Joanna Beth Harvelle had thought she knew what she wanted out of life.
She'd known how to kill a vampire since she was six. She'd killed her first werewolf at only seven and a half. By the time she was nine, she could hustle an entire bar full of hunters out of the contents of their wallets. More importantly, she could handle a shotgun just as well as any of those men. She was going to be just like her father. A hunter. A hero. She was going to hunt down evil sons of bitches wherever she could find them, and she was going to kill them. Jo Harvelle wanted to save people.
But now, as she lay dying, her lifeblood leaking out around her onto the cheap white tiles of some no-name Missouri town's no-name drugstore, she realized just how wrong she'd been.
All she wanted was Dean Winchester.
And all it had taken for her to realize this was one single kiss. One brief touch of his lips to hers and their entire life had unfolded before her in that second. It was dusk, and she saw herself, stepping off the front porch of a big old house with a huge yard, calling her children in for the night. The little girl was black-haired and green-eyed, her curly ponytail bouncing as she ran toward Jo. The green flannel shirt she wore, obviously much too big to belong to anyone but her father, flapped loosely in the wind. The dark-blonde haired boy, the younger of the two, trailed behind, shaking his muddy hands in the air and wailing. He jumped up to the porch and into Jo's arms. He was quieted by her assurances that it would wash off, by the presence of her arms and her love. She had just shooed him into the house and was about to follow when the roar of an engine made her turn around. A very familiar black Chevy Impala was crunching over the dirt driveway, headlights flashing for a moment before they went out. And then, out of the car he so loved, stepped Dean himself. Jo ran to him and leapt into his embrace, almost an exact instant replay of her son. Dean spun her around, then pushed her against the car and kissed her until both of the children burst out of the house with excited cries and came running toward their father. Only then did he reluctantly let her go. The family, reunited and whole, headed back toward the house, a tangle of arms and happy hugging.
The vision disappeared in an overwhelming cloud of fiery pain. It seemed as if the whole world were burning... Or was it really? She didn't know, or particularly care. What did it matter either way? It would always be just a lifeless dream.
A mile away from where Jo Harvelle, fallen hero, burned, Dean Winchester, who had never so much as shed a tear for a girl in his whole life, broke down and cried.