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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That gets a snort from Dean. "Saying I should move the car so if anyone from your world decides to try to follow, they'll just go splat on the floor? What I just fixed was what I was in the middle of looking for before you showed up."

...Although on second thought, maybe he should toss a mattress on the floor for in case it was Jo's mother showing up. She's intimidating enough when she isn't pissed off and injured.

Jo looked upward. Above Dean Winchester, and the top of the Impala, toward the ceiling. The one that if she hadn't fallen out of it herself, right on to Dean and the Impala, she might not have believed it could happen. At least not here, in this place, where magic was barely a thing.

"No one's coming." There's something all but certain in that. She can't be traced. They can't be traced. But there would be people cleaning up the mess, and she had colleagues. People who would know she'd gone black. And If Gus was alive, which was a Big If. "Eventually."

She doesn't sound perturbed even, when she glances back down.
"Maybe. But it won't be through there, I don't think. Whatever it was, it's closed now."

And as for the one way she could be tracked, the Ministry didn't know about that, between it being both a massive break in almost every one of her oaths to them and Dark Magic. Even if it could never hurt another, it was a strand of her soul, somewhere beyond herself. A choice she'd made before the road swerved and everything changed, when she was sure it never could and never would.

"Great, now I have images of someone who somehow managed to figure out how to repeat what happened dropping in on me when I'm in the shower," Dean grouses as he pries the car door away from her so he could close it before heading for the door of the garage leading into the rest of the bunker. "Give me around fifteen minutes to get cleaned up and changed."

"I meant more through another door." Beat. "Or portal. Or whatever they'd name it, if they had any clue what to call it."

A entrance way and a path between universes, when they had all the magic in the world but nothing like hard evidence anywhere about universes. Except Jo was staring straight at it. Not that she had any kind of background for any ideas on any of that. This was not magic, monsters, mayhem, and mad things that went bump in the night that needed to be kept away from wizards, witches, and muggles alike.

She stepped back from the car. "Yeah. I'll just --" There was a second of awkward pause hlding. "--wait here."

It wasn't like she had a clue what to do in this place, and it wasn't hers, and she wasn't about to take the run of his things.

"You could see if there's anything people need while we're out so you're not standing around bored," he tosses back over his shoulder on his way out to get cleaned up.

He's returned in a fresh set of clothes, hair still damp from his shower at about the twenty minute mark, ready to get in the car and get moving.

"Alright." She says, even as he's walking away. Goal in mind. Like an arrow, always going one direction and she supposes she can make good use of herself. Heads back through the bunker to find where Amy and Sam are, even if they end up not needing anything since they were shopping yesterday and even is Sam will keep looking at her like she's a ghost or a water mirage in a desert.

Or the girl who blew up in a hardware store. Yet happens to be standing in his library anyway.

About twenty minutes she heads back down from that side of the house toward the garage. Wide open spaces, a few faces, and somewhere on her way back she thinks she'd give anything to see Lee and Sokka's faces. Thinks she's an idiot for not thinking of them when Dean mentioned it. Sokka who tracked her, even when she was untrackable. When she started leaving him clues that weren't clues, that were apologies without words.

They'd look. They'd know. She never would have gone dark without some kind of message.

Not when they had been waiting back at her flat for her to be done with her job. They could think she was still in the field.
But even that could only last so long, and they managed where no one had before. Not entirely. But better than they should have.

By the time she's back, Dean's in the driver's seat of the Impala, door on the front passenger side left unlocked for her. The car's not yet on although he has a tape ready to be shoved into the tape deck once it's on.

Dean Winchester in the Impala. Again. Or is it finally? Hand in hand, those two. Even if this Impala won't be taking off the ground anytime soon, or at all. She slides a hand in one of her pockets, restlessly, even though it has to come out a second later. To open the door and get in the car.

Trying for all her might to not look like it feels as weird as it does. Like she's stepping on her own ghost. She couldn't count the number of times she's sat here, and for a moment she'd give anything for some part of it to be wrong. But it isn't. Not the shape, or size, or any of the colors. Not the way it feels under her thighs, or her fingers.

"Amy and Sam are good, but Jacob votes for cookies. Which I think means we decide whether we're being nicer to them or him."

That makes Dean laugh as he starts the car, shoving the tape in and getting Hells Bells started. "I vote we're nicer to him and let Amy deal with a sugar-filled kid. Assuming she doesn't manage to control his cookie in-take."

Then the car's moving until the pause as he waits for the garage door to open so they could leave. Then they're out and heading to town.

There's something of a smile that pulls out, unexpected, when the music starts, familiar, from somewhere far distant from where she was and what she did most of the time, and Jo leaned her head back. Before looking over at him, amused, "The more things change..."

"Isn't that from a Bon Jovi song? If you keep making Bon Jovi references, I'll have to make you walk," he teases as he drives. Not that he really intends to make her get out of the car and walk to town. It takes long enough to get there driving, much less walking.

Jo shifted in her seat, with a shake of her head.
Turning so she was more diagonal than facing forward.

"You could try. I could probably lock the doors before you raised a hand."
Beat. "And keep them locked no matter how hard you attempted to change that."

Which the whole idea of just made something squirm, making the car seem a little smaller.

"Or I could do something even worse." Jo kicked a finger toward the radio....even though it didn't change. Just like a point.

"Don't even think about it," he says in a level tone as the song switches over to the next one on the tape. No magicing the car. Nuh-uh.

Jo grinned, in spite of herself and the fuck all of all of this. It was very him. Or them. Or whatever.

She let her temple rest against the seat and let her fingers drum the beat of the music against Amy's jeans.

Dean quiets down after that to focus on driving, pulling into a parking space in the parking lot of the town's Walmart almost an hour later and cutting the engine before getting out his side of the car. "I'll go look for the kid's cookies and at other things while you look for clothes for yourself."

He's quite certain she can go clothes shopping without his supervision. And that she would probably appreciate him not following her through the underwear section.

Even without the reference, and the joke, that would have grown awkward, that she doesn't get to make, Jo appreciates the space. The first space she's gotten from him really in a day now that involves a building that doesn't belong to him, rooms he hasn't been through all of, that don't have his fingerprints all over having lived and explored, full of people who ignore her as she passes. She could be a ghost here.

She's done that. She's good at ghosting. That's what WHD and Jo Harvelle is on record, basically.
The joke wouldn't have helped anyway. She hasn't clarified nearly the things about him, that he has about her.

There are no wizards robes here, but she was raised in America, with only her Dad's magic in her world at home, so this isn't anything. She grabs a pair of jean's and a tank top, changing in the dressing room, which is fine. Form fitting, down to earth, blendable. She has no attachment to these clothes the way it was slightly harder to give up instantly Dean's own clothes. To her own chagrin.

She grabbed two more pairs of jeans, tank tops, piled an over shirt on it, and found a pair of sturdy boots. Socks. Underwear. A pile that reminded her far too much of moving into this world more than being here just a few seconds, but it was just for now.

Just for now. She was going home. She had to. Jo went to find where he'd gotten to in the store.
Pretending there wasn't some twinge in her, like maybe letting him out of her sight had made him not real.

Edited 2016-10-13 11:38 (UTC)

By the time she finds him, Dean has gotten the cookies for Jacob--and some for himself while he was at it--and was basically wandering the store to kill time and see if anything jumped out at him as something they needed.

He sees her from the corner of his eye and looks over at her. "All done, or should we hit someplace to get you some boots?"

He thinks it's probably safe to assume she'll want to give Amy her shoes back sooner, rather than later. Wearing someone else's shoes or boots tends to be annoying, since they've adjusted to be comfortable for the owner of said footgear, rather than random other people.

Jo shifted the pile in her arms to reveal the boots already in her arms.
The ones she'd picked up before finding him. A smile tilting her mouth.

"Beat you there already."

They weren't the best boots, but really magic could fix all the things they were lacking, and a number that probably couldn't be purchased anywhere in this area. No less this country. Universe. That was just such a weird thought every time the word slipped in against her mind again. An easier though that the strangled sensation of shock and relief re-finding him caused in her chest.

Dean looks down at them and then back up at her. "You hid those on purpose, didn't you? I can't really think of anything we need to grab otherwise. Unless you need to make a trip to get your own toothpaste and such, unless you're hiding those things in the pile of clothes somewhere?"

This entire conversation was weird. It's not the sort of thing he ever expected to be talking with Jo about, even when he still had his own of her.

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.

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