It wasn't until Dean opened his eyes the next morning that he realised something was very clearly amiss; he'd slept through the alarm again.
Despite vividly recalling untangling himself from Jo long enough to set the old alarm clock, the sunshine now intruding upon the bedroom told him it was long after the 7am wake-up call he had been grudgingly anticipating.
Stretching languidly, Dean rubbed at his eyes and rolled over toward Jo's side of the bed, and he clutched at her pillow and allowed his weary head to fall against it.
He frowned as her perfume failed to permeate his senses, and it was only the scent of his own cologne that invaded his nostrils.
But, he reasoned, Jo did admittedly prefer to use his chest as a pillow, and it was a sleeping arrangement that suited them both.
The rumble of his stomach demanded breakfast, and so he shook off all thoughts of their rather energetic and sweaty evening and grudgingly threw back the covers.
Stifling a yawn, Dean rolled over to face his night stand, and he reached out blindly toward his cell phone.
Releasing a loud groan of disapproval, he winced at the display and sat up hurriedly in bed. It was now a little after 10am, and Jo had planned a day of last minute gift shopping in Ellen and Bobby's absence, so that she might squirrel away the presents she knew her mother would undoubtedly attempt to route out.
Of course, Dean had other ideas on how they should make the most of Ellen's absence, and none of them had involved crowded stores, 'Jingle Bells' on loop, or hours spent standing in endless check out lines. But he assumed this was going to be one of those 'compromise' issues that he'd been led to believe marriage was all about, so he'd go along with it as long as Jo was happy.
He figured they'd still have that evening to themselves, and the thought – as well as the Victoria's Secret' bag he had found at the bottom of the closet – instantly brought a smile to his face and a spring to his step.
It was the little things – an unexpected kiss when his mood was low, sharing a beer out on the hood of the Impala, or her suddenly burgeoning collection of lingerie – that reminded Dean on a daily basis that in almost every way imaginable, Jo was his perfect match.
Though they bickered as they always had, and he assumed, always would, he knew beyond all certainty that there was no other woman with whom he could have been happy.
Jo was a hunter, she understood the life and, the demands and sacrifices it placed upon their relationship, yet beyond all of that, she also understood him.
She seemed to instinctively know him, dampening the anger that had once consumed him with an affectionate gesture or tender words, both of which she knew he would never allow himself to ask for.
The novelty of having a spouse, of being able to introduce her as his 'wife' had yet to tarnish, and though Jo simply rolled her eyes and smiled whenever he seized the opportunity to make the introduction, a small smile never failed to tug at her lips.
Because despite his rather colourful dating history, and the reputation he had earned as a result, it was clear to all that Dean Winchester was very much in love with his wife.
Padding heavily down the stairs, Dean tugged the t-shirt over his head and jammed one hand in the pocket of his sweat pants. The house was eerily silent, and as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he blinked in surprise at the unexpected sight that greeted him.
Leaning hunched over the table, Bobby Singer sat apparently engrossed in the book before him, his fingertips toying with the worn, age stained paper as he skimmed the obviously ancient tome. His concerned frown instantly made Dean uneasy, and as he strode into the kitchen, Dean cleared his throat to gather the older man's attention.
"When uh... when did you guys get back?" Dean asked, glancing out into the living room in search of Jo, whom he assumed would now be with Ellen.
Bobby stared up at him blankly and narrowed his eyes, "Huh?" came his not entirely eloquent reply.
Dean opened the refrigerator and reached in to grab the carton of juice, surprised to find the laden shelves now strangely bare.
An intense air of unease beginning to descend upon him, Dean folded his arms across his chest and stared analytically around the kitchen.
Realisation dawning, he suddenly cocked his head and peered off into the living room once again, blinking repeatedly as he noted the absence of the christmas tree.
Having chopped down the tree with his own two hands only a couple of days before, and decorating it at Jo's bidding with Bing Crosby in his ear and a beer in his hand, it's sudden MIA state was confusing to say the least.
"I thought you guys were staying until Sunday? You find a job out there or something?" Dean tried again. He gestured down toward the book and rubbed the back of his head, as he tried to make sense of the situation with his still sleep addled brain."Hey, you seen Jo this morning?"
Bobby leant back in his seat and his eyes were instantly upon Dean's face the second the words had left the young hunter's lips.
"Jo?" Bobby repeated uncertainly, earning an impatient sigh from the young man who was leaning back against the kitchen counter, arms folded across his chest.
"And by 'Jo', you mean..." Bobby enquired, eyeing him with an expression that Dean couldn't quite decipher. The hunter peered up unflinchingly from beneath his baseball cap, apparently waiting for him to explain further.
Dean frowned, swiping his hand over his face as he found his irritation now matching his confusion.
"Okay, does someone wanna tell me what the hell is going on around here? Where's Jo, and... and where's the God damn Christmas tree?"
Bobby followed Dean's pointed nod out toward the adjoining room, and his brows dipped further into a frown. He shook his head in abject confusion.
"Christmas tree? Dean, are you okay?" Bobby stared back at him, unblinking, diverting his gaze only momentarily toward the back door. "Sam... You wanna get in here? Now?"
A few short moments later, and Sam stepped dutifully into the kitchen, wiping oil stains on an old, greying dish towel as he stood before them and nodded expectantly. "What's up?"
"I'll be damned if I know," Bobby groused, noting the mounting panic that now seemed to be ghosting across the older Winchester's face, "kid comes down here talking crazy about Christmas trees, asking for Jo."
A look passed between them that Dean quickly intercepted, and his brother's suddenly somber demeanor only served to increase his panic.
Sam's lips instantly drew into a tight frown. "Jo... Harvelle? Dean, I..."
The tellingly melancholy inflection on her name sent a shiver up Dean's spine, and he felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest.
Dean shook his head in acute annoyance and arched an eyebrow, "You two are starting to freak me out! It's like the freakin' Twilight Zone around here." He pointed his finger accusingly at the two men, "Now, you wanna tell me where my wife is?"
"Wi..." Sam began, shaking his head as the ludicrous nature of Dean's words registered with him.
Something was clearly very, very wrong.
Instantly a hundred possibilities sprang to mind, and Sam hoped it was merely a case of a nightmare, and not the meddlings of yet another supernatural being. "Dean, are you feeling okay? You uh... you have a bad dream or something?"
After their brush with Osiris a month before, Sam had assumed this might happen. He knew Dean had yet to deal with his feelings on the subject of the blonde hunter.
Sam met Bobby's gaze, and the two men shrugged at each other before returning their collective attention to Dean, who was seemingly becoming more and more desperate by the second.
Standing up straight, Dean levelled an impatient glare at Sam. "Sammy, would you quit answering a question with a question.I'm fine, it's you two knuckle-heads acting crazy. Would you just tell me where Jo is? Where's Ellen? She with her?"
Sam's heart sank at the pleading expression and he decided to end his siblings presumedly dream induced fog with a short, sharp reality check.
"Dean, Ellen and Jo are dead, you know that." Sam spoke slowly and carefully, as if talking to a child. "Carthage... the hell hounds..." he began, frowning as Dean licked his lips nervously and began to vigorously shake his head.
"No... No," Dean widened his eyes, stepping back as he continued to shake his head in denial at his brother's claims, "Jo's fine. She was hurt bad, but Cas, he... Cas was there and he..."
A thousand memories fluttered through his mind, as Dean tried desperately to shake off the awful sinking feeling he had experienced so many other times over the years.
He clung to recollections of Jo, of things only he could know; the tiny heart-shaped birthmark on her hip, the feel of her lips, soft and yet demanding against his own - the adoration he had found reflected in her eyes, the moment his trembling hands had slipped a gold band onto her finger.
Sam stepped toward him and watched in confusion as Dean took a step back in response. His eyes were wild and glassy with terror.
"Cas wasn't there, Dean. Jo... She didn't make it. You know that. You just... You had a bad dream or something, okay? I know the whole Osiris thing screwed with your head, but you need to calm down, and just think straight." Sam held up his hands in what he hoped was a calming gesture.
His breathing now ragged, Dean fled toward the stairs, leaving a speechless Sam and Bobby simply staring after him.
"You gonna go talk to him?" Bobby suggested, sighing at the incriminating sight of the empty Jack Daniels bottle on the counter.
The meddling of a Djinn or even a Trickster would almost be welcomed over the bleak realisation that Dean's ever increasing appetite for liquor was most probably at the heart of his current condition.
Bobby had watched the young hunter for years, silently drinking his pain away, and finding the solace and comfort that alluded him in life, in the bottom of a bottle.
It made him numb to the guilt that otherwise threatened to eat away at him, and both Bobby and Sam knew that drinking had become a necessity for the older Winchester to simply get through the day.
But then they had encountered Osiris, and Dean now appeared even more dependent on alcohol than ever before. He was intent to drink away the tragic ghost of Jo Harvelle, until his longing and regret was forever silenced by the amber liquid.
His admission of guilt over her death had shocked Sam, but then Sam knew that his brother had never accepted or dealt with Jo's loss, or the implications of the extent of his feelings for her. He had never admitted aloud that he had cared for her, and Sam wondered if perhaps closure would come with a cathartic confession of Dean's true feelings; that had things been different, Jo Harvelle might have been the one.
Sam nodded in silence, listening to the sound of heavy footfalls, and the plethora of resulting bangs and crashes from the bedroom above.
With a heavy heart, Sam made his way up the stairs, dreading the conversation he knew awaited him.
x-x-x-x-x
The drawer crashed unceremoniously against the wooden floor boards, as it was promptly joined by another, and another of it's infuriatingly empty companions.
Dean furiously examined each drawer in the dresser, desperately searching for the clothing and possessions he knew had once been housed there.
The door to the closet hung open, displaying only his few sparse clothes and bags of ammo, and Dean left a trail of open doors and splintered drawers in his wake, as he stormed like a man possessed around the room.
Failing to find any trace of the life he was certain he had been living, Dean sat down heavily on the bed. The large, rickety brass frame failed to release a squeak of protest at his weight, and a sickening dread began to rise up from the pit of his stomach.
Jo was gone, along with all her possessions and any suggestion that she had ever been beside him in the life he remembered.
Dean was faced with the dreadful acceptance that perhaps she never had been there, that his memories of her and the life they shared had been nothing more than a dream.
The absence of the silver band that had recently adorned the third finger of his left hand appeared to finally confirm his fate. Dean yanked the ring from his right hand, where it had previously sat, and twisted it slowly against the light and rolled the cool metal across the pads of his fingers.
Swallowing hard, he hurled it across the room, taking some satisfaction in the sharp clink that rang out, as it hit the floor and dropped out of sight between a gap in the boards.
Wiping a shaking hand over his face, Dean blinked against the tears that began to prick at his eyes, and he climbed to his feet devoid of hope, or purpose.
Stalking across the room, he swiped the few meager items from the top of the dresser in temper, before sending the piece of furniture crashing to the ground to lay on its side.
Gripping the bed frame in his hands, the cover laden mattress was soon flipped over and laying prostrate against the upturned frame.
The end of the comforter swept across the night stand, and the old, metal alarm clock clattered to the ground with the sharp smash of glass.
Ignoring the sound of his brother's hesitant footfalls, Dean stared down at the scene of destruction around him, his eyes affixed upon the face of the clock that dared to somehow continue ticking.
His jaw set in anger, Dean glared furiously at the goading time piece, as the second hand purposefully marked each passing second.
"Dean..."
Brushing past Sam, Dean hurriedly exited the room, and moments later, the sound of the back door slamming echoed throughout the house.
Stepping hesitantly into the bedroom, Sam wandered over toward the upturned bed, glass crunching beneath his boot. Staring down at the old clock face that had held Dean so transfixed, Sam watched the second hand as it appeared to falter to a sudden stop.
Laying there pathetically amidst the shards of glass and fragments of metal, the broken, battered clock finally stopped ticking.
x-x-x-x-x
Castiel could feel the power coursing through his body. He could feel the hum of electricity, as a whispered chorus of voices - some praising him in prayer, others cursing him in pained anguish – echoed in his ear.
Of course they knew not to who they owed such praise or disdain, yet their faith united them in a tangled cry of help and guidance, from the one they simply knew as 'God'.
Silencing the voices that rose up from the earth, Castiel moved unseen throughout the heavens, passing through infinite realities that the souls now at rest had conjured.
He paused as he came upon a trio of familiar faces, none aware of his presence. Anger suddenly gripped the deity as he cast his blue eyes upon the face of the one he knew did not belong in his kingdom. Her fate had sealed that of her mother, and they now sat side by side, dragged from the earth by an unseen hand.
Castiel knew she now had no memory or recollections save for those of her life ending in Carthage, yet he could feel the confusion and longing that was now bound to her soul.
They were the extra souls in his kingdom, an addition to the heavens that was not yet meant to be.
Castiel knew this, because he had saved Jo Harvelle once before - in a hardware store in Missouri.