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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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?"

"Like stayed up there where they belonged, leaving us alone until the Apocalypse got rolling and they started swarming the place to try to keep the seals to Lucifer's Cage unbroken," he says, stopping in turn to look at her. "A lot of them are dicks."

Her eyebrows may have gone a little higher even at Lucifer.

"Well, you certainly didn't decide to have a boring life without magic." Jo shook her head.

"You and me," Jo said a second, later, starting to walk, again, while trying to figure out how to even fold that bit of knowledge inside her brain, without having a million questions from it. "We're going to have to make like a cross-referenced list about the monsters and things that are here and back home."

Dean snorts as he starts walking again. "The only times being a hunter is boring is during the stretches when nothing's popping up on the radar. And even then, it just gives time to rest up and resupply."

And become antsy for something to do if it lasts too long.

"Now you sound like one of the guys from back at the Roadhouse when I was growing up." It's blase and breezy, with something of a smile trying to tug its way across her mouth, as she's walking. Just a cast-off comment as she keeps going.

"Differences aside, it's not too unlike that back where I'm from. It's just a whole lot more--" She searched for a word, not even sure which one she needed. Magical, was obvious, given everything he'd already seen of her. She knew now that monsters and fantastic beasts existed that no hunter would have believed in even.

But it wasn't even that. It was that it was really a lot more "-- global. Which removes downtime in a lot of ways."
That was before they brought in mandatory leave, too. That she mostly got around. Except during. Well. Those years.

"Other countries have their own hunters. There's plenty to keep me busy here without looking for more in places where I don't know the language. So. Saying you're a globe-trotter now?" Dean keeps walking as he talks, not pausing for a moment.

"If by now, you mean pretty much since graduation," Jo shrugged, though it was more with the lift of her hands and the flannel in them, than her shoulders, given the walking. "Depending on who needs what, when, and where, I've been anywhere from just home base to five different countries in a week. But apparating makes that a pretty easy thing for us."

Her group, or her kind. She could have meant either or both. Though, honestly, thinking about, she really shouldn't have been talking to him about it anymore at all. But then she'd already broken the most cardinal of rules if he was a muggle. She both performed magic in front of him, several times, and even once on him, without asking permission that time either.

It wasn't, she told herself, like she was handing off trade, case, or mission secrets. Even if it was rule breaking.

"You could stand in a different country every few minutes, if you were making a game of it, and had safe landing zones."
Plus, if you didn't entirely wear yourself out, or actually have things to do, kill, find, catch, take over, remove, partner with.

If her higher ups somehow found out about it, she could always point out the books and movies in this world meant for muggle children let the cat out of the bag long before she did. Along with how was she supposed to know he was the wrong Dean right away.

"Huh. Sounds like a convenient way to get the real thing if you feel like having Mexican food for lunch and Chinese for supper. Assuming you can communicate with whoever you're trying to buy the food from." Hopefully, Jo isn't surprised by the focus on food. This is Dean, after all.

"Definitely makes cravings, for anything really,--" Anything at all. Food. Things. Places. People. Everything. "--easier."

It, also, made a very clear reflection of you not wanting to be somewhere when you didn't appear there, and went right on not appearing there. For a week, a month, a few months, a few years. It didn't change that you still could feel the exact flavor of the location. The well-worn path, like fingers on a wall, the taste on your tongue of something so familiar, that you just chose not to give in to, but never forgot the exact steps for.

How many times had she considered it, and how many times had she just talked herself right back out of it.

"And languages can be handled." There's a wave of her hand. Magic did a lot, and only so much in some ways, too.

"Magic can't do everything," Dean points out, not missing the reference. He doesn't have to worry about the bunker getting turned into the Sorcerer's Apprentice, is he? Because that would be a little much. To say the least.

"Case in point," Jo says, without thinking about.

Meaning herself and this place, but actually wincing when she realizes she meant more. She meant Dean, too. In to many ways for that to have been a safe comment to make out loud at all. Dean, being who he was. Dean, not being her Dean. And Dean. Dean, himself, somewhere else, and the fuck all of years that had passed since that fuckup had happened.

They'd had enough magic to take the ministry, their jobs, and the world by storm, but it didn't fix any of this.

"I'm not gonna ask," Dean says mildly, trying to think where else to go conversation-wise from there. Right, moving onto practicalities, he thinks. "You gonna want to go out to get new clothes today or wait until tomorrow? One of these options gets you stuff that fits properly sooner."

"Smart," Jo replied, but her tone is almost arch.

Almost straight along the lines of Of course, you aren't.

There's a look-over, for the safer of the two topics, and she nods with a shrug. It's weird. It's definitely super, super, weird to be in his clothes, that even if they smell fresh and washed, still manage to smell like him. Remind her of things that haven't been in a really long time. Not that she would have stolen his jeans, but she had at a point stolen enough shirts and flannels from the side of the bed on weekends and stolen work holidays.

"Yeah. That'd probably be better than me deciding not to shrink your clothes." At least she was honest. About that much.

Alice, Through the Looking Glass

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