InsaneJournal

It wasn't like Jo had the best of coping strategies to begin with, but when the awful, crushing weight of the realization her husband, the father of her unborn children, had died, she had nothing. So she did the only thing left in her less than healthy arsenal (the more self destructive ones were thankfully out of the question) of ways to deal with things and ran. She wouldn't, couldn't, deal with the looks, the sympathy, the I'm sorry's and all those things that at the end of the day wouldn't bring him back. And worse than that they were just things that would make this real. She wasn't ready for it to be real.

She chewed her lip to the point of drawing blood as the city passed her by until it tapered off and there was nothing but the desert and a rapidly approaching night. Her body shook and she shivered, the heat in the Impala blasting and she couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever get warm again. It wasn't even a plan that she'd fully thought out, it wasn't something that screamed over and over to do but she veered sharply at the sight of a dirt road off the main highway and started down it.

She'd always been the kind to need to fix something. Things broke and she knew damn well they didn't always get put back together but she was stubborn enough to need to try over and over again, even if it destroyed her. She didn't do well with acceptance, with knowing the things she couldn't change and letting it just be. She need to push it, to keep tugging at something till she could make it resemble what she wanted. Even at the end she'd never been able to accept the fact her husband was dying, that the answer she was still so desperately looking for just didn't exist.

As she came upon what she needed she pulled to the side and cut the engine, leaving the lights to cut through the encroaching black of night. She didn't think twice that she wouldn't find what she needed in the trunk. It was Dean and even in their semi normal lives she knew everything that had been in there before would still be there. There were habits people like them never got out of. She tossed what would be required in a box and managed to slice through her thumb trying to cut her picture out of her id with a knife. And it was honestly only the blood that clued her into it. She found a scrap of cloth and wrapped it tight around her thumb, numb to the injury, to anything really other than the task at hand. She tucked the box under her arm and grabbed the shovel, managed to shut the trunk and headed around the front of the car.

She dug a shallow hole quickly, tossed the shovel down and picked her box back up. She stood and stared down at the hole she'd made, fingers curled around the box. Ten years. If she was damn lucky. She didn't know much about her hopes and dreams for her children, she'd honestly been taking things day by day to a fault. But she knew she wanted them to have more than what she'd had, more than Dean. She wanted them to know what it was like to have a whole, complete family. Ten years would buy them more than Dean had known, give them as long as she had. And was a hell of a lot better than none.

She supposed the thing with her and Dean was that it had always been a matter of bad timing, she'd always known that if she'd had the chance she could have felt something real for him, a lingering thought that seemed to always be in the back of her mind no matter how much distance she put between herself and the girl who'd held a shotgun to his back before she even knew his name. Though until they'd both shown up in Vegas she hadn't ever really expected that it would be like this. There wasn't a doubt that this was it for her, that she would never feel quite like this again. She'd always thought the idea of true love and the concept of forever as bullshit, something made up to help the masses sleep better at night. Except now here she was and the only person she could see herself with years down the line was Dean, the only place she wanted to be was with him, with their children.

So she would make her goddamn timing. She set the box down in the hole, covered it up and stood back up. She shut her eyes, let out a shaky breath and waited.

Except nothing happened. There was no red eye demon, there was no one to hand her life and soul over to. Just the still quiet of the night, the distant sound of traffic and the sick, empty feeling that crept into her very being. She sunk back to the ground to retrieve the box. She managed to get a few handfuls aside before the reality of the situation came crashing down on her and the trembling took over her body completely and she simply broke down.