Samantha Jane.
-----
Jo Harvelle had been raised to think that women weren't meant to be hunters. Her mother believed very firmly that while women could be strong, capable, and even dangerous, it was the men who went out and battled the forces of darkness.
This wasn't really backward thinking, assuming that women just couldn't handle it. Ellen kept a shotgun behind her bar and she wasn't afraid to pull it out and point it right at the family jewels of whatever bastard was stirring up trouble in her place. She'd even used it once or twice, but it had been a long time ago, and all Jo could remember was the noise it made, and the way her ears rang afterwards, and how pale her mother's face had gotten, how badly her hands had started shaking after the danger was over and she'd carefully place the shotgun back where it belonged.
No, her mother believed that women shouldn't be hunters because only men were foolish enough to make that kinda choice. Women could fight with the best of them, but if they had any common sense, they'd stick to shotgun bartending and serve drinks to the ones crazy enough to go toe-to-toe with ghosts, werewolves, demons and the like.
Jo believed it, too. She'd heard her mother say it often enough, and in all the hunters she'd seen come through the Roadhouse she'd never once seen a girl among 'em. So yeah, she might dream about hitting the road, following in her father's footsteps, but she never really thought she could do it.
That is, until Sam Winchester walked into the bar.
-----
Jo had been afraid of a lot of things in her life. Even insulated by the sturdy walls of the Roadhouse, she heard some stories that chilled her blood, though her mother always put a stop to that right quick. Probably saw Jo getting interested, and didn't want to lose her baby. Whatever.
And she'd been on her own for a while now, and maybe jobs were harder to find than she'd thought, but she'd done her fair share. She had a deep cut down her left shoulder blade, where a werewolf had gotten her six weeks ago, that just wouldn't heal. She had a fair number of ghosts to her name, too, but as a whole she liked hunting down the ones that were corporeal a lot better. Living things like that had patterns, predictable, trackable behavior. It was just like hunting in the woods for game, back when her daddy was still alive. Ghosts weren't predictable. Just when you thought you'd finally figured out how to dust 'em, they changed the rules on you and you had to start all over again.
So she'd seen her fair share of bad, scary shit, but she'd never really been out-and-out terrified. And who'd've ever thought that she'd ever be scared of Sam Winchester? Skinny Sam Winchester, who'd come into her bar and smiled that pretty smile and told her that Dean was never going to love her, that Dean looked at her like a little sister.
After that she got knocked out, but hell, those weren't really the best choice of words, come to think of it. If Sam was an example of how Dean treated a little sister, then Jo figured she was set for life.
-----
Everyone went quiet when Dean and Sam walked in. You didn't see many women, not in the Roadhouse. Tourists, yeah, and Ellen and Jo, obviously, but not at night. The local women rarely came here for pickups, and hookers just stayed the hell away. Hunters, especially all gathered together like this, scared the hell out of anybody with sense. So maybe you'd get an out-of-towner wandering in looking for directions, but those women always got what they wanted and then got out, right quick. And you'd never see the children of one of the most famous hunters there was, just wanderin' in, just like that.
She saw Dean's eyes sweeping the tables, checking out the guys, automatically cataloguing what they were drinking and what they were carrying. Sam's eyes zeroed in one the bar, looking dead on at her and Ellen. Dean went for the physical danger. Sam sensed the actual power in the room.
A quick nudge in the ribs, and the two of them came ambling up to the bar, Dean moving like some giant cat, cautious and ready to draw down if someone so much as looked at them the wrong way. Sam was smiling, though, the kind of careful smile that only looks natural and friendly.
"Hey," she said. "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean."
-----
Sam's face was the first thing that Jo saw when she came back around. It always threw her off, Sam's all-American prettiness, her long, curly hair, wearing her brother's jacket and a gun tucked into the back of her jeans. Now her hair was a wild cloud around her face, her dark eyes were cold and hard, and her lips was painted bright red and spilling hateful, unwelcome truths around the cigarette that she held in her left hand.
That way, her right hand was still free to beat the ever-loving crap out of Jo.
When Sam had gotten bored of decorating her face with bruises, she crushed out the cigarette against the floor- thank God, not against her skin, she'd been worrying about that ever since Sam lit up- and swung one leg over Jo's knees till she was straddling her. She fisted one hand in her hair, forcing Jo's head back at an uncomfortable angle, the back of her head scraping painfully against the wooden post, and smiled right down into her face.
"I bet you want to hear all about Dean," she said conversationally. Her smile would seem almost friendly, if it wasn't for the menace that pulsed behind it. "You like Dean, don't you? You think he's just all that. You want me to tell you everything I know, don't you?" She forced Jo's head up and down in a parody of a nod. "Well then. Let me tell you a few things about my dear older brother. Because I know a lot of things about him, things that you want to know. Like how he kisses. What he looks like naked." She leaned down, whispered in her ear. "What he looks like when he comes."
She leaned back again, and Jo couldn't quite hide the horror on her face. Sam pursed her red, red lips in a playful smirk. "That's right, baby doll. Your precious Dean likes to fuck his little sister. You think he's really holding back because he respects you? Bullshit. He's not banging you because I'm the only girl he wants, and he knows it." She leaned back further, forcing her weight down painfully onto Jo's knees. "And now you know it, too."
The door crashed open before Jo could think of a response, and there was Dean, riding to the rescue. Two minutes later, the demon inside Sam fled with her smoking body out the window and instead of following, like Jo half-expected him to do, he turned around and set to untying her from the post.
"Dean, do demons ever tell the truth?" Jo asked. It was hard to think past the ache of the bruises and the raw spots on her wrists where she'd struggled against the rope, but she had to know.
"Yeah, sometimes," he said. "When they know it'll fuck with your head. Why?"
She pulled her hands free of the ropes, then looked up at him. He was standing patiently still, waiting for her answer, but it was obvious that ever part of him was straining towards that window, wanting to go after his sister. Wanting to follow her, wherever she went.
The demon was right. Dean didn't want any woman but Sam.
"No reason."
-----
"I know who you are," Ellen said. She was wiping down the bar with a rag, but Jo, standing behind the bar with her, saw her hand go down to the shotgun underneath. "I never expected you two to show up in my place."
Dean joined the party then, putting on his own charming smile, which was, whoa, very nice. Jo'd be dead below the waist, she didn't appreciate a smile like that on a face like his. "I'm afraid you've got us at a disadvantage, here. We found you from some calls made from Dad's cell, but I'm sorry to say we don't know your names."
"I'm Ellen," she said, "this is my daughter Jo. I know your father."
"Ah," Sam said. She leaned forward onto the bar, offered up that pretty, empty smile like a gift. "I guess you haven't heard, then."
"What's that?" Ellen asked.
"He's dead," Dean said.
"I'm so sorry," Ellen said immediately. "We go- well, we went way back. I haven't seen him in a good while, though. His type don't really keep in touch, you get my meanin'."
"Yeah, he didn't really keep in touch with us that well either," Sam said. She sighed. "Sorry you had to find out like this."
"Nonsense. No better way to find out about a man's passing than from the lips of his own blood kin," Ellen said. "Now. Can I get you two anything?"
"Beer," Sam said immediately. Ellen gave her a look, but she just smiled back.
"Make that two," Dean said, crowding in closer to the bar. His arm brushed against the sleeve of Sam's too-big, beat-up leather jacket. "Whatever you've got works for me."
Ellen poured. Sam picked hers up and wandered off to investigate the pool table, while Dean settled in at the bar, making himself comfortable. Ellen waited a moment, till she was sure Sam was out of earshot, and then leaned across the bar, pinning him with her fiercest stare.
"Boy," she said, "what are you doing, taking your sister around while you're on a job? Hunting's no job for girls to be tagging along."
Dean shot a sideways glance over to the pool table, where Sam was racking up, smiling flirtatiously at the hunter on the other side of the table. "Sam's not tagging along," he said. "She's my partner. She can handle that shotgun you're holding better than you can, I'd wager." He smiled, fondly, Jo thought, as his sister broke, then started running the table. "And she's going to beat that yahoo at pool, too."
"He's the running champion here," Jo said, interested despite herself.
"I know," Dean said. "She's still going to beat him."
Five minutes later, Sam had the hunter's twenty in her hand. And in Jo's head, a new idea was born.
-----
He'd told her that he'd call. She'd known he wouldn't. Either way it turned out, all he was going to be thinking about was Sam, and Jo knew, now, that there was no room for her in that equation. She could be a little slow sometimes, but even she could learn from experience when experience smacked her in the face so many times.
So he didn't call, but she did catch a glimpse of the two of them, a few weeks later. She'd gotten wind of a haunting only a couple towns away from her last job, so she headed over with rock salt and lighter fluid, figuring that however much she hated dealing with ghosts, she couldn't pass this one up.
She saw Sam and Dean in the library, though. They didn't see her- she ducked back into the stacks as soon as she caught sight of them- but she couldn't resist moving a little closer, checking them both out to make sure that they were okay.
They were sitting side-by-side, Dean with his feet propped up on the table, a book in his lap and Sam's computer in front of her. They didn't seem to be doing much work- from the sounds of it, they were arguing amiably about something Dean had allegedly done when he was twelve.
"C'mon, babe, you're just remembering it wrong," Dean said. "You were eight."
"Eight years old and there I was covered in werewolf guts, Dean," Sam said. "You don't just forget about something that like, dude. Not even close."
"If you say so," Dean said, turning back to his book. He wasn't really reading it, though, instead looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye.
"I say so," she said, but she was smiling. "It was your fault."
"Whatever," he said. "Bitch."
"Jerk," she said, but she said it fondly. She bent back to the laptop, and one stray curl escaped her hair tie and slid forward over into her face.
Without looking up, Dean reached out and tucked it back behind her ear, cupping her cheek briefly in one hand. Sam leaned into the touch for a moment, then he dropped his hand and they both smiled and went back to their research.
Jo turned and blindly left the library. She got in her car, turned around, and drove right back out of town. The two of them had the situation well in hand, and they didn't need her butting in.
There were other hunts, she told herself. Other hunts where she wouldn't have to look at the two of them and think about the fact that the only guy she'd ever really liked was in love with his little sister. Other hunts where she could go in on her own, and save the day and prove herself to her mother.
If Sam had taken everything else, at least she had given her this: the knowledge that whatever Ellen said, girls could do this too. So maybe Sam had Dean, and Jo had never really had a chance against her. That was fine.
She could still fight the forces of darkness, and do it with the kind of style that guys could never pull off. That was something.
That was enough.