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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"Don't make me throw you across the room again." Jo said the words, evenly, since sitting up hadn't made the room spot or swing this time. "You just asked me to stop doing magic for a while." She shook her head, as she stayed sitting, but hadn't made an effort to swing her feet over any edge. "And trying to keep me in your bed all night is not going to make that happen."

Jo raised her right hand, snapping, and then her left, snapping that hand as well.

On the right, she'd thought Colloportus at the restraints, which snapped closed even in his hands.
On the left, she'd followed a second later with Alohomora, and they unlocked right back open there still.

She'd braced for the pain of doing that, but nothing came except the normal wear of not having her wand to direct her magic. Then she frowned, before her mouth opened and her eyes shot to his. "Of course. That's why it didn't happen in the garage. It's only triggered by healing charms somehow." She rolled her eyes upward, a flash of anger flash bright and then dark. "Bastards."

The repercussions for that on both civilians and ministry trying to help themselves, or the civilians, would be vast with that.

Dean looks down at what was in his hands, back up at her, and rolls his eyes, putting them back where he got them from. So much for that.

Then she keeps talking so he looks back at her. "So you're saying any further healing you do is gonna need to be done the old-fashioned way."

"I don't know." Beat. "Maybe." There's annoyed semi-sneer.
She hated that idea, even all it needed was her handlers.

Beat. "I don't know what they used specifically."
Herb. Element. Charm. Artifact. Dark Magic.
"But it had to have been in the food."

The stuff passed around in the beginning, since no one had even gotten to dinner. What all had she even had. A champagne flute, during instructing Gil on blending, not personal preferences. One or two of the small snack things on silver trays that had been floating around by themselves. "I don't know if there was more to it, or to anything else. I am all but as literally in the dark as you on this right now."

Except that it would end. "Water. I need water." A lot of water.

"No." She looked at him suddenly, crazy smile breaking free. "Coffee. Coffee would be better."
"You can even dump the salt in it, if you still need to, and have coffee somewhere around this place."

"What did our coffee do to you to deserve salt dumped in it?" Dean demands. Actually, at this point, he's inclined to skip the holy water and salt. She's certainly been acting enough like Jo to have him convinced. "If you think you can manage to not stagger around like a drunk, first thing you're doing is take a shower. Next thing is putting on a change of clothes. Unless you want to look like Carrie at the prom when doing whatever you're planning to do that isn't sleeping?"

Jo's smile brightens the way dawn does. For a second wavering right at the horizon, like it was checking the time, like she was making sure she heard right, and then just a strobe of light getting itself golden and gooey over everything everywhere. She shouldn't be proud, or flushed warm with something like victorious success, that he's decided to forgo both attempting to chain her to a bed and making her prove she is herself. That he's going to trust her. With that much at least.

It shouldn't go to her head. It's not him. But it is, and she can't help it. Smiling.

Even when he starts dropping out orders like he's decided she's a soldier who is going to do anything he asked of her, or ordered her to do. When he hasn't yet gotten her to stay laying down, or to actually stop doing her magic. It's very him, and he's not angry. Oh, she'd known that face and that voice, if he was. Her own smile tilts toward a smirk, as she drops a mostly bare leg off the bed to let her toes touch the ground. "If I say, yes, sir, does that mean I'm allowed to try standing up and getting my wand back now?"

Dean rolls his eyes to the ceiling as if asking for patience. "It means 'yes, I won't freak out the kid of your brother's girlfriend when the lot of them get home from their outing'."

Just dropping that on her, like you do. She deserves it for being a pain in his behind.

Jo pushed up from the bed gingerly. Not so much because she wanted to take it slow as much as not wanting to take another header toward the floor. Or whatever that might involve again. But her weight holds and the pain, if there is pain, is ebbing away and away and away. Which could be away, or it could be the half-wards making it almost unnoticeable in the equation.

"Sam got himself a girl and a kid?" That sounds downright amazed. "Huh." Jo shook her head. "Good on him."

Someone needed to get a little normal up in these lives. Which. Well. She wasn't sure if their lives here were the same. Could be anything remotely like the same. Couldn't be the same exactly. No magic. She kept having to remind herself. No magic. No jobs. No flying across the world. Kid. House under the ground, and Sam with a girl and a kid. And Dean who was looking out for the lot of them. At least that last part never really changed it seemed.

Jo crossed the room, toward him, the sink, the counter. Where she'd been earlier, crouching down to find her wand even though she was only barely keeping herself from just calling it to herself through the air.

"Jacob's not his. The one coming along in a few months, on the other hand, is." Just to get that cleared up.

Then he's watching her, wary of her deciding to fall over. He would prefer she didn't. "So that a 'yes' on actually doing what I tell you for once?"

Make that the girl and two kids. What was this world even. That seemed insane. Like the good kind, but still insane.

She's leaning down, finally getting her fingers around the smooth wood, even as she tosses the question over her shoulder, "Do I ever?"

It comes out too easy, and it feels like it leaves her chest, fast and breezy like a bird between her ribs, before what feels like a ball and chain at the end of a cord from its tail slams into the back of ribs the second after. Because she doesn't. She hasn't. She spent the last years making sure he never even had a chance to get a single word or look at her in. So that he couldn't tell her anything, make the face at her she knew was hiding under the video footage of him pounding on that door, yelling.

When her superiors finally put it before her that this turn was a cover loophole out of control.

"Hope springs eternal," he says drily, arms folded across his chest as he watches her. "I'll bring you some of my clothes after dropping you off at the showers to change in. I don't think Amy would mind if you wore hers until we could get you somewhere to buy some of your own, but it's probably better to wait until she can make the offer."

Jo pushed back up to her feet, the tip of her wand being tapped against the side of her thigh and the dress, as she had to consider that whole idea. Even for a second. Or not consider it. How about not. She was good with not thinking about that. Not at all. Not thinking. Yet, at least. Shower first, thinking after.

"Yeah. Okay." Okay. Sam, Amy, Jacob. Yeah, she was keeping track of a whole lot of the things he'd said and kept saying, now that she was potentially stuck with it for a little while. Very little while, if she got a say in it. "Whatever it takes to get out of all this as quickly as possible."

"I'll tell Sam you're here when they're on the way back so he doesn't just drop everything and barrel in to see you for himself," Dean says, tilting his head at the doorway before going to it to pass through on his way to the showers. "Granted, considering it's Amy's car they're using, she's probably the one driving."

"Except not me." The words are out before she can consider them.

Or her. But not the her Sam would be expecting. The one Dean definitely knew she wasn't.

The one he tried to take the front of her face off for looking like. Which wasn't awkward at all to think about.

"I know. I'll tell him where you're from so he won't be expecting you to have any idea what the hell he may wind up talking about." Now that she's had time to calm down and sort things, can she really blame Dean for being upset and thinking she was some sort of monster mocking him?

Well. Aren't those lovely tiles on the floor. And things on the wall. That they are walking past.

There were questions starting to form, but she didn't have any idea where to start with them or even how to put them in some kind of order, or even consideration, that wasn't heartless, or artless, or entirely self-serving. Which seemed wrong, too. Unfair when he'd already helped her, too, and kept snapping at her for any slight that looked like she wasn't trying her best to be doing that for herself, too.

She tapped the tip of her wand against her thigh as she followed him through the bunker hallways.

Dean soon stops outside a door. "Showers are in there. I'll bring you some clothes from my room. Rooms do have their individual bathrooms too, but the only ones with towels and stuff are the ones actually in use."

Hence the communal shower, since it has things for in case someone wanted to get cleaned off in less time than it would take to get to their room.

"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.

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