"Hmmh." There was a press of lips, and her arms crossed loose over her stomach as she walked at his side. "She wasn't in love with it when I got my letter either, but my Dad talked her down. More than once that summer right before First Year. But I was two years in before--" She thinks about saying, you know. "--he was killed."

She likes that word better than dead. It's an issue Dean wouldn't have liked. Hers.
Dead was easier, and Jo was not easy. Monsters. Memories. Mistakes.

Monsters and Uncle John, and really she wasn't any happier with both dead than she had been with one.
By the time she knew the real story she didn't have much anger left for or about either of them. Only Dean then.






And even anger was the wrong word. Anger only went so far. Anger, like fire, died at a point. What that did...wouldn't.

She shrugged. Shrugged it off, shrugged through it. She had years of experience with that. No one ever paraded through the days of her life like they knew them, but didn't. Made her do it. Only Dean once upon a time, and now again, Dean, but not, somewhere far, far away. "So, you know, she couldn't stop me by that point, and there was the bar." There was a snort. "Actually, that was the first time I took anyone home from school. His funeral."

It was where the cowboy hat started, and Josephine. It was one of the times she most appreciated what her father left her.
It changed everything. It made her who she was. The path she choose. The job. Even the nickname that became her label.