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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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."

"So much trouble to keep in line." The fox had an oddly smug look to her as she sat up and put a paw out to Jo. When Sam petted her she tried to lean into his touch, nearly overbalancing herself as he moved away and turning to watch him. She was allowed. Though if anyone said anything about that or the worse of the two, nearly falling over. There wouldn't be trouble. Just a lot of denial.

"If you two want to catch up, I can go? She didn't mind, she could go make them something to eat before heading into the archives. Leaving them to talk.

Jo doesn't know what to make of that comment. It's the last thing she'd expect Sam to ever say to her. It's been years, and it wasn't like she'd left with so much as even a goodbye glance at Dean. She'd dropped him cold and she'd let the Ministry play Big Bad Block for her. Even if she threatened to send back ribbon'd boxes of anyone who dared touch Dean or take away his memories of her.

It was fucked. But it was all she had to give, or could take, then. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

She looked down at the little paw and actually reached out a hand to touch it lightly. Soft, against her slowly forming focus of her vision and against her fingers, as she slitting a half look toward Sam. Like she was being careful he wouldn't be a dick and just be standing there naked. Except he wasn't Dean, and he did have pants. Letting her blink and look at him normally, offering. "Already sitting. Point one, WHD."

She looked between the two of them at the foxes question -- maybe a little surprised when it spoke than by it at all. Who exactly was the animagus that Sam drug into his bed, that could somehow actually speak in English while in an animal form? She let the question hang between them, uncertain how much Sam wanted a civilian hearing or not hearing.

Sam stretched and shook his head, looking at both of them.

"Amy, stay. I have a feeling we can use your knowledge. You've spent more time here around these books than any of us. And frankly, I trust you more than almost anyone else in the worlds. Also, your senses might have some answers I don't."

He spoke clearly and succinctly, meeting both of their eyes to make his point.

Then he nodded. "Can you tell us, exactly, what happened before you were suddenly landing on me?"

Edited 2016-04-24 16:05 (UTC)

The fox stopped herself responding to the stay comment, there was a good number of jokes to be made there but not so much appropriate to the situation. So she just ended up laying back down, saying she was staying put without having to say it.

Amy had to wonder what Jo was thinking. If she wanted her to leave, if she'd speak up. But Sam saying how much he trusted her. How kind he was n the way that said that she didn't get out all that much. It made her feel better. She wanted to tell him all that and more but with Jo... That wasn't going to be possible right then.

"I love you, Sam..." She promptly felt like she should be blushing. Thankful she had fur and was red anyway. "I'll help if I can."

Well. That's not awkward or anything. Jo's totally not rubbing at her neck and waiting for them to finish having their moment there. Since it's not like she fell into their bed or anything. Probably while they were potentially already busy and up to what people got up to. In bed. With clothes. Where people did not usually fall out of the sky on to you, suddenly. Which the thought of made her look up, but there was nothing else there.

The blank ceiling was blank and mostly dark, as Sam started talking to her again. Making her look over.

"I was in a fight." There's a second her gaze tracks back to the fox, but Sam chose to have her stay and he knew what that could meant. She had to, too. Still she was careful. Because there were oaths, and then there were oaths. "There were three of them, and I was trying to get Gillespie out before the worst of it could hit him. It was his first night in the field. At one their functions."

his their gets a faintly beleaguered pressure and look, like he'd understand.
Minstry functions. Faults of the job, like glass in your shoe, but you did it. For the job.

Edited 2016-04-24 20:54 (UTC)

Sam stroked Amy's scruff, and smiled down at her, mouthing, 'I love you too', before turning his attention to Jo and listened.

"Okay. Now go back and... " he rubbed his face. "I don't know who you work for. This isn't your universe, I don't think." He shook his head.

"Somehow, you were knocked... here." His lips twisted lopsidedly. "At a delicate moment, which might have contributed. " He didn't know a lot about tantric magic, but he knew some of it could build up even without knowledge.

They could talk. Amy was quite happy being petted like that, might even fall asleep. She had a similar sort of thing when she was back in her human form. Though no one needed to know about that who didn't already. Doing things with her hair made her sleepy.

Amy was about to put her paw on Sam's arm when she thought he was about to say what they were doing. In absence of anything to hide under, Amy put her paws over her eyes. Maybe they'd forget about her.

Jo is going to screw him up a surprised, and disgruntled,look.
"You know, can we not say that? And just pretend you never did? Just. No."

The last thing she wanted to think about was Sam Winchester, in flagrante delicto, dragging her down from the sky, or through curtains or whatever the bloody fuck that had been. She was going with No. Just. No, and more no. Magic, yes. Sam Winchester's penis? No.

The rest was beating hard at the edges, as she clung to the only thing she could correctly reject outright as his other words sank in with alarm speed. Trying to take the breath out of her chest. The breath she'd barely gotten back to breathe, in the chest that still ached like someone thought she was gong and rang every cell in her body at 300%.

"What are you talking about?" Not knowing who she worked for. She worked for the only real government force the country had.

Sam kept one hand on her fur, petting Amy, as he spoke mostly to Jo, thinking outloud as often as answering her.

"A few times, over the years, Dean and I have been propelled into alternate universes, universes that possess the same people, but some event has gone differently. Often, it changed everything." He sighed.

"I have no idea who you work for, or where you're from, but I know you're not from this universe, as..." he fixed his eyes on hers. "the Jo Harvelle in this universe is dead."

It's idiotic, that's her first thought when she realizes she's still staring at Sam, to the fox, back to Sam, but her hand went to the amulet at her neck at first reaction. Fist curving too familiarly around it. The solid, heavy weight of the brass in her hand. Before she drops it. The second she realizes. How idiotic it is. Even while the words tumble out, hard and incredulous, "That's not possible."

She wasn't dead. (Even if she wouldn't be surprised if Dean wanted her to be. Or wanted to pretend she was. Or wished she had. For how she vanished. For how she let the Ministry be the wall between them it was supposed to be between her and the world. He'd deserved better.

But so had she. Hadn't she? Is he'd loved her at all?)

She couldn't be somewhere else.

Could she?

Edited 2016-10-13 11:55 (UTC)

Amy was on the edge of falling asleep, even if it was a very odd situation. Even accounting for the Winchester element to things. Curled up and being petted set her into a very content and sleepy place. Jo's words jarred her out of that.

"Which isn't? Being dead or being here?" Amy then nudged Sam's hand with her nose at Jo holding whatever her necklace held. Something that she did herself plenty of times with the little stars and moon when she needed reassurance. Maybe it was time to face being human again. Recovering enough energy to keep herself to her normal appearance.

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Alice, Through the Looking Glass

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