She couldn’t sleep - tangled up in the unfamiliar, grotty sheets of her bed in a damp, unfurnished bedroom at the back of a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. This place wasn’t Harvelle’s. It wasn’t her home.

Jo lay on her stomach, head to one side, watching the lights from outside the window dance across the opposite wall. She wasn’t really sure what it was that was keeping her from sleeping; her uncomfortable new living arrangements, her feeling of homesickness, the recent revelation of her father’s death, or maybe even her first night working here – her run-in with a perverted old hunter with every word against the Winchesters and every intention of getting into her pants.

“What can I get you?” Jo asked.
“Just a beer, darlin’” came the reply in a strong Texan accent. He was a rough-looking guy, around 35. His clothes were stained and unkempt under his leather jacket, which smelt of smoke and sweat and dirt, and his grin revealed dirty, yellow teeth. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
It occurred to Jo that she did, in fact, vaguely recognise the man standing before her.
“You ever been to Harvelle’s?”
“A long time ago…you were a waitress back there, right?”
“That was me.” Jo said, handing the man his beer. “Name’s Jo.”
“Dave,” he said, talking more to her chest than her face. “So, what’re you doin’ here?”

It was the first time anybody had questioned it - the first time she'd actually had to think about why she had left her home. Truth was, she didn't know why, and she told him as much.
"Guess I just want to live my own life" she added. "I want to be a hunter".

That last line, said with such an air of confidence, made Dave laugh, revealing his crooked, discoloured teeth. She shifted her weight to her other leg uncomfortably.
"What's so funny?"
"A hunter? You?" he was still chuckling as he took a swig of beer. "What put that idea into your head?"

Jo wiped the bar with a towel, attempting to hide her blushing red face. She took a breath.
"The Winchesters." she answered truthfully.

Jo had always wanted to be a hunter for her father, but it has not been until she had met the boys that she'd really considered it doable. Not until last week, when she'd gone on her first real hunt with them that she'd been inspired. "I've hunted with them".

"Them Winchesters," Dave said, pointing his beer bottle toward her in an almost authoritative, advising manner "They ain't role models, honey. They never fit in with all us other hunters, and you ain't gonna fit in either. It ain't your place".
He raised his eyes to look into her own, and, with a slight change to his voice, said; "I think you'd be better off serving us hunters some other way, you know?"

Jo kicked off her bed covers and walked over to where her shotgun lay. She cradled it, almost as if it were a baby.
She was a fool. A fool to think she could do this: hide from a past where she was nobody and immerse herself into a community where she could be someone. A hunter. An equal.
The truth was, since Jo had left she hadn't even thought about hunting. Her shotgun was kept beside her but never loaded, her journal open but never written in. A world of evil outside, but she hid from it, never hunting. She was a fool to think she could ever do it.

Maybe Dave was right. This wasn't her place and it never could be. She was just a lost little girl pretending to be somebody. A lost, pathetic little girl pretending to be a hero.

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