Jo Harvelle stood before him, staring at him with those big doe eyes. She hadn't changed a day. Then again, why would she? She was dead after all. It'd been years now. Long and hard years since she'd died. Yet one look at her drove a knife through him. Her blonde hair curved around her face like a halo. She had this soft sad smile on her face, as if too was breaking inside just by looking at him.
"Hey, Dean-o." she said. "It's been a long time."
"You could say that." Dean replied.
"So what brings you to Carthage? If you're here for the gas station, I'd say something happened to it."
No one had tried to rebuild Carthage after it had blown up all those years ago. Well, not until recently. Dean had gotten a call about something going wrong on the construction site. For any other hunter, it would just be your typical haunting. Not for him though. No, as soon as he heard Carthage he was in his car. There was no guarantee that it was her. He had a feeling it was though. Something inside of him told him to go there. So for the first time in years, he went back.
"Heard of a haunting of some sort." he said. "Thought I'd do a bit of hunting."
She turned away from him, looking off in the distance. "What are ya gonna do, Dean? Kill me?"
He sighed. "Why are you still here?"
"You look old." Jo says. "And tired. Maybe more tired than old. Still as good looking as ever though. Mom probably would've shot you as soon as she saw ya if she were here."
"It's been years, Jo." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "Things move on. People move on. Time passes, so yeah I've gotten a bit older. Even now though, if I saw Ellen I'd be running for the hills just for looking at you too long."
Jo laughs. A sound that Dean didn't realize how much he had missed in all these years. "Still scared of her?"
"I've faced many things, but a pissed off Ellen Harvelle is by far the scariest thing."
Dean stares at her for a while. All he wants to do is hug her. It wasn't possible though. Once again he couldn't touch her. That always seemed to be his curse. Wrong place, wrong time. There was never going to be a right time for them. Not now, probably not ever. Maybe when everything was said and done, and he wad dead. That would perhaps be the only time.
"Why are you still here?" he asks again.
She turns to him, tears welling in her eyes. "Isn't it obvious? I don't want to die, Dean Winchester."
"Damn it," Dean says, realizing that his own tears had started to roll down his cheeks. He turned away from her, not wanting to see the look of a broken young woman. No, not on her face. Never on her face. She was Jo Harvelle, he preferred the memory of the sassy blonde who played with knives to annoy him and wasn't afraid to speak her mind. Yet that wasn't the face that his memory was bringing up. No, it was the Jo that lay there, unable to move after hellhounds had ripped through her. She'd looked so small and fragile, all the life that she had been so full of fading away from her.
"You've died." Jo speaks again. "Several times. Something kept bringing you back though. Were you ever scared to die?"
"Of course," he turns back to her. "The first time, well second really. I'd signed my soul to save Sammy, easy decision I'd do anything for my brother. At the time, I didn't even hesitate. Then my date kept coming closer and closer. That's when I realized, I wasn't ready to die. I tried to do everything to stop it. Nothing was enough. And then…."
"Then you were brought back." She finishes with a sigh. "I remember dying. I tried to put on a brave face. Everything hurt. All I can think about is the pain."
"It would all be better if you moved on." He tries. He didn't sound convincing though, even he knew that.
Jo reached out for him, then dropped her arm before it could even come close. "What happens to me then?"
"I dunno, Jo, but it sure as hell has to be better than wandering around this place."
She looks up at the sky, watching as the birds fly above her. "Do you think in another life….in another life that I wouldn't have died….."
"Oh, Joanna Beth Harvelle, in another life you were happy. You lived a long life."
Jo sat down, patting the ground next to her. He obliged, sitting close to where if she had been alive they would have been touching. "Tell me more."
"In another life, there wouldn't be a need for hunting. We'd have grown up as next door neighbors. My mom and Ellen would've been best friends, always complaining about how they put up with our dads. Sam would've been your best friend. I'd be annoyed at the two of you for trying to follow me everywhere and copying everything I do. Your mom would have pulled a shotgun on me for giving you your first kiss. I…..I would've broken your heart when you were barely even a teenage by doing something. You'd have hated me." he says, picturing all this clearly in his mind almost as if God himself was allowing him a glimpse of this life.
"I could never really hate you," Jo says, her hand hovering above the his one that rested on his knee. "I loved you."
Dean continued on. "Then you and Sammy went off to college. I worked at some mechanic shop in town. You'd come back to visit, looking more and more like this beautiful blonde angel every day. I'd try to brush off my feelings, bringing around some cheap thing. Then you'd graduate, and it was my turn to grow up. I started slow, trying to win back your trust. Eventually I got it. You would look at me with this happy look whenever I'd surprise you with flowers. Each morning I would wake up before you just to see look so perfect and innocent. I'd…..I'd ask you to marry me. You'd want some big wedding, whereas I'd rather just go to Vegas. I'd do it all for you. Get you that perfect little house with the white picket fence and the little two point five kids."
Jo smiled at him, possibly the brightest smile he'd ever seen her give. Tears flooded down my cheeks. "And are we happy?"
"Happier than I'd thought I'd ever be." Dean said.
"I'm gonna go to that place." she told him. "Then maybe one day you'll join me."
"Sooner or later." he echoed.
She placed a kiss on his lips. It felt like a feather tickling them, but he longed to feel that again. "Make it later."
Then she was gone. Dean was left there alone, sitting on the ground with tears streaming down his face. He hoped with every fiber in his being that she was in that place, that she was finally at peace. That she was finally happy. Perhaps he would see her there in his dreams, even if only to catch one more glimpse of her.
"I love you, Jo." he whispers to the air before leaving Carthage for the very last time.
—
Hours later he met up with Sam two states over. He pulls into the parking spot next to his brother's rental. He didn't say anything as he walked straight into the motel room, grabbing a beer from the fridge.
Sam looks up from his laptop. "Was it her?"
"The job's done, Sammy." Dean didn't say anything else the rest of the night.