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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"Makes sense." Jo laid a hand on the door, before she looked back up. "Thanks, Dean."

It's a choice this time. The first one wasn't. Which makes this one feel like it is, the first, because the first just ripped out of her when she saw his face. But choosing to say his name and look at him. It's like being reminded she said she was sorry, but not for the right things, and he had no clue what those were or why either. So she just gave him a sort of perfunctory smile, of pressed lips, before walking into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Close the door. Don't think about it. Look at the room. Don't wonder how many years since she said that name not to Sokka, Leah, or a handler she was threatening to break into pieces if they did so much as attempt touch him. No. Nope. Not. Room. Shower.

Jo reached down and tugged the white -- and red, and black? From the car? -- one piece dress off over her head. Holding it for a moment before her in her left hand. It would be easy to clean. But. Really. It would be just as easy, to let go with her left hand while pointing her wand at it, leaving it hovering in the air, and instead of Tergeo, to just wrinkle her nose at it and let herself relish saying, "Incendio,"

and watch the waded crumple (of white and red and black) burst into a small ball of flames.

He gives her a lop-sided smile. "No problem. Go get cleaned up. I'll be back in a few."

Then he's heading off to his room to find a t-shirt, flannel shirt for her to toss on over it, and pair of his jeans, along with a belt since there was no way his jeans was staying up on her without it.

Once he's back at the showers, he knocks on the door to give her warning that he's coming in and enters to the very charred and still smouldering remains of the dress. "Really? You couldn't just throw it out like a normal person?"

She's too well trained to leave it there on its own, and really there's probably too much pleasure she takes in watching the thing burn in midair. Something caustic and a bit destructive to let herself focus the frustrations all simmering under her skin all into. The banquet. Gil. This place. Dean bloody Winchester. Who did, but didn't know her. This place. Lee & Sokka. Her promise to them. So new it still had plastic wrap on it.

So. Maybe. Yeah. She stands there. Watching it burn up in midair. With only her underwear, her wand, and her necklace left. For a long time. Because it feels good in some ways. To watch the edges sear, sizzle, and disintegrate in mid-air, vanishing as it did. It's almost hypnotic in a way, or it must have been, just watching it burn and fade away, because the next thing she knows Dean is knocking on the door, and making her scramble for a towel.

To have something in front of her, by the time that door gets opened. Since around was going to take far too many more seconds.

At least it helps that he's busy looking at the burned remains of the hovering dress and not her, with her barely-there towel shield being held mostly at right above her chest at that point. With her left hand and her right upper arm, pressing it between itself and her side. Giving him a slightly wide-eyed for the surprise look, that doesn't change from it becoming a flash of shocked sharp annoyance at his words.

"Your normal, you mean." And with that, and a sharp touch of a frown, thinking Scourgify as she flicked her wand at the floating remains and they vanished entirely. Not that Jo was going to point out that she heard that from a lot of people all the time. Superiors, family, friends.

Edited 2016-03-20 04:24 (UTC)

"And what if you set off the sprinkler system?" he retorts. "You know how to turn it off? 'Cause I don't."

"Come out when you're done. I'm gonna make a couple of phone calls," Dean says as he puts the clothes down and heads out of the room. Then he's leaning against the wall opposite, and calling Sam. A little bit of checking that indeed they were on the way home and that Amy was doing the driving, he filled him in so he wouldn't get blindsided by Jo's presence.

That call done, he calls Castiel next, fills him in, and asks him to swing by as certain people apparently have to let their inner pyro out.

She stares at the ceiling once he goes. Maybe grateful she hadn't set off a sprinkler set, and gotten drenched pre-shower. Maybe, also, annoyed that he didn't seem to have or even be buying the smallest clue, and every new graze of that knowledge felt like it was gouging out more of her skin, and there weren't skin layers left to furrow through. Sprinklers were easy. Most man-made structures were.

It wasn't, like, say if the ceiling just started raining. That might give her a headache to figure out.

It's stupid and even more frustrating, which has get in the shower to at least get clean. Leaving her last piece of clothing and her wand outside of it, not too far away, in case of anything. That was training as well as just plain smart considerations at this point. The hot water was heaven, and it was nice to get the blood and some traces of oil off her skin. She worried the knot of scar tissue with her fingers.

Attempting, after a few seconds consideration, the smallest of healing spells that wouldn't have helped it in the slightest, and was rewarded with the feeling like someone has suddenly punched her in the face. Yeah. Yeah, that was going to get old fast. Aggressive, receptive, deflective, and on and on, was fine, but not that. She blinked it back, and went back to the soap. Finishing up everything and just standing there in the high-pressure heat for another minute, maybe it was two, skin pinkening everywhere, before turning off the shower.

Easy enough to towel off and take a long second looking at the piled clothes. Dean's clothes. Even if he hadn't hand delivered them, she'd recognize this assortment, or at least she'd make the association to it, even if it was someone else's. Jeans and solid color undershirt and matching flannel. It was just missing a pair of well-worn leather boots and jacket thrown somewhere nearby. There's an old ache of prickled scar lines too deep at that thought.

It's a perverse play in hilarity, she thinks, once the jeans are on. Belted, and cuffs rolled to her ankles, and still hitting the tops fo her feet, because she didn't think he'd take too kindly to her resizing all of his clothes to fit her (even if she might have extended the right pocket to be able to hold her wand). The shirt goes on loose over it, and the flannel is still in her hands, when she's opening the door -- before taking a step back in some surprise to find him just waiting there on the hallway wall.

A jangled surprise, but something too familiarly warm splashing the inside of her chest at just him, being him, leaning on a wall, like he was holding it up while just waiting for her, and it made things hurt a little more than expected. "This going to be my new form of house arrest? Do I get to keep you as my babysitter now?"

"Hey, I ain't the one setting fires," he says pointedly. Not gonna be forgetting that anytime soon, nope.

Then he shoves off from the wall to start heading back to the garage. "Anyway, place is kinda big. Can you really say you wouldn't get lost until you manage to work out where everything important is?"

He doesn't bother waiting for a response before continuing on. "I gave Sam a heads up and they should be back any time now. I'm meeting them at the garage to help bring in groceries."

Jo only marginally manages not to roll her eyes, since what she did hadn't even touched anything in his house, if that was what he was calling this place, except to the air. She'd never burned down a place on accident, and he probably didn't want a number of how many places fell into the not an accident box.

"Should I take that as a request for a detailed list of all the reasons you need to watch me? That's hardly at the top."
She was much more dangerous, for many more reasons than that. Books full of them. With a codename, and no real life.

Her bare feet still stuck to the floor from the moisture in the shower and she nodded, a little uncomfortable with the knowledge that very suddenly there were about to be three (three-point-five?) more people in this space, that she didn't, as he pointed out, know her way around in much, and whom didn't know here, or would, but as a her that was supposed to be, apparently, very dead.

"Do I need to come down, or is there some room you'd like to leave me in, like a child or a small pet until you're done?"
Because social graces, what were those, when she didn't feel entirely like she was where she was meant to be.

"I suppose I could always lock you in the dungeon," he says with a straight face. Jo can feel free to try to figure out if he was serious about there being a dungeon. He was, but she doesn't need to know that for certain right now.

He only lets her marinate in that thought for a moment before continuing. "You really think Sam's gonna want to wait to see you? If he was the one driving, they'd already be here."

Jo smiled, for a brief second, before it vanished entirely again. It was a flicker like a candle flame, before it caught up, again (and again and again), that it wasn't about her. It was about...this other person who used to be her. That wasn't her, here, anymore than she was her here, and, fuck all, but pronouns were getting weird even in her head now. Jo reached up and rubbed at her neck, where it was still wet and dripping water off her damp hair.

"Were they close?" It's an odd question, uncertain if she should ask and positive she was getting on to ground where she couldn't not be asking things anymore. Not if she was stuck. Not if people were racing toward her, who didn't expect her, but did. It was going to become impossible not to. "Her." Still awkward. "Here."

Before, what had he said. Hellhounds. Something about being ripped apart by hellhounds in front of him.

"They were friends. Although we all hit a bit of a rough patch for a bit before she realized that she was pissed with the wrong generation." A round-about referral to John fucking up and causing her father's death.

Dean swears that he will give her more context behind what went on with the hellhounds eventually. Tomorrow is good enough. He can steel himself for Jo screaming at him tomorrow.

Jo stopped, fingers freezing at her neck, at that last word.

"Your dad." It's a question that isn't a question.

It's old. It never stops. Her voice is barely even to a whisper.
No. No. No. She wants to put those two words back, and all of Dean's.
Questions were the wrong thing. She shouldn't have asked about Sam at all.

"Yeah," he says, looking back at her. "Found out what happened when you yelled at me about it a few minutes after your mother told you when we got you back home after a hunt the three of us did. I'll add that you weren't even supposed to be there since Ellen told you not to, but outside of tying you in a sack and mailing you back home, we weren't going to get rid of you."

He's talking, and the words are all wrong. Which makes it worse.
Because his voice sounds absolutely right. It never stops sounding right.

She doesn't know how she got back there, but her back is against the bathroom door and her jaw is half-locked by the time he stops. Her expression a torn too many things. Pain. Denial. Confusion. Because it's not right. None of it is right. Her mom did tell her, but he'd known before she had, and there hadn't been any yelling. There hadn't ever been another word. She could never even remember exactly what his last word had been before her Mother dragged her off to tell her.

Something simple, she was sure. Like a yeah, for promising she'd be right back, really. But she'd never been willing to step back into her memories, or pull them out, to be sure. To touch the last second when she thought she'd known who he was, who and what they were, had always been, might be as long as the long road gave them.

There are too many memories in her head, and his words are still in her ear.

It's too close and too far, when she asks, "Did you want to?"

He goes quiet as he watches her reaction. Something's sure wrong. "I'm guessing things went differently for you. I got to wish I sent you home right about the time the bastard took you when I let you out of my sight, yeah. He was a ghost who targeted short blonde women; the reason you wanted to take the case. Your mom gave it to us because she didn't want you anywhere near it--or hunting for that matter--which turned out to be a smart call, 'cause if you worked it on your own, you would have just been one more disappeared girl."

"But since me and Sammy were there, Sam was able to figure out where to look and we got you and the last girl to disappear out. We weren't able to salt and burn the bones since they were buried in about two tons of concrete so we had to lure him to where we could surround him with a salt ring without it and him being disturbed."

Alls well that ends well, she wants to say, but she can't. Doesn't. Her throat feels closed.

She hasn't stopped looking at him, but none of that happened. Not ever. None of it. Maybe that thing with her mom.

She remembered her mom not wanting her to go to Hogwarts, but the letter was basically gold in her hands and her Dad had been so proud. They'd never needed to worry about the expense with his job, and it was another option after all the muggle schools Jo kept getting herself dropped into and kicked out of, and maybe her mother even agreed so that it took her away from the Roadhouse and her "uncles." She couldn't even begin to imagine. A life where she never left home. A life where her mother, and not the Ministry, had any say in what she did.

Dean's quiet for a minute, waiting for her to say something. "Come on, say something, even if it's just 'hold still so I can beat your ass into the ground'."

Jo being quiet was slightly unnerving.

Jo swallowed past that boulder in her throat, and maybe she hated him a little because her eyes burned for no reason she could specifically qualify. Maybe because that sounded even more real. That plea that masks itself as a complaint. The one that was too real. From that 5% that was not Dean's 95% shit talk. The one that begged, through shit, for something that wasn't real. Because real was worse. Come'on, be a brat, be a bitch, be anything but suddenly silent. Wherein silent might as well have stood in for hurt, which Jo Harvelle just didn't do.

Maybe even across worlds. She swallowed, again against it.

"I try to reserve that for when you're actually being an asshole." Not when he was being honest.
Not when he was talking about her, the other her saving her, and getting her home, and bloody fuck.

Just all of that. She didn't show up just so she could walk on graves and the whole world could be wrong. She was supposed to be in the middle of a firefight right now or, Goddrick willing, outside of it, back home, with a glass of scotch and a hot bathtub, dress and heels left on the floor by the door. Or screwing someone she picked up on the way home, high on a ministry win and not giving a damn.

But she isn't home (..and she isn't dead..) and Dean is here.
Looking pained by her existence and her silence (..just like her....like Dean from her world).

So, she does what he asks, what she can, what she's done for a whole world more hundreds of times that she could begin to count. She takes breath and she balls her fingers in the flannel still in her hands, and instead she says, almost too conversationally, pushing off the door. "We should head down to the garage, right? Keep your brother and his tots from racing every corridor to find us?"

Relief washes through Dean when she starts talking again and he gives her a small grin as he starts off down the hall again. "Sam'll be the only one trying to track you down. Jacob's more likely to more wary of you due to the whole hunter thing and Sam and I being the only ones he and his mom can trust, pretty much."

Well, at least he got that much right still.

Jo walks by his side, fingers in Dean's flannel, shoulders back, eyes watching the things on the wall. Doors and decor. Making a map more out of habit than out of anything like a plan. Listening to his voice, as it slides back into normal, from the other, so very quickly. "Because?"

"They're kitsune. And I'm only bringing this up because if you go poking in the fridge after someone's made a run at the morgue, you're bound to notice the pituitary glands in a jar," he says, letting his strides lengthen, certain that she'll keep up.

"People tend to be a little weirded out when they find pieces of brain sitting with the beer," he adds with a half-smirk.

Jo looked to a side, at some surprise, but no more really than that surprise that had come with 'Sam has a girl, with a kid, and a kid of his own on the way.' That was an odd revelation, but more it just made her look over at him with a sort of bewildered expression briefly while they walked. She'd never quite thought of Sam as one of those, but you know, you got your kicks where you got your kicks.

Dean was already on board, though, so it couldn't be the worst thing at all, and his brother had a kid on the way. There was a whole lot of huh to go around there, which was at least five hundred steps up from having to listen to her own world gone backwards and upside down.

"Wouldn't it just be easier to have two fridges if you get people staying around here who had those kinds of issues in the middle of the night? Or like a mini fridge specifically for the beer, in wherever or whatever you have in the way of a living room in this place?" Beat. "Or, I don't know, a liquor cabinet with better stuff than just beer on offer at midnight, since what people want at midnight usually isn't just to get a light buzz?"

"The amount of people we let in here can be counted on one hand. You know what hunters are like, or should," Dean points out, giving her a side-long look. "We're not gonna let just anyone in within range of Amy and the kid. Anyway, we do have whiskey. Just not in the fridge."

There's no hesitation. "Interspecially bigoted."

Beat. "But still right eight out of ten time when on their count."

That was the thing about family. Family was the only one who got to insult family, because in the end, you still knew them for their flaws as much as their successes. She loved both where she came from and where she ended up, even if the prior didn't know more than twenty-five percent of what was out there magic-wise, creatures and powers, the glory and the absolutely wicked terror.

Jo gave him a look, glanced off her shoulder, without a pause from those two statements. "And if you're going to get your knickers in twist, you said 'people' first, not me, so if you're going to count only you and your brother as people in that kind of statement, it's your fault, not mine for taking you at your word."

Or its her fault, but only for trusting him. Which, honestly. She was always going to lose that war.

"Fine, smartass. The amount of people not already living here that we let in can be counted on one hand," Dean grumbles. Then he skips a beat. "One of the people we let in is on his way. His name's Castiel and he's an angel. Something happened a while back that clipped the angels' collective wings, so he has a couple days drive to get here rather than doing the not here one moment, here the next thing."

It's almost out of her mouth to say, And somehow you think you can trust me?, but she stops it.

Or maybe he does. Because she stops short, at least a step behind him when she says, "Angels? Like in the clouds angels?"

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