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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Jo snorted. "Yeah, Winchester. That's what I'm about. Hiding boots from you."

She can't help herself, even knowing the words rolling out. "It's not like it's a world or something."

There was a roll of her eyes, that really did not a single thing to assuage the flash of amusement and admonishing rejection mingled against silent laughter in her copper eyes. She fell into step with him, sliding into casual with overly trained ease, as she gave a nod toward where all the cash registers and lines had been coming in. "I'm sure what you all have will be fine. It's not like any of us are hoping this lasts all that long, right?"

"It might be nice if you could figure out how to get back and forth easily," Dean says a little wistfully. He would rather not lose her entirely. Again. Granted, this time he'd be losing her to going home to her own universe, not a hellhound attack, but still. It's still losing her.

He's in line a moment later, waiting for it to become their turn.

Jo looked at him oddly, a wary confusion touching her expression for a moment. "You want me to come back?"
The last three words are almost stumbled over, like somehow that has to be completely outlandish.

As though she couldn't for a second understand why Dean, of all people, would want her around. Like. Actually want her to find a way to be around. Again. Except. It catches up late. One second. Maybe two. Or three. His her, she's not here. She's dead. Even Sam said so. Couldn't stop looking at her like she'd vanish.

It's not. She keeps having to remember. He didn't. Or more aptly she didn't to him.

It makes her stomach knot, and her arms shift the load, even though it's light and barely noticeable.

"Why wouldn't I?" he says, giving her a quizzical look. He has absolutely no idea why she would think he wouldn't want her around. Why he wouldn't hold on as tightly as he could, now that he has this chance again, even if things aren't exactly the same.

Given this Jo was a witch from a universe where Harry freakin' Potter was real. Along with her hunting being different because of it.

"Aside from the fact I don't belong here?" God. The words in her mouth.

And the fact it wasn't stopping. "And you've all just had to sort of take me in without a vote?"

If she could stop feeling that trill of confusing was turning hard toward a flush of panic, the quickening ratchet of her heart, toward the brush of the days she did her best not to think about except during that one month a year she usually cherry-picked the worst of the worst case files for their department, whether man or beast, to distract herself with, and everyone let Jo pretend Jo just didn't give a damn about the month, or her handlers trying to say something about any of it.

"Sure, it was a bit of a shock," to put it mildly, "but that doesn't mean we never want to see you again."

Right, their turn. He sets down the cookies and moves over to give her space to put down her own things, digging out his wallet in the process. All hail fake credit cards to pay for things.

He's setting things down, and she has to set things down, lips pursed. Not agreeing.

Knowing it's coming from somewhere else, and she should just let it go. What bloody hell is it about him, that it makes her want to open her mouth and saying something. Anything. A war between the part of her that understands, that is, what, relieved?, to even see his face, see him fight, hear him laugh, to say he wants here with him, again, even if it's not his, and the one that wants to push him back, behind the wall she put up so exquisitely it stood for years without him, the other him, getting through.

Why. Why him? Why couldn't she have fallen out of a curtain-ceiling and landed on anyone else.

Except she knows she doesn't mean that. And she hates that she actually feels so much more than compelled not to go quiet. Not to just leave the person talking to her in the dark on the fact they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Because he's not just some other person, even if he's someone elses. And maybe it's an excuse, or maybe it's just another messed of thread in it.

"You don't even know me." It's quiet. He definitely doesn't know the things she's done. Even if she's not clarifying that part. Glancing at him barely, over one shoulder, hating that she know exactly where her gaze will land, right around his shoulder, and what fills her periphery. But not finding his eyes. "Not really."

That's the thing about lies. The best lies, especially of omissions, are made of the absolute truth, too.
Especially if they are other true problem. "You don't look at me and see me. You look at me and see her."

"This other person that I don't even know who was, not really either, but was still here. Or at least that she was before."

Dean stays quiet, giving himself time to mentally chew over what she's said. Along with not talking about things probably best not talked about in front of a civvie who knew nothing about what their lives were like.

He finally speaks up after grabbing the bags to lead the way out. "I wouldn't mind the chance to get to know you better. Find out about more of the differences besides the incredibly obvious."

The last said with a lop-sided smirk.

She not used to help, or having someone around anymore. She was once. She remembers it. The way you remember childhood memories. There are details you forget until something reminds you. Like someone grabbing the bags with all your things and leaving you empty handed. That it's just polite but it's odd, too. Puts you unmoored and taskless.

It leaves her simply walking behind him, catching up to his side once away from the register. Trying to take in his words, or even figure a way out of the maze she set herself in. Or him, and maybe, rather than. Mirrors on mirrors. She wasn't being fair either, even at absolutely honest, and absolutely lying, and still he said that and smirked, the far too familiar way. Making something sore sound in her chest, against all of it, all of her better knowledge, nature and years, worst of all, that agreed.

And yet. Still. "That I'm too smart to fall for any of your crap?"

The response rolls out only a beat after his, too much habit to miss, even if it doesn't entirely reach her eyes now.

Edited 2016-10-14 05:05 (UTC)

"That, too. I mainly meant the whole, you know. Magic thing." The part where she's alive and his version isn't doesn't need to be said; it's a given.

He has the feeling said 'magic thing' will take some getting used to. He'll have time. He seriously doubts they'll find the answer to sending her home immediately. It could be days. Weeks, even.

Right. Time to change the subject slightly. "Cas should be here either sometime tonight or tomorrow. He might be able to help figure things out."

Damn him and his stupid face, and the muscles in her cheek that fluttered just a little when he didn't even argue the point.
Even though they both knew what he meant. She'd be surprised if he didn't flinch for a while at the sight of her wand.

"I don't know what you could be talking about." There was a careless wave of a hand, her first two fingers sharper.
That very possibly might have caused a cart to roll a few inches. Not far enough into the street to be a bother. Or a scene.

"I'm obviously just an absolutely, everyday, ordinary girl, run the mill, British-American dual citizen, with absolutely nothing --no job, skills, hobbies, proclivities -- to interest any of these people." A bland, as markedly almost blank as it was almost teasing. "Or you."

Beat. "Who might have score an O all of her O.W.L.'s and been near the heads of both of those countries at a point. But I couldn't say for sure." There's the faintest flick of a smirk. "Then, I'd have to kill you, and both of us being dead, here, would be a sin."

Edited 2016-10-14 05:35 (UTC)

"I think Cas might object to having to bring me back. Again," Dean says dryly. "Not to mention it would upset Sam. And yes, I will give context when we're not in a Walmart parking lot."

Best to give her news about things like this in pieces instead of all at once. Give her time to absorb one thing before moving on to the next.

He's soon shifting the bag in one hand to the other, freeing up his ability to pull out his car key to open up the trunk and deposit the bags in it before slamming it shut again and heading to the front of the car to unlock the driver's side door. He intends to lean over and unlock the passenger side one as well, but he wouldn't be surprised in the least if she beats him to it.

Except Jo hasn't moved.

She's still standing somewhere near the back of Baby.

Unable to not think the name. Unable to make her feet even move.

Because.

No.

He didn't.

And if he -- even if --

That's not. It's just not.

"You don't get to just say something like--" Like that. There's solid metal under her hand and she doesn't remember when she started touching the car. The parking lot doesn't even exist. The store doesn't. The whole world refracted down to Dean. And Dean's face. And what he just said, no matter how he just said it.

She's not even sure if her organs are connected to each other. Her blood is moving. She's still breathing.
She's always kept access to file she shouldn't. She always had to know. Always had to know he was okay.

Nothing in the world makes sense if she has to hear, or has to make herself actually say, barely above a whisper, her voice a waver almost demanding to make that a joke, something, anything else. Anything but a sideways truth. "You died?"

All right, apparently, they're doing this now. Dean rests his arms on the top of the car and gives her a level look. "You'll need to bear with me, because I don't know how much of my and your Dean's pasts are the same. Basically, when Sam and a whole lot of other people were babies, a demon messed with them.

"Once everybody was hitting twenty-two, abilities started showing up for them. In Sam's case, it was visions of people who were going to die. Mostly people connected to him. Awhile after that, said demon, who, by the way, killed Mom because she interrupted him while he was occupied and who later took Dad out, basically kidnapped everybody in waves to make them fight each other to the death."

Dean swallows and licks his lips. "Sam didn't make it. So I went to a crossroads and made a deal. What else was I supposed to do? Dad told me to keep him safe--been drilling it into me since I was four--and I failed."

It's words. It's all words. Words blowing through her harder that magic and poison that's still left her feeling vaguely disoriented sometimes. A fountain of words. Dean Winchester. Staring over the the car at her. Tell her how he died. How he did it to save Sam.

She doesn't know when she starts moving, rounding the car. Not on the passenger side. On his. Past the trunk. Past the door. Barreling against him. Even if it's probably wrong. Inappropriate. Not her place. Not her world. Not her Dean. Except. It's still Dean. Dean still died, and nothing in her understands any of the details between point A and point B. Not if that one is TRUE.

She can't stop. Her forehead ends up against her chest. Her arms half around. Finger fisting in his shirt.

She has to know he's real. He's alive. Right now. Solid. Alive. Heart beating.

And there's a viciousness, in her whisper against his shirt, that was never present even in the garage,
"Don't you even dare make a joke about this."

Maybe later. Maybe never.

Not about what she's done. Not about dying.

Dean was startled, because he wasn't really expecting this, his arms going around her in a hug a moment later, lowering his head to rest it against hers. "I've had time to get used to it. Your Mom effectively slapped me upside the head for making her have to hear from another hunter that I was back. Told me to keep her on speed-dial."

He can't help the small grin that forms at the memory. "I told her 'yes ma'am' 'cause she was kind of intimidating. Always has been, since I first met her."

He blows out a breath, grin disappearing. "Cas saved me for a couple reasons. One, to try to keep me from unknowingly setting the first ball for the Apocalypse rolling. Two, little hard for Michael to wear me to said Apocalypse if I were dead or a demon."

She shouldn't be doing this. Not at all. Not a little. He's not (him). He's still (alive). Some part of her brain, absent and aloof, finding everything in the disjointed details her training refusing to let her forget can't help but notice. He's warm. He smells exactly like the clothes she had the first day. But better. Warmer. Actual. Old memories. Old pains. Too close to the shock. Especially when he actually puts his arms around her and rests his head on top of hers.

Jo snorted out, in surprise a little, maybe painful amusement, at the story about her mother. Lips pressing hard. She was not going to tear up. She didn't. She wouldn't. She shook her head, even against the burning. She'd always wanted that. Dean to meet her mom, and he had. That one day. The last day they ever saw each other. It'd been a big thing. Bringing him back to America. To the Roadhouse. To her.

It meant a lot of things she didn't say, and he'd gotten that.

And then it was all over. It was all done.

She'd seen her mother again, much later. But never him.

Jo refused to be this stupid. Refused if it hurt everywhere. Even if maybe she was almost tearing up. She made one of her hands unfit the material of his shirt and slid it between them, against his chest, meaning to push away, but somehow she didn't. Somehow she found the beat of his heart, even though her hand was only in the middle of his chest, where her head had been, and all she did was look up, the agony of the whole of these ideas meeting something like incredulousness in her expression. About him being used for ---what.

"And somehow you like this guy? This angel?"

Dean loosens the hug, giving her enough room to get loose if she needed it. "He was a pain in the ass at first, sure. He's much easier to get along with now after I've had a few years to work on him. He actually stood against Heaven, siding with Sam and me about trying to put a stop to the Apocalypse. See comment a couple days ago about God needing to fix him."

She probably needs the reminder, given their current choice of topic. It's just a mite distracting. "I think you'd like him. He might hug you when he arrives. As a word of warning."

"Maybe someone--" There's an emphasis there, and a meaningful look, like someone was definitely not her. "--should inform him that I'm not really the hugging type."

Totally not like there was anything of the sort going on right here in this second, that Jo herself might have started.

Which was about as much true as it really wasn't. She hugged long gone colleagues, and Sokka and Lee hung on her like limpets until she scattered them. Even though she almost never did. It had been too long. It'd been too long. so many years, and the loss of Dean, before she broke all the rules to take them back for herself when Lee almost died. Even when they'd stopped looking at her like she might up and vanish on them again. Lee was always jostling her, and Sokka was always hugging her or dragging her somewhere, arm in arm, like they were still kids back at Hogwarts.

(And, okay, maybe. Just maybe. Because she kind of liked it. For them.)

Jo leaned sideways against the car, "You've had a very different life over here, too."
Maybe just as fucked up and broken in a lot of very different ways.

It's wrong, but she's glad neither of them died on each other.

Life was hell without him. But a life she chose. Could survive just fine.

She couldn't see how she'd want to choose life, want to be alive, if he was suddenly gone.

"He isn't much for hugging either. He generally just does it when something important has happened. It took him awhile to even start doing so." It took the amount of time he's spent on Earth and the Winchesters to get him there.

"No kidding. I bet your me can't say he helped stop the Apocalypse," Dean says, giving her a cocky grin. Time to bring things around to him being a smartass and her trying to puncture his ego. Give them a break from the heavy subjects.

"And this angel, who apparently has problems with morals and picking sides, is going to think my falling through the world is important." That's a line of logic she's not even well into following. She got the whole, if she breathes through the tension the threatens to still spider-crack her ribs, brought him back. From. You know. And is friend. But wanted him in some crazy Heavenly fight.

"He might have." Is almost obviously evasive. Leaning her back on the car. "I don't exactly keep track of his log sheets."
There were some things she couldn't get her hands on. And some she could. Stories from both sides of the pond.

But there are honestly some things she doesn't do. Some steps she knows would be too far to go forward.

"Well, you did fall through a hole in the universe. Knowing how that happened and if it can be repeated might be nice for him," Dean points out. "Helps prevent being taken by surprise by another occurrence."

Not to mention, Jo's important to Dean, which makes her important to Castiel.

She looks over, faintly pointed, but not cruelly so. The last of her words still sticking just a little too sharply. "Helps with getting you this door that you want, too, maybe." She pulled her hand back from his shirt. Both. The one in between them instead swinging the way a door might instead. "To make it possible to come and go."

The idea of which was...confusing to consider with him this close. With the thing he'd said.
The one that was going to be buried in the coldest, furthest, box in her head she could ever make.

"Even if it might not be smart at all. You're lucky you go me, and not one of the people who was chasing me."

"If I got one of them instead, I wouldn't have hesitated with that wrench," Dean points out with a raised eyebrow. "If we can figure out how to make those doors or whatever and control where they go, we can try to keep them from opening into... sensitive locations."

"You didn't hesitate with the wrench, to begin with. Given the aim at my face, which-" The word is superbly airy. "-I'm really rather attached to." Though she supposed that was his point, too. Even if she hadn't really had any marker for comparison in that second. She wasn't out for blood. Well, not his, at least, in the middle of Ministry firefight.

Not ever, if she was being honest. She'd left him, but she toed a dangerous line and made her colleagues see him as untouchable, too. Unless they wanted to suddenly see themselves on the opposite of the line with her in that same second. She didn't care about the reasons or the responsibilities or the rules she'd broken. For him. Even after. Even now.

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