dust—swirling and winding up into the sky until it finally disappears.

When the last hint of light winks away, Jo honestly doesn't know how she's still standing. Seems like her knees should be giving out right about now. Sam and Dean seem to think so, too, because they're right there on either side of her all of a sudden, bracing her just in case. The relief is too much, bubbling up warmly in her chest, and Jo laughs and laughs and then has to stop abruptly—if she doesn't, she might not be able to hold in the tears that will inevitably follow.

She doesn't ask if it worked. They all three already know the answer to that question.

"Come on," says Dean, squeezing her arm reassuringly. "Let's head back inside. Get some sleep. We've got a long drive tomorrow, and Bobby'll kill us if we make him worry."

"Okay," Jo murmurs. She shakes off their worried support, gentle but determined, and starts for the motel on mostly steady legs. The slice across her palm still bleeds sluggishly, and she hears Sam's heavy footfalls as he dashes back to grab the supplies worth keeping. Dean still holds the ornate relic in one hand.

"You gonna be all right?" Dean asks her, walking close enough at her side that their shoulders and elbows brush every third step or so.

"That depends," she says, turning the corner of her mouth up into a quiet smile.

Dean actually looks worried for a moment, taking the words at face value for a handful of nervous seconds before he catches up to the expression on her face—the teasing light that glints in her eyes behind the stubborn sheen of grateful, unshed tears.

"On what?" he asks cautiously, and Jo lets the hint of a smile spread into a wider grin.

"On whether or not I'm getting my feet rubbed tonight."

She already knows the answer will be yes. Sam and Dean can't seem to remember how to deny her anything these days, and she's not above using it to her advantage for the sake of a little pampering. Not when every inch of her body aches with how ready she is for this baby to come—this little girl she can't wait to meet.

"I think that can probably be arranged," says Dean.

He drapes an arm over her shoulder and tucks her against his side, just as Sam jogs to catch up with them. They're like sentinels to her right and left, white knights or something, and Jo has never felt so safe.

There's nothing the three of them can't do.