She had always believed there was something between them—a quiet, unspoken connection. They never put it into words, not really, but it was in the way he cared for her. In the way he spoke to her. In the way he looked at her. She had been so sure he loved her—loved her like no one else ever had.

How terribly, painfully wrong she had been.

When Sam went to Hell, it was as if something tore her chest wide open. As if someone had ripped out her heart, crushed her soul beneath their heel, and razed to the ground everything she had ever tried to protect. But then came something even worse.

Dean left.

He chose someone else. Someone who wasn’t as shattered. Someone who could give him a home, a family. A future. Someone good. Someone whole.

He chose Lisa. And though she understood—truly, deeply understood—his choice, she could not find it in herself to live with it.

In a single breath, she lost everything. Her family. Her friends. The love of her life.

She felt the world was punishing her—for every harsh word she had ever spoken, for every drop of blood on her hands, for every sin buried deep inside her, never quite forgotten.

She took refuge at Bobby’s place. She drank until the world blurred. She cried until the tears ran dry. And when there was nothing left, she threw herself into helping hunters from the shadows—because that, at least, still gave her some small illusion of purpose.

She was only a ghost now. A flicker of the woman she used to be—driven, fierce, full of love and stubborn hope. But hope had long since withered away. There was nothing left worth fighting for.

She knew Sam had come back from Hell. But she also knew he hadn’t come back whole. Whatever part of him had once been gentle, warm, and kind—that part was gone. All that remained was the shell of someone she had once loved. Someone she now barely recognized.

And so, when they both walked through Bobby’s door over a year later, asking for help with yet another hunt, it took everything she had not to greet them with silence and a scowl.

She sat at the table, the faint glow of her laptop screen casting shadows across her tired face. Every now and then, she raised a glass of bitter whiskey to her lips, letting it burn its way down.

She didn’t look at them. She couldn’t. She felt hollow. Betrayed. Alone.

She felt dead.

Because they had been her world—and they had taken that world and left her behind.

Dean sat down beside her, quietly. He watched her, eyes lingering on the edges of a woman he no longer quite knew.

It had only been a year, and yet, she felt like a stranger.

“Long time no see,” he said softly.