veneficusvenato | 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: ??? ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It gets the faintest tug from one side of her mouth. "I would put them back." Maybe.

Maybe, is what that almost-a-smile, that doesn't quite touch her eyes, says.

"Yeah. I'd like that." Jo considered after a second. Passing on the choice to just deflect into food. She really would rather be in jeans, and clothes, and shoes, and other things that fit correctly. Especially since she didn't know what would be coming at her from what side in this place yet.

"Sounds like a plan. Other stuff can wait until tomorrow. Stuff like how I met my version of you, your mom deciding that getting in a drinking contest with an angel was a good idea, so on," he says with a grin. Just tossing that second one in there. Of course, then came what happened the next day.

Jo raised her eyebrows, but this time her mouth pulled out toward a curl. "Yeah. That sounds like her."

Like every complaint her father ever made, about never staying in the muggle round and getting into twice as much trouble with the kinds of things found on their side of the line than anyone on the other side. If there had to be angels, Ellen Harvelle would totally be down for that kind of thing somehow. Jo liked to think a lot of traits came down to that, too. Straight up blood and sass, as much as any iota of magic made her who she was, too.

"I think it was somewhere around the dozenth shot he finally started to feel something," Dean says with a shake of his head. "It took drinking an entire liquor store to get him drunk a different time when he was kind of... upset."

Jo's mouth stayed in the stray curl the image had brought to her, making her shake her head at the whole concept. Her mother drinking with an angel, if not managing to drink him under the table the way she managed with almost anyone else who'd tried her on for size before Jo was stolen away by her letter, only to come back for summers and holidays.

The rest is a simple enough question, because the whole thing is still so....new. "What even gets an Angel upset?"

"God basically saying go away, the Apocalypse wasn't his problem. Kinda shook Cas' faith in the guy a bit, since he was counting on him to put a stop to things." It would make anyone drink, really. Dean may have done some of his own afterwards.

"Bloody hell." The words slip out more in surprise than in anything like straight off belief.

Especially when it's followed by, "Seriously? Angels and God, and God doesn't give a crap over here?"

Not that Jo was claiming she had anything like all the world's faith in God in her own place, time, universe, whatever it was they were deciding to call it. But maybe that was a reason to be grateful they didn't have angels or know if they did and couldn't see them. No one got told that kind of shit. And what was that even like. She hadn't even thought Angels were real a few minutes back, and God was telling Angels to get out and deal with the disaster of the world without him?

"He gives just enough to bring back Cas after he got his ass smote two different times by two different archangels and a few other things. But the big stuff? Nope," Dean says with a shake of his head, tempted to do a u-turn to head to the kitchen for a beer.

Along with trying not to be weirded out by Jo's Briticisms. That's going to take some getting used to.

Jo shook her head, not even sure there were words for that. That was fucked up. Beyond fucked up. Someone to heal you, but someone to not even give a fuck about the war that you were currently fighting in, possibly even in your name or for your planet. It wasn't like she'd ever had the best ringside childhood seat for thinking mercy on the fallen was ever a thing that wasn't just in song, but that.

That was just.....fucked. That was the only word for it.

If she was -- If they were -- If so many years hadn't -- and this wasn't.
There's this urge, shivers in her skin to nudge his shoulder, when she says the word. But she doesn't.

It's just the words, and the oddness of the want somewhere in her chest. Long dormant, but not asleep. "Sorry."

"We eventually got things taken care of without him. At least Gabriel felt like being helpful. Even if I had to yell at him first," he says with a shake of his head before continuing down the hall.

Alice, Through the Looking Glass

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