You’d always sworn you’d die with blood under your fingernails and a loaded gun in your hands.

But after Dean…

After Dean, something inside you went quiet.

You gave him a hunter’s funeral. Built the pyre with your own hands, even though Sam tried to stop you. You didn’t speak at the fire. You couldn’t. You just stood there and watched the flames lick the sky, swallowing the only man you ever truly loved.

Dean Winchester. The man you met in Purgatory — savage, stubborn, bleeding and laughing. The man who’d carried you out of hell and into life more times than you could count.

The man who made you believe in forever.

And now he was gone.

You and Sam quit the life after that. Not in a dramatic way — no big declarations. Just one day, you didn’t pick up the phone when another case came in. The bunker went dark. The Impala sat parked under a dusty sheet. You packed your bags. Sam held your hand as you walked away from it all.

You bought a little house near his. A town with white fences and a good school. You got a dog. You made friends with your neighbors. You taught yourself how to bake banana bread, and you smiled when people called you by your new last name — one that didn’t come with blood on it.

You met someone.

He was kind. Safe. The sort of man who reminded you how to laugh again, even if it wasn’t the loud, reckless laugh Dean used to pull from you. You married him. You had a son.

And you loved them both — fiercely, fully — but never the way you loved Dean.

Because Dean Winchester was a wildfire. He wasn’t something you could replace.

Years passed.

Your son grew tall. Sam grew gray. You watched your boy ride his first bike, graduate high school, fall in love.

You held your husband’s hand as he took his final breath in a hospital bed. He left this world with a smile on his face — because you’d given him a good life.

And eventually… you grew old, too.

You died in your sleep. Peacefully. No monsters, no demons, no screaming.

Just darkness… and then—

Light.

The sun on your skin. A breeze in your hair.

You’re on a bridge. You’re in heaven.

Not just any bridge. That bridge. The one Dean told you about once — the place where he finally found peace.

And then you see him.

Leaning on the railing, arms crossed, a soft smirk tugging at his lips. His eyes are just as green as they were the last time he looked at you.

And your knees nearly buckle.

“‘Bout time,” he says, voice rough with emotion.