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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"Firefight," Jo replies, but there was the faint tug at the edge of one side of her mouth.
Like that was clarification beyond 'fight.' "And something else. I think."

Because it was harder to think than it should have been.
Not impossible. But like there was a weight on her head.

She's watching him, and the pile he's making, with a wrinkle in her brow. Archaic and simplistic pieces for the knowledge and skils she had now. They'd both had, except he kept saying he wasn't, hadn't didn't. But he moves exactly like he should. His face. His voice. Gruff manner. All of those are so on key it's like standing with a ghost of who he should be.

"Bastards decided it was the perfect time to target the families probably. It's not the first time."

"You know I don't know who you're talking about, right?" he asks rhetorically. She's just going to have to live with his methods unless she feels like magicing herself better. He only knows bits and pieces that he had to pick up while hunting. "What needs dealing with first?"

"You do." Jo shook her head. "I can't promise entirely to be standing for mine, so you're first, because I might need you."

She looked at the room, the piles, him. Not him. Definitely not him when saying those words. Any words like those last ones. It was too much like looking at a blinding light. She'd been living a perfectly fine half-life before any part of him needed to go existing in her breathing space, again, and the more he kept existing the less it felt like there was any air for breathing. Or maybe it was the thing in her head, or the blood loss. She'd really rather take those over him.

"There was a ministry dinner. See article one," Jo says it mockingly, with a wave at the short white dress that used to look pristine and in one piece. No dirt, no blood, no rips. Though she'd probably mock it even if it hadn't gotten messed up. She hated playing babydoll for anyone. Even her bosses. Even only three or four times a year. "They like to call them mandatory occasionally.

Usually they are just boring, high-minded and even higher paid, wizards and witches, talking about even more boring topics than themselves."

The mention of witches and wizards gives him pause and he stares at her for a long moment before working on getting his own injuries cleaned up, starting with his arms. "Somehow, I get the feeling you're talking a different kind of witch than the ones who do the black magic, swear themselves to the Devil crap that I sometimes take out."

"That may be the first sensible thing you've said." Jo said it with the curve of a smile. "Yes."
The last word a little pressed, both like he should know better and like she was clarifying him being right.

It's weird to have to clarify. It was always a language they already spoke, two different ones they didn't have to explain to each other. That they'd always had to avoid for others. Well, she had. He'd always had Sam. Magic and monsters, families and futures, oaths that couldn't be broken and roads that couldn't ever be given up for anyone, even each other, that neither of them ever asked or even wanted the other, too. It had been a good little island. That flat of Dean's.

"A very different kind." Except to her it didn't feel different. Even when she'd be growing up, begging the universe to send her that letter, she'd known about magic and monsters. Even before she was allowed near either. "Not that there aren't the bad kind in the wizarding world, too. People and monsters who just want to muck with dark magic and use it to screw over their fellow man, wizard, witch, or muggle."

The word 'muggle' results in Dean pressing the antiseptic pad he was using a little too hard against the scrape he was tending, making him hiss in a breath. Then he quickly wraps up what he was doing for that part and throws it out before staring at her instead. "Like Harry Potter and crap?"

Jo's head cocks. A thin blonde eyebrow raising.
"I wouldn't say we usually lump 'and crap' in with HP."

There's a look upward and a shift to her head, that freezes a little too suddenly when her lean tried for a half-second to involve the list of her shoulders one direction with her, in a freer give to admittance. "At least not while sober. Or on uncertain premises." Everything else-wise was, of course, a whole ton of free game. Especially among heroes and legends and shadows with no names and no faces. They got it, and they liked to debate the legacy issues with that story.

Edited 2016-03-18 04:11 (UTC)

"Yeah, well, wherever the hell you're from, I doubt he's just a character in some kids books that were written awhile ago," Dean retorts. "There's movies based on 'em. I watched some of one once when it was on tv and I had nothing better to do."

He was actually reasonably entertained, even if he's not going to admit to it.

"There're --?" Jo squinted at him. "I'm not even sure I want to know." It's a lie. She always does.

"I mean, it's not like there aren't dozens and dozens of unauthorized autobiographies and near to the friends or families texts and interviews, media pieces, artworks, especially at the school, but the last thing he'd ever want would have been more." The man in her books never struck her as someone who specifically seemed to have wanted anything he ended up with. It had seemed even more so when it was whisperings among old contemporaries of his.

She eyed him, not so much distracting or deviating, as asking on top of it. "You done killing yourself over there now?"

"I'm saying him, Dumbledore, Diagon Alley, fucking huge snakes, all of it, ain't real here. Made up. Fiction." Dean checks himself at the mirror, clearing up the blood on his face. "Yeah, I'm done."

"They said that about everything our parents did, too." It's a little too calm, and a little too easy to say, almost blase, because her life is all it has always been, even if it suddenly seems unreal to him, and it's all the way out of her mouth before she has any clue if he is the right person with the wrong mind, or is the wrong person and who has an entirely different past, life, family, because of all of this.

"Over here." Jo shifted back, and pushed herself up on a counter. Even though she had to grit her teeth and clench her eyes closed just to get there. "I need you to make sure that I don't stop once I start." Beat. "Or that I just don't fall down and slam my head on something." If she decides to pass out or something.

Yes, because passing out, and not screaming, was totally the bigger problem, since she couldn't make him fix it.
Even if he could, he might not have anyway. At least she would tell herself that, and let herself believe it.

"I guess now's a bad time to tell you an angel once dropped Sammy and me into a universe with a tv show about our lives with actors who looked exactly like us 'cause the whole thing was fake," he says with a smirk as he saunters over to where he could grab her if he had to.

"If you start to fall over during whatever you're doing, I've got ya." Believe him, he'll be keeping a close eye on you.

"You always do end up in the oddest places, don't you?"

There's something almost wistful, almost oddly fond, about those words, even with their edge and the smallest of small shakes of her head. Her world isn't. Fake. And she does have to get back to it. To Gil. To that banquet. To whatever happened. Wherever it was left. However she ended up here, and in the room before here, that wasn't, she was positive, in that first building.

It's easier than paying any attention to his last words. All business. Business is safest.
Even with the faint, but solid, weight resting against the bare skin over her breastbone.

She picked up her wand, having to change it to her left. Hating the need for non-dominant use, but it was her right shoulder and she'd never manage a hold if it was twisted up, the muscle tight and lifted the whole time. Lining her wand up with an inch away from her right shoulder, she tapped on her left elbow with her righ fingers as she looked at him. "Don't let me drop this either. Your cabinets--" The ones above and behind her, sitting on the counter. "--don't need any help currently."

Jo took a breath, looking at him, only a second before closing her eyes. She didn't want to look at the fact she didn't have a single reason not to believe him, and even if she did, it wouldn't hold a candle to the reasons she did. She just closed her eyes, left fingers tightening around her wand, right fingers tightening on the edge of the counter, and started to recite archaic latin very softly, almost a song, right at the bare volume of her breath.

"Tell me about it," he says wryly. Then he's nodding once at her next words and staying quiet so she could get on with things. No matter how weird that Jo of all people is using magic. With a wand even.

The first round is easy, or it's supposed to be, which why she knows, again, something is wrong.

More wrong than just the fact her shoulder is a stinging, burning ruin. The disarming spell hadn't seemed hard, but then it was a rudimentary spell. A spell children and duelers alike needed and used. It was not an advanced healing spell meant to actually manipulate the atoms of your body to your will. Which should have been hard, but it should not have felt like she was pushing through walls of sand.

The blood flow still slows down, then stops, but it already feels like pulling teeth and her knuckles are whitening on the counter edge. Which doesn't bode well since the first two rounds are the easiest. The second goes the same as the first. It's still feels like the wand is being shoved into the wound, and not being held two or three inches away, but she can feel the magic sliding through it. Cleaning out whatever might have been picked up on the floor, the car, the fight.

By the end of the second, her left arm is starting to shake visibly, teeth gritting, and it's starting to feel like she's pushing against a rock.

Jo's reactions aren't lost on Dean, making him give her a look of concern. He would prefer she not keel over and make him need to catch her. "Are you sure you should keep going?"

He promises he won't mind patching her up the rest of the way to the best of his ability. Which it looks like he's going to need to do.

"Have to." Is grit out. Even when she shouldn't pause for words. She shouldn't break her concentration for anything. But his voice evades all of her logic. Slides. Into her ears. Into her chest. She can't not hear that voice. Her shoulders are starting to shiver, and she's holding hard as possible to the focus of the healing. "Have to get back to Gil." Her teeth are so tight between words it makes her jaw ache, down into what feels like her collar bones. "The others."

"Something's wrong. They did something--" Something else. Something else. Something else. "--else."

She can't checklist it. She has to stay focused, even when her shoulders curl, and she thinks that new pressure is her chin hitting her chest. Spine curving. She has to get through the words. She has to start them again. Her fingers on the counter staying white, something she can't feel anymore, beyond a desperate need to focus. Words. Words. She has to say all the words. Each one harder than the last as the muscles over the bone in her shoulder start reknitting what feels like a strand at a time, and the skin over that at the edges is already trying to push together, melting and covering cracks and tears.

It feels like her focus tries to splinter the harder she pushes, the harder she forces. The pain is overwhelming, and she doesn't have to question that she'd probably be seeing spots if her eyes were open. That the pain outside of her half-wards would probably have her trying to pitch further forward, losing what dinner she'd had, than she was already trying for. The counter barely felt and the want to curl into a ball loud against the locked shake of her body.

"Dammit, Jo," Dean swears, starting forwards to catch her if he has to. "You're too fucking stubborn for your own good. If you try to keep going, you'll pass out."

He can ask who Gil is later, if he doesn't forget about it. Right now, he's more interested in keeping her from hurting herself in her attempt to unhurt herself.

There's something that's a hiccup of a laugh, and oh bloody fuck she shouldn't laugh, that hurts, but it's sounds right. That sounds so right. Her name, against those words, that tone. Swearing at her, in a way that sounds both like an order and pleading. All at once. His voice in that tone. How long has it been. How many years. He's close now. Too close. Not close enough. And she has to wonder if she is going to fall off a counter, doing a healing spell of all things. Breaking, not mending. Breaking, not mending. He always said. He was always right.

"Price of the party." He knows that. He knows what they signed up for. Blood and promises. (Be safe.)
The price is everything that it has to be, and it has to be themselves, well, they signed up for that party, too.

She starts. Again. A second time, or is it a third. She has to get through the third recitation without breaking it again. He's such a bad influence. He always was. Kept her in one piece. Happier than she ever was before. After leaving them. Mend. Mend. Mend. The words are Latin, but the thoughts are brutal. Images, not words. Like a jackhammer, and she knows it's force not finesse that is going through her numbing fingers, when her hand -- body? -- shakes so hard her wand actually slips from her hand and her hand snaps up, snapping, clawing fingers hard around her shoulder instead of floundering from her wand.

Focus, focus, focus. Just get through the words. Two more lines. One. A few words. It feels like something is exploding inside her head.

Snaps, against the last word, as she feels it snap free. The words finishing. The pain giving. The explosion blooming in her head. When the words become not Latin, but English, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, bloody fuck,", and she's trying to curl toward her knees, and there's no counter balance in the thought of it, or the fact she'd been precariously balanced on a counter as it was.

Needless to say, Dean saw her pitching forwards coming and grabs her. Just what she needs on top of everything else; landing on her head.

"You overly stubborn pain in the ass," he mutters, shifting his hold on her so he could carry her over to the bed and lay her down. "Always gotta prove you're just as tough as any guy hunter, don't you?"

That's. She's not. Words hurt. But her brain won't shut up, and her breathing doesn't stop. So suddenly, the usual of old, old familiarity is almost as brutal as everything else. With nothing to prepare her, and no means to have been held back. Suddenly, she's breathing in leather, warmth, motor oil, and Dean. And she wants to swear as much as she just wants to tuck her head into his shoulder, against his neck. Where it will be warm, and his pulse will be beating. Where she used to tuck her face, her nose, like she owned those inches and everything else connected to them.

There's a bed a second later, and she's blinking. As suddenly as he was pressed against her, he isn't, and she almost hates that, too. There's a lot of hate to be spread around. Some at him, most at herself. A lot at the new Sparkle Tossers. But giving is not in her vocabulary. Not ever. "I am." Her fingers pushed into her forehead, and she twisted, even when it swung her vision dizzy, spotted, to her shoulder. It looks more like she cauterized her skin than healed it. But it was closed. All one piece. Scarred. (Things her team could handle later, or she could. Since it was the only scar on her.)

And there's that taste still. That one at the back of her throat. Again. That strange sharp, sweet thing, strong again.

Jo scowled, remembering where. "That is the last time I eat anything from Paraguay when not in Paraguay."

"Glad you agree with me on the pain in the ass thing," he says almost cheerfully before turning away to get something to wipe up the blood with. "The water pressure in the showers here are awesome. Once you can stand up without tipping right over again, anyway."

If she tries to get out of that bed too soon, he swears he will tie her to it.

She wants to say to him that Tergeo will make that go faster, without getting it everywhere. Especially in white fabric. She should never, ever, ever let them dress her when it was not for undercover. It was such a bad idea. Tiny nerd witches cooing over her like she had given them the fourth coming in agreeing to this one night. But her brain isn't helping.

"They potioned everyone. It was in the drinks. It had to be." He's talking about showers, and Jo shook her head, trying to push up toward sitting. Gil. The Ministry. "So that they'd have the upper hands, while the greater portion of people were suddenly spelled against being able to be helped after the first attacks."

It was even more reason why she couldn't stay there.

"Lay down or I will tie you down," he says firmly, seeing her trying to sit up when he turns to return with something nice and damp to clean the worst of the blood off her with. "Do you have any idea how you got here? If you don't, it might be awhile before you can get back home."

Not that he entirely wants her to leave. Yeah, risks of the job, nothing's more important, yadda, yadda, but considering...

Her eyebrows go up, but the problem keeps being he's so very...himself. It sounds right. It looks right. She believes the threat is there. Even when she wants to scoff. Even when she already unhanded him with a disarming spell, that wasn't near anything in offensive magic really.

But even for saying, "You could try," she's frowning faintly, dropping back to her elbows and then her back.

Not because of the pain, or maybe a little because of the pain, but mostly because of the rest of his words. Stuck here? After leaving Gil at their mercy? After leaving the whole party that way? Not that she was going to single-handedly save hundreds. There were dozens of them, her group and several others, in those mandatory dinner crowds. She wasn't even usually assigned anywhere near homeland ususally. But do nothing?

How had she even gotten here? Via verdant drapery? One that had not been anywhere in the garage once she'd gotten upright.

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