A/N: I actually wrote this story quite some time back, when I first began posting here. But at the time I had no inkling of the SPN age demographic, and I just didn't know how this might be received. Now that I've been posting fic for a while, and because people have been kind to me, (and because a few friends have urged me to post) I thought I would go ahead and lay it on the line. It's a mood piece, a character study. Probably not everyone's cup of tea . . . and that's okay. 8-)

Moments, Wishes, Regrets

Once upon a time, she'd dreamed of what others would call a "normal" life. White picket fence, green grass, 2.5 kids, a dog. But that changed when she fell for Bill Harvelle, and changed even more when she learned what he did for a living.

Hunting, she got. Her daddy hunted game. Hunting, as Bill knew it, was different.

She came to know it well.

And he was gone one day, lost on a hunt. She'd listened to what John Winchester had to say about it, said little, grieved much. John was not a man who would understand a woman's grief. A man's grief, yes; he'd experienced his own, with Mary murdered. But that had made him cold, and hard, and pretty damn much unreachable, when she needed information about Bill's death. She'd pieced it together herself.

Something in her had responded to the man, and she bore him no grudge that Bill had been killed, only the knowledge that he'd been part of it. In time, through years, over whiskey and beer they had discussed it in stops and starts, not wanting to reveal too much of their own hearts, their own grief; but they had come to understand one another. To understand that few people in the world could truly grasp what it was to lose a life partner to a hunt.

And then John's sons had walked through her door.

Long time since John had come around. While she hadn't forgotten him—who could?—he had not been part of her life for years. She raised Jo as Bill's daughter, because she was; John had come much later. It was her own commitment to the love she'd borne Bill that she said little to Jo of John Winchester.

Whiskey one night; too much. Shared memories. A loneliness no one on earth could understand, save someone who'd lived it. It had resulted in one night, never was repeated, never was addressed. It might not have happened at all.

Until John Winchester's sons had walked through the roadhouse door.

She had not thought, at first, that it was possible, let alone likely. That John had two sons, she knew.

And here they were.

Holy shit, but John to the life. Not in looks exactly; neither boy closely resembled his father. Bits and pieces, yes. At first she hadn't seen it at all, but by the end of the night, after too much whiskey, she saw it all.

Sam had John's dark hair, tanned skin, dimples, and while his eyes were a dark hazel, not John's deep brown, they were nonetheless his. The height's progenitor, she had no inkling of; possibly an ancestor. John was tall, but not that tall. But Dean—well, in a way, he confused her. A hair shorter than his father, but the same square build. And apparently Mary's coloring, with the dark blond hair turning brown, and green eyes that saw miles and miles, far beyond what men his age should.

Sam was sweet. Dean, dangerous.

It was instinct, and knowledge. She did not require anyone to tell her what was obvious.

Sam was like Bill: dedicated to the work, good at it, but wanting so badly to be normal, to have the dream. It wasn't a bad wish, a wrong wish, an unrealistic wish. It just didn't turn out to be their wish.

She'd never envied John Winchester, who'd lost his wife. He'd wanted what she'd wanted, the normality of it. The whole baseball, apple pie thing. And he'd tried. Lord knew, he'd tried.

Bill Harvelle had died, leaving her with a daughter. John Winchester had died, too, and, whether he knew it or not, had left her with his sons.

Sam was at the jukebox plugging in quarters. Dean was at the bar not far from her, talking with Jo.

Dean was all wrong, so wrong, for her daughter. It was instinct, and self-preservation, and the knowledge that Dean was his father in a different body, different clothing. Dean was not what she wanted for Jo. Not as a one-night stand, certainly; but, also, not as something more.

She'd loved Bill Harvelle with all of her heart and soul. But she wasn't blind to a good-looking man, to a man whose soul spoke to hers. It had nothing to do with age. She and John were pledged to others; had lost those others. And one night, over too much whiskey and shared pain, they had allowed themselves to seek solace in one another.

John, like Bill, was dead. But here came John's sons, and they were so alike, too alike, in too many ways.

Sam still loomed over the jukebox. Dean, as Jo drifted away to serve another customer, was alone, sucking down beer. Ellen pulled up two shot glasses, filled them with whiskey, then set both down upon the bar directly in front of him. "Let's drink to your father."

Dean had learned from John; was far more guarded. But here, with her, feeling more comfortable than perhaps in another roadhouse, he was more relaxed. The body was fluid.

After a minute frown, he arched one brow. That was John to the life. Ellen smiled, flicked a finger toward the drink.

Dean's smile was slow and self-contained. It did not of itself, unless he was using it on a woman, blossom into something wide, free, and unencumbered. That was Sam's gift. Sam, despite talents, was not the same as John or his brother. Part of her answered to Sam because he was so much like her late husband; but part of her was drawn to Dean for what was so quintessentially Dean.

"To memories," she said.

Dean considered it. Then he hooked fingers around the shot glass, raised it, tapped the glass against her own, and downed it as even as she tossed back her own serving.

What came out of Ellen's mouth was not what she intended. "Don't jump her bones."

Myriad expressions chased their way across his face. She saw it even in fractions of instants: denial, offense, acknowledgment, understanding, a tacit salute that the daughter was worth it, and a multitude of other feelings. Complicated, was Dean. Far more than his father.

Oh, she knew Dean's type. And she knew that in another roadhouse, in other circumstances, things would be far different. But that was posturing, and a desire for unencumbered release. Here, Dean respected boundaries. He desired far more than a quick coupling that served immediate needs, but nothing more. By the same token, he could not commit to any more than maybe two or three nights with a woman, and that she understood. Most hunters were incapable of more. Too much risk. Too much potential heartache.

John Winchester had given his life to Mary, and it had ended in catastrophe. How on earth would two motherless sons, raised by a man on obsession and revenge, look for anything more?

But not with Jo.

Ellen pulled up the bottle, thumped it down upon the bar. Caught his eyes and held them with her own.

She saw his understanding, acknowledgment. No jumping of Jo's bones.

As the night died, as the customers deserted, Ellen and Jo tended to the detritus of their lives, of cleaning up after others, wiping down tables, bar tops, tossing bottles into trash, dumping glasses into the dishwasher or, at the very least, for the last few glasses, into a sink full of hot water and suds, for addressing the next morning.

Sam had spent much of the night in a booth by himself, surfing the web. He drank beer, noshed on whatever Jo set before him, stuffed quarters into the jukebox, occasionally engaged in conversation, but pretty much was self-contained, and absent. Ellen had seen it before; he was chasing a job. Several leads piqued his interest, but he hadn't settled on anything yet.

Dean still sat upon a stool at the bar, slightly hunched as he rested elbows on polished oak. He'd put off the leather coat, but the broad shoulders nonetheless stretched the seams of his gray henley shirt. Dean usually flew below the radar when it came to physicality. Sam was so tall that many missed the older brother's height and heft. He was much more like his father than any gave him credit for.

And, like John, he cared so very much . . . and locked it all away.

Jo went off to bed after saying her good nights. Sam did the same, disappearing into the back room where he and his brother sometimes crashed on Ellen's cots. Dean lingered over whiskey. Quarters in the jukebox kept it going. He'd had several beers, two shots of whiskey, and she saw nothing at all that spoke of drunkenness. If he stayed, it was because he found no reason to vacate the barstool.

Ellen stacked up clean glasses below the bar. "She's young."

He slanted her a glance under long lids. She saw a glint there. After a moment, he asked, "Why are we talking about Jo?"

She paused, threw him a glance. "Because she's all I've got."

"No," Dean said. He tossed back a third shot, contemplated the bottle from which might arrive a fourth. "We both know that's not how you define yourself."

From Sam, maybe, that would come. The observation seemed—informed. But it was not the kind of thing she expected from Dean. He was very much a still waters run deep kind of man, shared little of himself or how he thought, how he viewed the world, save for superficialities.

He poured himself another shot, but did not drink it. He let it sit as he nursed his beer. "I'd never hurt her."

Ellen smiled. "Oh, you might. Probably would. Jo's not stupid, but you got enough going on that she'd fall for it. Hell, I think she has. But I didn't raise her to be easy."

She caught another glance, another glint, from the corner of his eyes. Yes, he knew very well how women responded. He wasn't stupid, and she'd seen him in action. He knew how to work it. But just now, he wasn't. She saw Dean for Dean, with absolutely nothing on the line.

His smile was crooked, was fast. "Let's just say that I am aware how painful a life might be were a man to threaten the virtue of Ellen Harvelle's daughter."

She smiled back, unabashedly acknowledging the implication. She tipped her head in acknowledgment.

Dean refilled her glass with whiskey. "This time, let's drink to something more than memories."

She matched his smile, nodded. Lifted the glass. Saluted him with it. "Then to what are we drinking?"

"You."

She stalled in raising the glass to her lips. Saw the warmth in his eyes, and shut it down instantly. "MILF action, am I? Should I be flattered?"

His smile, again, went crooked. "I don't doubt some men would say so. But that's not what I meant." He raised his glass. "To you, Ellen. No more, no less, than that."

"Damn it, Dean . . ."

"What?"

"Hell, boy, I'm not immune. I'm not dead, am I?"

He looked up at her, smiling that smile. He was not Bill. He was not John. He was wholly himself. And no, she wasn't immune, or dead. For a long, hard moment, she wished herself young again. She wished herself Jo, with so much life before her.

She set the undrunk glass back upon the bar. "Good night, Dean."

Because it was the only way the night should end.

She wished it otherwise.

She wasn't immune, or dead.

Hell, she was just a woman.

And he so much a man.

But she walked away regardless. Knowing she'd regret it.

Knowing it was best.

~ end ~