Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or situations. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: AU somewhere post-Born Under a Bad Sign. There's no deal with the Crossroads demon.
Jo is a hunter. She had been calling herself that in her head, secretly, since she was a little girl, posing in front of the mirror with her daddy's salt gun, head tilted back, as if to say "Yeah? What? You think I'm just a little girl? Think again." But now it's real and she is and she finally realizes that what makes a hunter isn't just wanting, isn't just seeking, isn't even just hunting. It's killing.
Jo has killed. She is a hunter. She is a killer. She no longer poses in front of mirrors. She avoids them if she can help it. Because what Jo killed wasn't a what. He was a who.
After the devil's gate, Jo returned home to find her mother picking up the pieces. She stayed. She helped. There was no one else. But her mother needed her to be there so badly that when they reopened and the hunters started trickling back, Jo felt that familiar itch. The talk turned to this job and that and Jo's mind wandered and she found herself wishing the roadhouse was still ash on the ground and that she had nothing but the open road to look forward to every day.
The talk turned to the Winchesters more and more. She tried to ignore it, tried to tell herself that they had no need for her, that Dean had no need. He would fuck her, no doubt. That part was easy. But she would never make his breath hitch the way he did hers. He'd never see what she saw. That they were the same. But the talk kept coming back, back to the boy who wasn't just a boy. The boy who was supposed to lead the demons. The boy who was acting more and more erratic everyday. The boy that had to die.
Jo wanted to protest, to stick up for Sam with the puppy-dog eyes and floppy hair. But she remembered his hand firm on her neck and his eyes glaring into hers and remembered seeing the demon, but past that something more. Something Sam. The same Sam who would smile apologetically at her when Dean was being an ass and who would be dorkily proud when he found a lead. He was still there. And whether he wanted it or not, there was evil there, just beneath the surface. Waiting.
There was talk of the Winchesters turning up in a small town near Columbus. Jo snuck out at two in the morning, feeling like a child, not able to wake her mother to say goodbye. But Ellen was ready for her, waiting at the car, and she said nothing, only pleaded with her eyes. Jo looked away and then never back.
The part of the equation the other hunters didn't understand was Dean. That Dean would die for Sam no matter what. You couldn't separate them by force. But she had the blonde hair and the little girl eyes that Dean could never take seriously, and when he found her she was wincing in feigned pain and clutching her ankle. "Stay with me," she pled when he tried to leave her at her motel, and he sighed and pulled up a chair. After he drifted off, she injected him with a sleep agent. He never had to know. She was only tracking Sam for recon. She wasn't like those other hunters, ready to kill without reason.
But when she found him there were bodies. More than one, less than five, she wasn't sure. And one alive, struggling in his arms. He looked up and he was Sam and she suddenly felt the sensation of his body pinning hers to the bar so strongly she almost cried out. "Don't meddle in things you don't understand, little g---" he started to say, and then he fell and the other girl was screaming, the blood splattered on her face. Jo didn't stay to see if he was dead.
Jo has been running since. She knows Dean knows. Doesn't know how she's evaded him this long. Jo has the life she had dreamt of, when trapped at home at the Roadhouse. She has nothing to look forward to but the road, forever. She's honed her skills. Protecting yourself from a Winchester requires that after all. She never sleeps. Every branch tapping on the window has her hand on her gun. She wants her mother.
He finally catches her in Montreal. It's fucking freezing out and she's out of gas and so fucking tired and she finally she stops at a motel and waits. When he kicks down the door she doesn't even flinch. He stands and stares at her for what seems like forever until finally she asks if he's going to close the door. "Didn't figure hypothermia would be your weapon of choice, Dean." She smirks the smirk of a seasoned hunter.
He doesn't look angry, just tired, as tired as her. As he grabs her by the arm and hoists her up, she closes her eyes and waits. When she feels nothing she opens them and the look in his eye finally marks her as her equal. She doesn't have to tell him that she had to because he already knows. Would have done it himself, maybe. He'll never know. She feels like she could be sick at the image of herself reflected in her eyes. She doesn't have time. He kisses her hard and she simply follows. She knows it wouldn't have been like this before, would have been soft and loving and respectful. This is hateful and it's exactly what she's earned. She shoves him onto the bed and takes her penance.
She finally sleeps that night, and when she awakes shortly after dawn, he's gone. She's just packing her bag when there's a knock at her door, and no longer wary, she opens it to find a cop, hat in his hands, sorrow in his eyes. They need her to identify a body, he says. The man had her name and this address in his pocket. She exits her room and sees the Impala still parked and she knows. When they pull the sheet back, she's not surprised. This is her true penance and she claims it. This is his vengeance and his rest. There's nobody to phone.
She leaves her car and drives away in his. She doesn't cry when she finds his wallet in the glove compartment, tiny picture of Sam, head tilted back and laughing. Hunters don't cry. Jo is a hunter.