veneficusvenato | Alice, Through the Looking Glass

Alice, Through the Looking Glass

Do your job, you love it, Lee had said,

and Sokka hadn't helped adding, Be good
and we'll make it worth your while even.

For them, Jo'd stood still while two of the costumers got to make her over in a way she rarely agreed. She told herself if was for Sokka and Leah, but it was for Gillespie, too. Who might have been a Gil, but could have been a Dick, John, Harry or Bartholemuel, too. That was the job, after all. Part of which was dressing up and dragging the newest trainee to a Ministry Function, because that, too, required training this high up.

Learning that this was all part of it, too.

Blending in, using your real name, but with the longest-lived lie you were handed.

Today, which involved watching two people curl her hair and apply her makeup with wands, and even a board that looked more like an artists pallet. Then a short white dress, with just enough give to hide her wand but nothing else, and an even smaller, more ornamental, looking shoulder jacket.

It would have been lovely if that was the worst the night could offer. Dresses, makeup, small talk, and Gillespie. But things never went that easy, really, did they. She couldn't just go home and bitch to her people about the mind numbing boringness and the funny tasting food. No, of course not. Instead the night went from that to explosions, sparks raining purple and black, from two dozen people dressed in black and purple, and running.

Shoving Gillespie, while shouting and and firing behind them. Creating a diversion. A spectacle. They weren't meant to be the people who did clean-up or cattle herding of the ministry wives and children. This wasn't exactly what they were for either, but they excelled in a pinch. Just like a handful of the other groups that had been in the milling dinner crowd.

The throbbing knuckles, and the disarray of her curls, as well as a rip along one side of her skirt, had happened before the running started, but they were lost in that. The way running did. Took every thought that wasn't attacks, hexes, and counter-spells. Stumbling through the doorway that should have led to a staircase, but didn't. She felt it sizzle through her skin, but all the three wizards were following right after, and as a burst of purple exploded toward them, Jo shoved Gillespie out of the path.

But it slammed straight into her, acid burning and needle stinging, sending her stumbling backwards, with a crack that she was sure was one of those damned heels they'd insisted on, which only helped it. She reached out to catch the reddish drape hanging behind her, but her fingers went straight through it, and her shoulders followed sending her into a tumble.....

...that did not have her slamming the ground less than a second later.
Or the one after that. Everything went black around, and she swore she would
have Gil's ass for breakfast, as well as the costumers, and her best friends.....

....before the light returned in a blinding assault and Jo collided solidly,
in an all too familiar feeling, with another body beneath her.

[ Jo's Timeline: 1 Year Before Order of the Jobberknoll
SPN Timeline: ??? ]

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The evening had been simple, spending some time with Amy, annoying Dean, doing his best to juggle the slightly complicated and yet incredible life he led. It was a good evening, despite the complications. He recorded in his head several more moments of Dean looking... well, like he was choking between both wanting to yell at Sam or Amy, or both, or wanting to laugh, and say something like "Thank God." or "It's about time you got laid.", or something similar. He would remember those.

And it ended, or so it was supposed to, in bed with Amy, very nicely. Quietly, mind you, because they were both exhausted. But nicely. And he could lay there next to her, and grin. Or at least he could right up until there was a crack like a roll of thunder, right above his head, and a flash of purple and brilliant white light, and something like a rip opened up above him, and a body slammed out of that rip, which rip slammed shut, and the body slammed onto him, hard.

He barely had a moment to cry out, and one hand to slap the panic button on the wall, before blonde hair, white dress, and flesh, oh so much flesh, was covering his face.

What even was his life?

Amy scrambled to get out of the way, getting tangled up and falling on her ass. Because sometimes she wasn't a graceful as she liked to think she always was and things suddenly appearing put her off. She also liked to think that she'd be a little more use in that sort of sudden attack situation. But she'd been nearly asleep, so her claws had only killed off a pillow when she'd gone down fighting.

Sitting up and trying to untangle herself, Amy peered over the edge of the bed from the floor where she'd ended up. And there was a someone on top of Sam. It was a someone not wearing very much.

"Sam?" She wanted to know if he was okay.

Person shaped impact is hard, but somehow not a hard as she thought it would be, and she can tell a second later trying to push herself up why -- there's a bed. There's a bed and holy -- it's not his first name, it's never first names in the field, sometimes never even surs or initials, it's all depending, but it still shoots out of her, as she springs backwards.

"Winch-" But the shocked, confused word doesn't make it through the full syllables.

There's a hiss and a sharp cry when Jo tries to catch herself on her hand and sags sharp and fast from the pain it slams into her shoulder.

He heard Amy's word, and he tried to answer, but until the body was springing away, he didn't see, didn't answer, and then as he opened his mouth, he heard his name again, and then saw her, and heard her cry of pain and...

What the hell?

"Jo?"

Her cry and flinch, he knew those too well, and memory slammed into him. His mind told him it had to be a demon, or something else, but scent, and touch, and voice, and that flinch...

everyone flinched just so, just one way, when they were hurt, and this person... she flinched like Jo.

Sam slowly sat up, staring.

"Holy shit. Jo Harvelle? You died. What the hell is going on?"

One hand rubbed his chest, then he looked at Amy, confusion and old pain written on his face. "Amy, Jo. I think. Maybe. She was a hunter. Is--- was.... uhm..."

he stared at Jo again.

"What?" Somewhere near his bed was a gun, a knife, and even a hammer, but right now, he was just worried his instinct to go treat her obvious hurt would get him, or worse, Amy, killed. Shit.

Hunter.

That was the word that Amy heard first. Or more appropriately processed first. Hunter. Someone who could and she assumed would try and kill her given a chance. It was too late she could have seen Amy's claws. Her eyes. But the familiarity Sam said her name told Amy she didn't have to go on the offensive to keep him safe.

The fact the hunter, Jo, was hurt hadn't slipped her by. She looked to Sam then back to her.

"Want me to go get the first aid kit?" Because she thought Sam would want to help someone he knew. Might help show that she wasn’t so bad either. Still didn't mean she wasn't going to keep a wary eye on her.

Edited (phone tag lol hit send before I meant to.) 2016-03-17 07:46 (UTC)

It's because it's Sam, okay. Not in spite of the fact it is, that she lets herself sag on the soft bed. The words are a river of blaring noise, but he isn't moving, and someone to his side isn't either and she doesn't have time. Gil wasn't prepared for this. Not for a banquet hijacking. Not for being alone with three of whatever new sparkle squad decided to get a wand up their arses and try to make this kind of showing.

She pushed back up only second later, shaking her head at the girl and turning toward Sam.

"No. No, just fix it. I can't stay. I didn't even mean to-" Jo twisted her torso, looking at her shoulder at the same time as sort of positioning it more toward Sam. Trying not to feel woozy, and uncertain where at all that came from. She never got woozy. It wasn't one of her things. Not even this should have done it. Not even when her fingers are slick with blood, and that might be her shoulder bone under them in the ruin of skin, too.

"Just fix it, and I can go, and you can let Dean bitch all he wants about how I still break bones better than I mend them."

Sam nodded to Amy, starting to speak as Jo did, then falling silent, and staring. And blinking, then nodding to Amy again. "Yeah... and hot water. And... the silver bound book next to the first aid kit." He had a bad feeling about this. He flashed Amy a grateful look, and more, and then refocussed on Jo again.

Fix it? Shit.

He wet his lips, and stared, and his mind ran through possibilities, and then he nodded. "I think... there is something else wrong here." He swore to himself, under his breath, then apologized, under his breath, to God, then facepalmed at himself. Argh.

"Jo, ah... where were you right before you showed up here?" Somehow, this was starting to feel like a few of the adventures he had experienced with his brother that were... odder. Man, he hated those adventures!

But as he looked at Jo, alive and healthy, if hurt(ALIVE!!), he couldn't be mad at a new adventure rising. Not if she was back... from another... world.

Edited 2016-03-17 08:16 (UTC)

Amy gave one last look at Sam before she headed off. It wasn't final. She told herself that, that woman was in no state to get past Sam and come after her. There wasn't any danger. That was a lie. It bothered her. Taking as little time as she could to gather what Sam had asked. Only the water would be take the longest.

She ran to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil, scurrying around she found the book he had asked for and brought everything to the kitchen filling the empty coffee pot to use as a jug. She also pulled a beer from the fridge and a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. She took a drink from the bottle before she headed back to the room she shared with Sam.

"I got everything." She stuck close to Sam feeling safer. For herself and for his friend.

"Too long. He doesn't have that kind of time." He could be dead, dying, or captured. Maybe he got lucky. Maybe he took one of those bastards out. Maybe he got lucky and he was hiding. She didn't know. She didn't have the time to question it like a bump on a log. Nor for the slow butchering from the retrieved supplues over a fast torture of one that would at least leave her arm usable.

"Ministry banquet had a--" There's a flicked glance toward the girl. The one Jo didn't know. She could be another Unspeakable or she could be civillian. "--a problem. Here." She reached out for his wrist, all familiarity and seriousnes. "Just keep your hand here over mine even if I scream, good?"

Except it's not a question. He knows his job. They all know the costs are sometimes high, higher if you want to win. Jo closed her fingers over her ripped up shoulder, screwing her eyes tight closed, to focus harder, closer, without her wand to direct, only her focus, and started the first incantation of the Vulnera Sanentur, which was a soft, archaic latin sung nearly right at the barely there level of her breath.

Even as she shivered, pain like a knife, against her grip and her magic, the blood trickling down her arm slowed noticably.

Sam's eyes went wide as he reached for the things, but stopped as she spoke, and he held here hand over her arm, and he was confused. The move was so intimate and yet... so alien. And then... magic, magic flowing and strong and it prickled along his skin, not malignant, or benevolent either, but just there and his other hand reached out to grab Amy's, as if to somehow stabilize himself, and her, and Jo, all at once.

Even past his astonishment and the tingling, and the worry, and the sheer w-t-f Jo is alive(and a small part of his mind wondering what Dean would think), he forced words out, confusion demanding answers.

"What ministry, what thing? What happened? And who doesn't have that kind of time? Jo... I don't think that what you think is happening... is." Well, okay, her body is visibly healing before his eyes, yes, but... uhm. He has no answer for that.

Holy hell. "How did you get here?" The place was warded, mostly, or so he had thought. Didn't always stop bad guys, but...

When Sam reached for her hand, Amy didn't think or hesitate in holding it tightly. At first it was okay, then she started to feel odd. The kitsune wasn't sure how to describe it at first but it wasn't right.

Then the pain started.

At first it was nothing so bad, nothing that she couldn't cope with. Amy concentrated on what was going on. Watching what was happening with Jo. Though it was getting worse, she was starting to feel physically sick. Like too long without the food she needed, not what she sometimes ate to feel normal.

Amy tried to focus on Sam's voice, the darkness creeping in at the edge of her vision. But she was fighting it as much as she could. Saying it hurt was an understatement at the very least. Amy had never felt pain like it. Even the times she'd gone hungry didn't feel like this and that was what Jo was feeling? Amy would have asked what the hell she was to not be feeling it, but that was much more than she was able to process then.

"I need to sit down." Amy could barely hear herself say that as she slumped to the floor, letting go of Sam's hand as she went. Her only thought then was she hoped she still looked at least human. Or mostly, she'd take mostly.

Sam is talking. She can hear his voice, it's too close to drown out, but she can't open her eyes. She can't stop focusing even to look at him. It takes two more incantations. He knows that. He should know that. He shouldn't be trying to distract her. Not while it hurts like she's pushing her fingers straight into that wound and into her own bones, instead of stemming the blood flow.

Not while she's using half of her energy to stay partially upright, and the same half of her energy to have enough focus and direction for the magic of the spell. Two flames burning the same inch of wax from opposite sides. Ripping herself apart inside, worse than what was already there, just to put herself together. Part of who she is. Part of anything to get the job done.

The second starts without pause from the first. The same words, but no longer blood. It's cleaning it. Burning away anything she might have gotten in the wound since the moment her skin was burned by their magic. The third comes faster, because the words are flowing faster on her tongue, desperate to get all of them out and done. The third is going to be the worst, after all, without anything to counter it

It's her muscle beginning to knit together, to attach to the bone under her fingers. It feels like jamming a burning poker into the hole her fingers are on, and for a moment it does hurt, badly enough her shoulder jerks hard and her fingers almost slip between the bloody mess and Sam's palm......before suddenly it doesn't. Does. But not as badly. It's almost like the pain has become suddenly very distant. Three rooms over.

Warmth flooding the space it leaves, and making everything clearer. Her magic more certain, focused, easy.

Even if she finds her head somewhere near her knees, almost against the bedspread, by the time the third incantation finishes.

Sam believed in Jo, and in Amy, and in both of them, and he believed they could do this...

...and he felt, a moment later, a pulse of heat, and pain, ripping into him, somewhere deep. It felt like claws, like Lucifer tearing his soul, and Crowley reaching for him, and holy fire, burning into him, and...

He screamed, and let go inside, even as faith sprang up, and from that well, a heat rose like a fury, swirling away pain, away fear, away darkness, and he grit his teeth and stared at Jo, even as inside he prayed, somewhere down deep, for all three of them, and felt that resounding boom, like a sound but not one, as it finished, and then...

Jo was down, almost collapsed, and Amy was down, sitting almost collapsing, and Sam? Sam gave up the ghost, and darkness swam up, and swallowed him whole.

His head hit the wall with a thump, and he toppled to the floor.

Amy couldn't do anything as she watched Sam fall, Jo was on the bed just out of sight but she could still hear her breathing so she was still alive, as was Sam. That was what mattered, they were alive. She just couldn't find the energy to move.

It felt like something had drained her and keeping a hold on her human form was trouble without the pain on top. Amy could tell she still had hands, that was a blessing. She slowly forced herself to try and move. If she she could reach Jo then maybe Sam would have a chance.

With a lot of effort Amy rested her head on the bed, propping herself up against it. "Help Sam." She forced the words, "Please." She tried to keep her eyes open but couldn't quite do it. Which meant that her eyes changing to their fox like appearance wouldn't be noticed. However the ears and tail from under the shirt she was sleeping in, were a little bit harder not to.

Jo was still gasping air, but it was more shock than anything like pain. Pushing herself up as Sam fell, and the girl, said something to her side, clinging to the bed, and Jo's shock was still greater than any part of her rather vast and far reaching confusion. "What the bloody fuck was that?"

"What did you-How-" There were words, but they weren't making sentences, as Jo looked between them. The girl holding the bed edge -- with ears? Had she had ears earlier? Jo did not need to know these things about what Sam did or did not do in bed -- and Sam. Sam, who had fallen over. And she pushed herself forward, half sprawl to catch herself on her hands, which didn't hurt up her shoulder anymore. "Sam?"

There was a bit of concern split through that one.
The last thing she needed to do was make him hate her more. (Or Dean.)

Sam groaned as he sat up again, abruptly. "Holy shit." He stared at Amy, and at Jo, then back at Amy, and down at his hands, both of which now held what almost looked like brands, circles of reddened skin inlaid into his hands, in perfect rounds. he blew out a breath, because they didn't hurt, but they sure as hell felt like they should.

"That was... new."

What the fuck?

Amy heard Jo's questions to her. There would be time to answer them later. If she could. There was one at least she knew she was going to have to explain. Not that there was any hiding it from her then. It wasn't quite the way that Amy wanted to tell anyone what she was. Then again if she had her way the people who knew what she was would have stayed at two.

When she heard Sam's voice there was a new pain that blossomed. Had she ended up with everyone else's pain? "And not fun." She opened her eyes again. "I hurt." Amy's own magic was trying to make things right with her again.

"What the bloody hell?" Jo rocked back on her feet, still confused at what just happened and why everyone looked like a wreck. Even if she didn't feel as bad as she'd felt when she slammed the bed a few second back, she was sure of that. Except the girl was collpased and Sam's hands were red. "What was that? What did you do?"

What the hell kinds of magic with The Untouchables messing with these days?

That had been...That had. Jo was still breathing in hard and looking between them.

"No, you know -- no, I didn't mean to get here, and I have to. There's a kid--" Gus, Gil. Gilespie. She had to go. He was alone. He was new enough to have cellophane on him still. New enough she'd bitched about having to have him and now he was alone. "I have to go, Sam. You can call me." Even if he never would, and she didn't know if she believed more that he wouldn't tell Dean or that he would. She didn't think it would matter either way. It couldn't matter either way.

Gil and the Banquet. There was no time for her. For feelings. For second thoughts. She had to -- she focused hard, reaching for that space, picturing it perfectly, down to the damn dolley's on the floating platters, feeling the edges of herself waver as though she was blowing away -- right before Jo screamed and her hands fisted in the blanket, as though something sharp and hot had slammed straight down into her skull, keeping her solid in a threat to tear her right apart otherwise.

Sam rose as she spoke, and shook off the sheets, frankly not giving a damn that he was naked anymore, even as she seemed to flail in words, and then almost vanish. Before reacting like someone had slammed something into her head.

"Jo!" he reached for her, then, to try to help. "Damn! There's something magic going on here. Amy! Grab the ash can by the door and close the ward!" A line of salt infused, blessed ash should seal the prepared wards around the room, if something was attacking Jo. At least until they could find out what the hell was going on.

Even as he tried to ease Jo to the bed.

"Sam..." Amy began, unmoving from where she was still, "It's my fault." She turned and looked over to Jo slowly. Wondering what exactly the other woman had figured out. Clearly she'd figured out something she just wasn't sure what.

"I'm a kitsune." Amy looked away as she said it, because it would be the first time in a long while that she'd actually said that to someone. "You were fine until Sam took my hand, whatever happened it was because of me." She felt bad about that, the more she thought about it, the worse it felt because she'd hurt Sam as well.

Amy was sure about one thing, whatever had opened was now firmly shut. At least there and then. "You can't go back. At least not here, not right now. I'm sorry."

"No," Jo gasped, and shifted away from Sam's directing. Even his touch. Even if she never quite made it out of his hands, hands still on her skin, holding her up more than moving her, and making her gasp. Several answers in that one word. No to Sam. No to the girl with the bright eyes and ears. "No. It's -- It was --"

Bloody fucking hell, it felt like a whole band had exploded out from her head and her head was barely there, like a door with the last bits swinging on barely there hinges. "They did something." Not her. Not the girl. At least....Jo didn't think so. It hadn't hurt. She'd been okay until she tried to. She was sure the magic had slapped together something. Earlier. The first time. Something new. Something she'd never felt before. But. "Sam. They did something."

She didn't know what and she was still blinking her vision back toward anything like cohesion against the fading pain.

Sam flinched at her word, and stopped, not moving. He didn't take his hands away, but he didn't try to move her, either, and he pulled his hands back to just touching, barely, staring down at her. He did shoot a soft smile at Amy, briefly at her words. "I think, actually, it was... something more."

He looked down at Jo. "What happened, right before you came here?" Because he had a feeling magic was involved. He had felt, in that moment, old feelings rise, like when he had been exorcising demons, and when he had used telekinesis, and other things. And he had also felt Amy's power, somehow. But he had felt something else, too. Something from Jo, he thought.

And the combination still was burning in him. He felt a pull toward them both. Before, he had been, at least a little, always aware of Amy. But now, and not because of the positions of their bodies, or their closeness, he felt an almost inhuman awareness of Jo, too, and his awareness of Amy was heightened.

Something had happened. And he wasn't sure whether it was good or bad.

Amy nodded. Still, it all seemed to convenient to her to deny that it happened when it did. When she touched Sam. She was going to feel guilty. Nothing was going to change that. No matter how many times she was told otherwise. She decided that it was easier to just change into a full fox and she hesitated...

About to slink under the bed when it was dark she changed her mind and hopped up onto it, with a little less dignity than usual and an annoyed huff. She curled up at the bottom. Tail over her nose. Still watching and listening.

Things were coming back into focus. Colors and shadows becoming part of her vision, and a certain part of Winchester she never needed. "Woah. Hey-" Jo lurched to one side, raising a hand. "Sheets! Sheets, Sam."

She doesn't get far, sagging to her side, off her knees still on the bed. At best a foot, foot and half, before she's back on her ass, rubbing at her eyes, like somehow she could rub out all her veins, and muscles, and bones. "Bloody fuck, wasn't I blinded enough already?"

Meaning she's blinking and looking anywhere but at realizing Sam wasn't in sleep clothes. Not that she'd thought he was. Given the girl. But still. The girl who -- Jo's was blinking at the side of the bed, where there was suddenly fox. The jokes were a little too easy, and her vision was nothing like perfectly clear, and her lungs still felt too much like ash and sandpaper to go about making them yet.

She rolled her eyes while closed and blinked, looking at the fox and not Sam. "Winchesters, huh?"

Sam looked down at Jo, gaping, then facepalmed. and shook his head. That was Jo, alright. He laughed. He couldn't help it. He stood there for a moment, laughing, not caring at the view she got.

He laughed and slid off the bed, then petted Amy, once, before padding toward a bureau, then bending to retrieve underwear and pants. He slid them as he spoke. "Complaints, always complaints. Damn, it's good to see you again, Jo." Even if she wasn't his Jo.

"Now that I have pants on, we should get you sitting up and figure out what the heck is going on."

Alice, Through the Looking Glass

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