Jody called.

You were sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance while EMTs asked you what day it was and if you knew where you were while trying to start an IV. Four cops stood ten feet away discussing whether you were a suspect or a witness or a victim.

The phone rang and you looked at your pocket because you couldn't quite figure out what was going on. One of the EMTs answered and spoke to the person for a moment before putting the phone in your hand and raising it to your ear. You said "hello" because that seemed, in some distant memory, to be the thing to do.

Jody rattled off a half dozen questions before she stopped for a breath. When she did, all you could say is "He's gone."

The next hours (days?) were fuzzy, but you know you were cold when Jody came.

You were in a small room with a locked door and no windows, dressed in only your t-shirt and boxers, laying on a bed with no blankets. You faced the wall because you always faced Dean when you slept but now Dean was gone. You knew it was probably a bad idea to have your back to the door, but if you faced the room you could see Dean wasn't there. At least with your back to the door you could pretend.

You don't know how long you were there or what really happened in between, but the door opened, and Jody came in. She sat on the side of your bed and brushed your hair away from your face and said "Come on, kiddo. I'm getting you out of here."

Someone in scrubs brought your clothes, and helped you dress. They gave Jody your belt and knives and gun. You gripped the armrests of your seat and hummed Metallica because the last time you were on a plane, Dean was with you.

Jody brought you to her house and put you in the guest room, where you sat on the side of the bed and stared at the wall for two days.

She finally came in, forced you to eat, and told you that you had to figure out what you were going to do. That you were welcome to stay as long as you needed, but you couldn't sit there and stare at the wall forever. She said you had to get through this, and if you couldn't do it on your own, she could get you some place where you could get help.

You didn't speak, but she could tell you didn't like that idea.

She asked if you wanted to go back to hunting.

"Not today." you said.

The next morning, you actually took a shower, came downstairs, and made coffee. Jody just smiled.

She made breakfast, and when she sat down across you, you said "I don't want to hunt any more."

"So what are you going to do?" she asked.

You froze.

You grew up hating hunting. You always wanted out. You wanted to be "normal". After Stanford, when you went back to hunting with Dean, you always said it was temporary. Until you found Dad. Until you found Jessica's killer. Until you got revenge for Dean. Until you found out what pulled Dean from Hell. Until you stopped the Apocalypse. Until you ... whatever.

But now, sitting in Jody's kitchen, you realized you had no idea how to do "normal. "

"It's ok." she said. "One step at a time."

That day while she was at work you put down salt lines at all the doors and windows, thinking how disappointed Dean would be because you hadn't done it already, and painted three hidden devil's traps. You told her she needed an anti-possession tattoo. She didn't say anything at the time, but a week later, she asked if it needed to be over her heart, or if she could get it somewhere else.

You took to doing things around the house. You washed dishes and vacuumed and folded laundry. You dropped a glass one day when you went to put it in the cabinet, and it shattered on the tile floor.

It shattered like Dick Roman had shattered when Dean and Cas killed him.

It shattered like your life had with Dean gone.

You dropped another one, to see it shatter as well.

When Jody got home, she found $20 on the counter with a note to buy more glasses, a trash can full of broken glass, and you passed out with half a bottle of bourbon beside the bed.

The next morning, Jody informed you all the alcohol in the house had been removed. She said she should have thought of it sooner, knowing that you had a family history of alcoholism.

You couldn't bring yourself to leave the house to buy more.

The days flowed into one long block of time, much of which was spent wondering where the past hour/day/week had gone. You knew that time passed, because Jody went to work and came home, the sun rose and set, and the garbage was picked up on Thursdays.

Most nights were the same. You sat for hours, with a pistol in your hand, or the eleven assorted pain pills, half bottle of generic brand Advil, and six muscle relaxer tablets that were left in the bottom of the first aid kit, trying to find the nerve to send yourself to Dean.

You never did, because of the lingering fear in the back of your mind that you wouldn't end up in Heaven with Dean, but back in the Cage, for eternity this time.

One day you heard Jody pull up in front of the house, and a diesel engine idling outside. You looked out to find a flatbed wrecker unloading Dean's car onto Jody's driveway.

You sank to your knees under the living room window, shuddering and sobbing until you heard the diesel engine drive away. You managed to stumble out the front door to see the car up close.

The headlights were broken and the paint was scratched all the way back to the doors where it had gone through the Sucrocorp sign. Both front tires were flat, the windshield was cracked, and the passenger side front fender was caved in.

You pulled open the door on the passenger side, your side, and sank into the seat, asking hopefully "Dean? Cas?"

There was no response.

You knew it was ridiculous to even hope that their spirits had attached to the car. They died inside the building, and the car was outside.

But for some reason, you felt like you lost them all over again.

The next thing you remember, it was dark, you were in your bed in Jody's house, and she had brought you soup and tea.

"I can have the car taken somewhere else." she offered.

"No." was all you could say.

To your surprise, the car started right up, and ran like nothing had happened. The damage was strictly cosmetic.

You had enough cash to buy two new tires, so you took the rims off and Jody took you to town Saturday.

People nodded to you in passing as if they knew you, and it was only after the man at the tire shop said "Sorry about Bobby and your brother." that you realized they somewhat did. They knew you from all the times you and Dean had been dumped off on "Uncle" Bobby when you were kids and all the times the two of you had come to see him as adults.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota was more your hometown than Lawrence, Kansas was.

You asked the man about the best place to get new headlights and the car painted.

You realized it would probably be pretty bad if the sheriff you were staying with had to arrest you for credit card fraud. Then it dawned on you that you didn't even know how long you'd been living on Jody's hospitality.

On the way home, you turned to her and said "I need a job."

She smiled and said "I've been waiting for you to say that."

The sheriff's office had several guns that needed repair, and you just happened to have the tools and knowledge to fix them. As soon as they were done, Jody mentioned to some officers she knew in other jurisdictions and the gossipy waitress at the diner that she had found an expert gunsmith, and soon you had all the work you wanted.

You slowly returned to the land of the living. You got the car fixed and took Jody to dinner one night. You managed to go to the store a few times and it was all right as long as no one tried to talk to you about Dean or Bobby.

Jody didn't say anything about the nights you went outside to sit in the Impala and talk to Dean, or just to cry. She always left you something to drink when you came back in.

You went with Jody when she finally got the anti-possession tattoo. She had it put just under her collarbone and above her son's initials, which were already over her heart.

You discovered that you missed touch. You spent thirty years with Dean, used to sitting in his lap or curling into his side when you were kids, which gradually evolved into pats on the arm or sitting with your shoulders touching or even horseplaying when you were adults.

You started hugging Jody when she left for work and sitting beside her to watch tv. When she had a really bad day, you laced your fingers through hers and listened to her talk about it.

You kissed her for the first time a week later.

By the week after that, the two of you were making out like teenagers while watching tv in the evenings.

The first time you had sex it was hard and fast and desperate on the floor of the living room. Afterwards, you started crying and you didn't even know why. She took your hand and led you to her room, where she snuggled you up and stroked your hair until you fell asleep.

It took another week before you moved into her bedroom permanently.

Five weeks later, you realized you hadn't worn a condom the first time when you heard her retching in the bathroom first thing in the morning.

You were shocked. Jody, who had been suspecting for several days, not so much.

You asked her to marry you, because that's what Dad would have expected.

She rolled her eyes and told you that when needed a man to take care of her, she would let you know, thank you very much.

You cried yourself to sleep that night because your child would never meet Dean.

When you found out it was a boy, you cried for two days because you realized that his brother, Jody's first son, was already dead.

The first time you had a panic attack over the situation was in Babies R Us, looking at cribs. You had faced demons, angels, vengeful spirits, wendigos, vampires, shapeshifters, the Hookman, and dozens of other supernatural creatures.

The second scariest thought you ever had was the realization that you were going to be responsible for a real live human being, and had to raise him to eighteen at least without screwing him up too much.

The scariest thought you ever had was that Dean was never coming back, and you were still having regular panic attacks that one.

You found the "normal" you had been looking for your whole life. You lived with Jody as a couple. She went to work, and you worked in the garage fixing and customizing guns. The two of you discussed things like child care arrangements and whether to buy a new washing machine.

She gave you space to grieve, but didn't let you wallow in it.

You didn't know if you loved her, or if she loved you, or if the two of you were together because you understood what it was like to have no one else. In the end, you decided it really didn't matter.

Once in a while, you'd see something in the news, you would know there was a case, but you had no interest in hunting. You'd email the info to Garth and maybe read the emails he sent back or maybe not.

Dean Robert Winchester was born two weeks early. You and Jody never considered naming him anything else, but you weren't sure what you were going to call him, because you couldn't imagine calling anyone else Dean. You had kicked around possible nicknames like DW, Robbie, or even Bert and decided to wait until he was born, to see what his personality was like.

He ended up being called Spider because you swore he grew eight limbs when you were trying to dress him.

He stared at you with wise eyes, much too old to be a baby, as if he knew you down to your very soul. You held him for hours those first few days, wondering if the angels had been merciful and sent Dean's spirit back to you in this body. You couldn't decide if you hoped it was true or not.

Because Dean deserved Heaven, and he deserved eternity with Cas, even if his little brother was a whiny bitch who couldn't move on from his brother's death.

The night Spider turned three weeks old, one year, one month, six days and nine hours after Dean died, a text came across Jody's phone.

It was from Dean's old number, and it was only coordinates.

The coordinates to Rufus' old cabin.

Jody knew you had to go, but she didn't like the idea of you going alone. You told her that if it was a trap, you wanted her to stay put with the baby where they'd be safe. You even etched more protective runes into the door and window frames.

You left within the hour, knowing you couldn't eat or sleep until you knew. Until you knew who or what sent you those coordinates, whether Dean had been brought back again, or if Crowley or something else wanted to send you to Dean.

You really didn't know how hard you would fight, if it came to that.

When Dean slammed you to the floor and sprayed you with holy water, you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was your brother. You felt his presence all the way down to your soul.

You were so shocked you couldn't quite form a coherent sentence. You had so much to tell him. That you were living with Jody now. That you had a son, named after him.

It took almost half an hour before you could begin to put the year he was gone into words.

"I guess, um... I guess something happened to me this year, too." You began. "I don't hunt anymore."

Dean was surprised, but before you could tell him the rest, he latched onto one idea.

"Did you look for me, Sam?"

He was livid, and no matter how much you tried to tell him you thought he was dead, he didn't understand.

You slipped outside to call Jody. You told her that it really was Dean, and the two of you needed some time.

She told you it was fine. That she would head home. She was at a motel in Columbia Falls.

You weren't surprised.

You went back in, where Dean immediately started again on the fact you didn't look for him.

You poured yourself a drink, but watching the whiskey splash around in the glass reminded you of seeing black goo splashed onto walls and Crowley telling you that were well and truly alone.

The glass slipped from your hand to shatter on the wooden floor.