pixel_0 | Red Thread After (Gen, PG)

Title: Red Thread After
Rating: PG
Category: AU gen oneshot
Word Count: 3142
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jo, and pieces of others
Spoilers: S2: “In My Time of Dying” and “Everybody Loves a Clown”
Summary: At the end of the world, she becomes the first circle on their list.
Warnings: Character death
Author’s Notes: This is the wonderful

mellaithwen’s birthday fic. I asked her for prompts back at the beginning of August, and this was the one that I chose. (Her exact prompt is as follows: “Happy Apocalypse. Like world's gone to hell, character deaths a-plenty but in the middle of it all, the boys have something to be grinning/joking about.”) A very happy birthday, hon! Hand-holding and beta by

equinox_blue. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Crossposted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.

- - - - -

Her eyes are lifted to the dark sky when they find her kneeling beside her mother’s grave. The snow is falling, thick and steady, and it lands in the twisted mess of hair on her back. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t move, as they approach until Sam says her name.

Jo turns then, slowly, and when she looks over her shoulder and her face comes into the illumination of Dean’s flashlight, Sam can see she’s been crying. He tries his best to smile, tries to look as though he still holds hope, as he says, “Hey.”

Next to him, Dean is gazing at the damaged remains of the bar where Jo used to work. The same bar that Ellen fled to so that she could be with her daughter as the end came down upon them all. Dean sweeps his flashlight over the rubble to see beams, black and charred, laying a sharp contrast against the crystal white of the snow.

“What are you doing here?” Jo asks, turning back to the mound of earth that is being dusted with snow. Sam assumes it’s where she buried her mother.

“We heard that you might be here,” Dean answers. His boots crunch through the layers of ice as he comes forward.

“Well,” Jo replies with the bitterness of a freshly orphaned child, “you found me.”

Sam glances over to Dean, who only shrugs weakly beneath his bulky winter clothing. They both understand grief and what it means to lose a parent; yet they do not understand her.

“We’ve got a place not far from here,” Sam tells her. “You can stay with us.” He glances around to see nothing but wind-whipped snow for miles beyond them. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Jo remains silent before she whispers, “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Sam asks.

“I can’t…” She pauses, voice faltering unsteadily. “I can’t walk. My feet…they’re—I can’t feel them.”

“We’re not just going to leave you,” Dean answers.

Sam closes the space until he’s near enough, and he crouches down next to her. Her clothes are flimsy, defenseless against the harsh unending winter they’ve been thrown into. Slowly, he holds out his hands to her.

“C’mon,” he encourages, “it’ll be okay.”

She hesitates, initial fight and bite gone out of her and heavy sorrow taking its place. He watches her stare at Ellen’s crude grave, probably not wanting to leave the last of her family behind. He remembers lingering with Dean at their father’s pyre, long after the ashes had cooled, unable to go just yet.

“She gave me this,” Jo tells him. The snow falls on her eyelashes. “Before she died, she said she wanted me to have it.” For the first time, Sam notices Jo’s hands that have wrapped themselves in the bright red wool of a scarf. “It was hers…the last thing she ever gave me.”

Sam waits a beat before embracing her. “Jo,” he says, “let’s go.”

She loops her arms around his neck, small hands startling icy on his exposed skin where the hood of his coat has fallen away. She’s light in his hold, cold and frail, and she buries her face into the material of his jacket.

Dean pulls a blanket from his bag to drape over her, and Sam carries Jo through the snow.

- - - - -

They take her to Bobby’s where they live now after his death. The house is furnished with enough food and firewood. Enough to keep them alive long enough to believe that they’ll see this to the end.

After the bombs, Dean siphoned gasoline from all the cars in the lot to fuel the Impala for a few more months. He makes trips occasionally to search for supplies and more gasoline, but Sam’s not sure what they’ll do when they completely run out of fuel and might need to start walking. It’s far too cold to travel much outside the junkyard.

Inside the house, they melt snow in a bucket over the fireplace. She sits, huddled in a heap of quilts they’ve wrapped around her, while Dean lights candles to see by. Since the explosions that destroyed the civilized world, the sun has been hidden by the thick, gray clouds. Life is a never-ending winter night.

Once the snow is melted into a warm bath, Sam helps her peel off her cracked shoes and wet socks. Uneasily, she lowers her feet into the water. She cries when the numbness gives way to pain because as hard as dying is, finding life is even harder.

- - - - -

They put her to sleep in Bobby’s bed upstairs. The bed where Bobby died with a piece of metal in his gut and bloody vomit drying in his beard. They don’t tell her this though. Only allow her to get the sleep she so terribly needs.

Downstairs beside the fireplace, Dean flips to the list of names he’s made in their father’s journal. Outside, the wind howls and snow clicks noisily against the glass windows. The old windup clock on the wall that could not be affected by the end of electricity says that it’s a little past seven in the evening. The sky is endlessly black beyond the window.

In the journal, Dean draws a line through Ellen’s name and loops a circle around Jo’s. It’s the list of everyone they’ve ever known, ever met and loved in one way or another. As the time passes, more names are crossed out. The untouched ones give them hope, no matter how false it feels to Sam. Jo, the only circle, the only one they’ve found alive, remains their sole success.

- - - - -

They talk about lost mothers and fallen fathers. Not one sad tear is shed through the night.

Dean tells how their dad snored so badly that Sam and he always asked for a separate motel room just so they could sleep. Jo says her mom would snort when she laughed too hard and then blush embarrassed pink after. Sam remembers when Dad accidentally got caught in the middle of a prank war.

The memories are happy. Nothing about death. Only about life. Remembering the imperfections that made their parents human. Remembering the trips and stumbles of the confusion of parenthood. Remembering to love them even now.

They laugh so hard that Sam wipes tears from his eyes and Dean’s face turns hot red. They laugh so hard that Jo exclaims she’s going to pee her pants before running from the room.

This makes the brothers laugh even more in great, whooping gasps. Dean nearly falls off the couch, slapping the upholstered arm just to stay on the cushions. Sides aching and cheeks sore, tonight Sam forgets about the bleak world sleeping outside their door.

- - - - -

One day, Sam forgets to knock. All his time with Dean where they share everything, never hiding, and he’s never needed to knock before. He swings open Jo’s closed bedroom door and sees her naked with clothing in her hands. She gathers a shirt to her chest with a curse and an angry shriek of “Sam!”

Embarrassed, flustered, Sam quickly turns away in a flurry of apologies.

But not before seeing. Not before seeing the small swell of her belly that doesn’t match the rest of her frame.

- - - - -

“So when were you going to tell us?” Sam asks as he sits down next to her on the porch. Snow has drifted over the stairs and junked cars. For today, the wind is only a mild breeze, and she’s taken the opportunity to breathe in fresh air. By tomorrow, the air might be cold enough to freeze the insides of their lungs.

“Tell you about what?” she replies, not making eye contact.

“About,” he stops, feeling awkward and stupid. This is not his place to ask. Not his place to know, but he still wants to see if they have the chance to hope. The chance for a future beyond the three of them. So he swallows and says, “About the baby.”

Jo snorts dismissively. “Right. That.”

Sam waits, lets the silence settle before he asks, “The dad, is he—He’s not coming back, I’m guessing.”

“I don’t think so, no.” She sighs, a hot puff of air into the coldness. “We hooked up after the bombs. He left to see if he could find any other survivors.” She wipes her eyes with a gloved hand. There is only snow in her eyes. No tears. No sense of loss. “He never came back, of course. I figured out I was pregnant not long before Mom died.” Jo smirks wryly, and now there are tears in her eyes when she turns to look at Sam. “She didn’t even know she was going to be a grandma. My mom, a grandma. Funny, huh? I wonder what she would’ve said.”

Sam smiles softly down at her as she touches the fluttering ends of the red scarf. She brings a curled fist to her mouth and hiccups down a pinched sob.

- - - - -

Dean returns from a trip to the world beyond Bobby’s gates with more gasoline, canned food, and assortment of medicine in case they ever fall sick. While Jo is upstairs, he pulls Sam into another room and tells Sam he found some baby formula.

Sam has to chuckle. Dean, always prepared, even during the end of the world.

Afterwards in the kitchen, Dean pops open the lid on a can of sardines. He tilts his head back and drops the little fish into his mouth, one by one.

“Find anybody?” Sam asks, putting away the supplies Dean’s dumped onto the table.

“Three more names to cross off.”

“No one to circle.”

Dean sighs, sardines finished and wipes his hands on his blue jeans to leave dark greasy streaks, and he looks to Sam. “No circles.”

- - - - -

Jo keeps herself busy organizing the volumes of dusty materials Bobby left behind. She sings as she goes. Old familiar songs that were on every jukebox in every good American bar. Songs about lost boyfriends and cheating girlfriends, drunken nights and unrequited love. Her voice drifts through the house and makes Dean lament the loss of electricity for a stereo system.

“Sure wish she was a radio,” he grumbles to Sam. “Then we could change the channel on her to something actually worth listening to. Give us some freakin’ good music for once.”

But as harsh as Dean appears, Sam knows he’s equally grateful for another person besides the two of them.

When Jo’s belly grows too big for her tiny shirt, she takes to wearing Sam and Dean’s clothes. Sam is always slightly surprised to see her wandering the house in his sweatpants and stretched out shirts.

She cleans and rearranges things, notices dirt where Sam and Dean don’t and alphabetizes anything she can get her hands on. Sam remembers from some distant knowledge that humans have the ability to start nesting. He wonders if this is Jo’s way of doing it.

“You have any ideas for names?” Dean asks her as they sit in front of the fireplace. The fireplace and assorted candles throw the room into an orange glow, making it seem warmer than it really is.

“A few,” she replies, glancing up from an old book she found earlier in the afternoon.

“Name it after me if it’s a boy and after Sam if it’s a girl,” Dean says with a smirk.

“Very funny,” Sam remarks dryly.

“I thought so. We’ll call her Samantha Sue,” Dean chuckles, still amused that he can harass his younger brother in this desolate world. It just proves that some things can’t be stopped by the apocalypse. “You can teach her how to do her hair all nice and pretty, Sammy, since you spend so much time on yours. Wanna show her how to paint her nails too?”

Jo shakes her head in exasperation at Dean. Her face is softer, rounder, and her breasts are full beneath the flannel shirt she wears. Sam remembers her, hard and tough, from when they first met at the Roadhouse and she shoved a gun in his brother’s back. He still can’t believe she’s going to be someone’s mother.

- - - - -

“You know what I miss?” Jo asks as she braids her hair in quick twists of her fingers. “Besides my mom,” she quickly adds as if they were too stupid, too callused, or too forgetful to assume that Ellen was not a definite loss in her daughter’s life.

Sam glances over at her instead of moving his head. He doesn’t want to take his attention away from his cards for too long. Dean might be bluffing, but Sam can’t take a chance at losing by being distracted.

Still, Jo’s question has spurned a rush of thoughts in Sam. He thinks of everything he misses from before. Indoor plumbing to pour a glass of water from the faucet and hot water for showers in the morning. Electricity to study by and to cook with, to listen to music while lying in bed and to light the way in the darkness. The friends they’ve lost to the bombs and cold, and the people they know they’ll never find. The sun.

Oh, the sun.

Instead of answering directly, all Sam says to her is, “No. What?”

She sighs, a tinny little breath of air as she ties the end of her braid. “Hunting, I suppose. I think that’s what I miss.”

This time, Sam does raise his head to look at her. He’s not surprised that Dean’s lifted his attention away from the card game to stare at her as well.

“Hunting?” Dean echoes in disbelief like he thinks she’s messing with them, and after they fall for this, she’s going to sit back and laugh at their expense.

“Yeah, hunting,” she replies, folding her arms around herself in a manner that could be defensive but is probably just because she’s cold. “Everything that went with it. Getting out of the same place and seeing the world. Saving lives and searching for an answer about, well, something.” She pauses, bites her lip and looks to the window. The world is as dark and snowy as always. “Like, we had a purpose, y’know? It feels like we’re just sitting around waiting now.”

“Waiting for what?” Sam asks, even though there’s an answer to that already unfurling in his mind.

She looks at him. Smirks dryly. “An end. Don’t you think? An end?”

Sam doesn’t ask if she means an end to the snow that haunts them continuously or if she alludes to something else. If they’re all waiting for an end to their lives.

- - - - -

Sam is in Dean’s room, talking quietly about their list of people. The ones they’ve lost and the ones they can’t find. All this time later, all their trips into the snow, and they still only have one circle on their list.

“Do you guys really think there’s anybody else out there?”

Startled, the brothers look to the doorway where Jo stands, holding her full belly. “I mean, I guess I wonder if this’ll ever be over,” she continues as she moves awkwardly into the room and eases herself down on the side of the bed beside Sam and Dean.

“We can’t be the only three out there,” Dean tells her. “Out of millions of people before, only three now?”

Sam looks to Jo, looks to her swollen stomach where new life waits and grows, and he says, “Not for long.”

- - - - -

Jo goes into labor during a ruthless blizzard. Sam kneels behind her, holding her shoulders for support and whispering what he thinks are encouragements. She keeps screaming and crying, and her face is flushed hot. Finally, she reaches back for his hand and squeezes. Hard. Desperately.

Dean is hunched between her spread legs, ready to welcome her child to the world. “I can see the head,” he tells her with a waver in his voice that Sam recognizes as him fighting for calmness. “You can do it. Just push, okay?”

Sam doesn’t ask how his brother knows anything about childbirth. He only wipes Jo’s hair off her sweaty forehead and wraps his fingers around her hand for reassurance.

“It hurts,” she moans with her head bent back to Sam. “Is it supposed to hurt this much?”

“It’s coming,” Dean says. “It’s coming.”

Jo shakes, and Sam tells her, “You’ve gotta push. It’s almost over, okay? You’re almost there.”

She bites down and screeches through clenched teeth as Sam feels the muscles in her body tighten.

Suddenly a cry, frail and fresh, cuts through it all, and Dean wears an amazed gape and holds a squirming wet baby in his hands. The baby squeals and kicks its legs.

Jo’s eyes are glassy. “Oh,” she breathes softly. “Oh God.”

- - - - -

They can’t stop the blood. Can’t stop the bleeding despite all they try.

With her newborn daughter clinging to her breast, Jo dies on red soaked sheets. She dies in the same bed Bobby passed away in, and the blood is sticky where it spilled from between her legs and blossomed on the blankets.

Dean brings his bloody fingers to her throat to check for a pulse. When he bends his head and swears hoarsely, Sam knows that Jo’s really gone.

Sam lifts the baby, holds it in the crook of his arm. The little girl, eyes pinched shut, wraps her small pink hand around his offered index finger and yawns.

When Sam looks up through blurred vision, he sees Dean staring at him with wet eyes. They say nothing to each other.

- - - - -

Jo’s daughter survives on stolen infant formula and her mother’s inherited grit.

One morning, Sam walks downstairs to find Dean napping, the baby resting on his shoulder and opened journal beside him. Jo’s name, once a circle, now has a slash through it. At the bottom of the page, Dean has written the baby’s name and paired it with a new asterisk.

Sam smiles.

He gently eases the little girl from Dean, who awakens at the movement.

“Sammy?” he murmurs.

“I’ve got her,” Sam replies. “Go back to sleep.”

Dean nods drowsily and closes his eyes with a heavy sigh.

Sam pulls a coat on and makes sure Jo’s daughter is bundled up before he goes out to stand on the porch. With the baby tucked against his chest, Sam walks down the stairs. The forgotten sun peeking through the clouds makes him squint and makes him want to cry at the sight.

Moving farther away from the house, he stops abruptly when a small patch of grass, green and new, catches his attention. The baby, wrapped in a red scarf made of wool, stirs, and Sam lifts his eyes to the brightening sky.

End