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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"I'm pretty sure Sam would beat me to within an inch of my life if I ever did that again." No more demon deals, nope. Having a hellhound coming after him to collect the bill was terrifying enough the first time.

Dean finally opens his own door to get in. "Well, that provides rather less need for alcohol than I was thinking."

Doesn't take it away entirely, but is better.

Jo slid him a look, before it's a half roll of his eyes. Because, the thing is, while she and Sam didn't always see eye to eye in those years, when and after he finally got to meet her, but they both agreed in most things Dean being an idiot. Or noble. All too often the two went hand in hand. No matter how stupid or brave the move, neither of them would have actually killed him. Or gotten that close. Even if Jo had screamed any number of ways he deserved to have bitten the dust.

But the other has to be asked, quizzically even. "What did you think I was going to ask you for?"

Was it something she should have asked for, or should be avoiding, or should dig toward.

"All the bad crap that's happened," Dean says promptly. "There's a lot of it to get through."

Including more deaths. Which he's not going to bring up until they're back at the bunker, otherwise, they'd never leave the parking lot.

She clicked her seatbelt and leaned her head back, looking out the passenger side window.

"That much is mutual." Not that she's agreeing they're going to get through it. In the time she's been here, she's alluded to much and admitted to far less than she's been told. She knows a good larger portion of that is her training, leaving no real artifacts of her life behind anyone could pin to her fleeting presence. But another part. Yeah, that's probably him.

What she offered is more than he knows what is. But he can realize that or not as he wants to.

Dean gets the car started so they could get going. "Maybe we can trade stories and drink. Make a not particularly happy party out of it. Want to swing by somewhere for something to eat, or are you good?"

He actually has slightly mixed feelings about food right now. He's sort of hungry, but the earlier conversation matter has kind of put a damper on his appetite.

Jo tilted her head, looking back toward the big brick box of a store a moment. More like a reminder.

"I haven't been in America in good while--" Clarification even while, her brows are up and she's making her way through a list. Places she would usually consider pop to. Or only appearing at and then leaving right from there back to her flat. Never staying. Not in the building, and not in the country. "--and I like a potato skin as good as the next girl, but America really does have the better handle on french fries. I always got fries while here."

Beat. "And skittles." She should have gotten those inside if she thought about it.

And rather shit faced tossed. Which might have happened in her mother's bar as much as one home.

She hadn't thought about much at all about being in America,
when all it was dwarfed by with Dean, in an Alternate Universe.

"All right, we can go somewhere with fries," Dean says amicably. Pulling out of the parking spot so they could leave the parking lot. "Is there a specific location you want to go, or just the diner in town?"

Jo shrugged, "McDonalds is fine, if you want to get home. You did mention drinks. Burgers and fries and drink is fine. It doesn't have to be a whole other reason to keep you out." Her fingers drummed twice.

Before. "You do actually still have McDonalds over here, right?"

She didn't need to end up with a craving for something simply because it didn't exist.

"Yes, we have McDonald's. And Burger King. And Wendy's. And probably all the other fast food chains in your universe's version of the States," Dean says, driving in the direction of the McDonald's. Which is more or less in the direction they need to take to get back out of town. Just with a turn down a street to deviate from the original route.

"Good." That's decisive, with a small nodded-sideways bobble of her head.

"Good, good. So." There's almost a note of cheek, lightly louder. "I think tomorrow, if we manage to make it through a whole second day and night without killing each other, there should be Frosty's, too. If it's not as long of a drive as this place. What is it about Kansas?"

The last question is really more to the window and the landscape passing them by.[ ]

"I think you meant what is it about the entire country," Dean points out. "Nebraska has a lot of driving to get anywhere too, remember?"

Although maybe not, if Jo's been living in Britain since she was around twelve.

At least it's only a couple minutes more until they're at the McDonald's and he pulls into a parking spot, killing the engine. "Ready for some nice hot fries and a chance to get your own drink refills?"

Jo looks over at him, at first confused, before she nods, an odd expression stealing on to her features. Half there, and half distant. Like it was uncertain where its feet belonged, in which emotion, maybe in which emotions of which decade even. It was almost easier to look at him than it was at that.

"I haven't spent a lot of time in Nebraska, or America for that matter, since I was twelve. Summer vacation, and winter mostly during school, and mostly when Sokka begged, and only until I was seventeen, too, before-" Jo has to sort of look at his hair, the roof of the car. Before she vanished. Name on the dotted line. Jo Harvelle, Gryffindor, reckless prankster with her own whole cabinet of files but perfect OWLS, perfect N.E.W.T.'s, graduated on one day, and on the next she never existed. At least not until three or four years later.

When she appeared officially on the bankroll of someone nobody as like the thirteenth nobody undersecretary to them.
Though she never once stepped foot into an office and really never even remember the names of anyone she didn't actually work for.

"I don't think I've driven more than two or three times in a year for a while." Not when apparating worked so well, when so far, required so little. Even flying was so much faster. But it does beg the question. "Did she stay in Nebraska?"

Dean shakes his head. "Nope. At some point when Sam was doing his own thing for a bit, he dropped by the Roadhouse. Found out Jo and Ellen had a fight about Jo hunting. Cue Jo packing up her bags and heading out to hunt, sending her Mom postcards every so often. She also took the occasional job in bars since only one of those options got her money for pesky little things like food and gas."

Jo pulled the door handle, face wrinkled, as she pushed up and out of her seat. Trying to picture it. America.

Her whole life in America. With her mom, and the Roadhouse. The way it was supposed to be before she got her letter, even though her mother was very much American, and not a witch. It didn't seem the people who knew what her Dad could do, and she had already been doing since early childhood, cared at all either about her rough and tumble, middle of nowhere, half-American-ness.

"All of you." She stepped back by him. "In only America." It sounds ludicrous on her tongue.

She grabbed the door to the place to slip inside it, odd puzzle pieces everywhere. "Why were they fighting?"

Edited 2016-10-16 05:31 (UTC)

Dean gets out his own side, smacking down the lock on his side without even needing to think about it before following her. "Ellen didn't want her hunting. She'd already lost your Dad to it, she didn't want to lose you too."

He's not even going to bother trying to keep pronouns straight. It's not worth the headache.

"Hmmh." There was a press of lips, and her arms crossed loose over her stomach as she walked at his side. "She wasn't in love with it when I got my letter either, but my Dad talked her down. More than once that summer right before First Year. But I was two years in before--" She thinks about saying, you know. "--he was killed."

She likes that word better than dead. It's an issue Dean wouldn't have liked. Hers.
Dead was easier, and Jo was not easy. Monsters. Memories. Mistakes.

Monsters and Uncle John, and really she wasn't any happier with both dead than she had been with one.
By the time she knew the real story she didn't have much anger left for or about either of them. Only Dean then.

And even anger was the wrong word. Anger only went so far. Anger, like fire, died at a point. What that did...wouldn't.

She shrugged. Shrugged it off, shrugged through it. She had years of experience with that. No one ever paraded through the days of her life like they knew them, but didn't. Made her do it. Only Dean once upon a time, and now again, Dean, but not, somewhere far, far away. "So, you know, she couldn't stop me by that point, and there was the bar." There was a snort. "Actually, that was the first time I took anyone home from school. His funeral."

It was where the cowboy hat started, and Josephine. It was one of the times she most appreciated what her father left her.
It changed everything. It made her who she was. The path she choose. The job. Even the nickname that became her label.

"My Jo, as she put it, was still in pigtails when her Dad died. I think it happened when the three of us were still in the single digit age range." So there's another difference. Although he's going to shut up on this subject for the moment. Time to order their food.

It only takes him a moment to pick what he wanted, glancing over at her to signal it was her turn, a moment later as he digs out his wallet.

She's going to pretend, maybe even for a second right at the very beginning badly, that those first two words, said together, don't strike an odd chord through every part of her. Just the words put together. Even when he's just differentiating. Except that it's a number. He already said it was his Dad, too. Earlier. The same kind of thing. The job. Her dad. His dad. Whatever the American, general-hunter level equivalent of what happened in his file.

She'd never needed the gory details, but it hadn't kept her from memorizing them anyway. Sleep was for the weak.

Jo tried to tune it out. Ordering herself a burger. Cheese, bacon, avocado on top.
No egg here in America. Just a normal, greasy burger. And a large fry.

She couldn't imagine the rest either. Not her Dad not being there, two days later, sweeping her up into his arms, nearly dancing her around the room, bragging that his kid got into the best school on the planet, still smelling like fire smoke and the crisp crackle of magic and faded leather. Letting her sit on the bartop while he told her, what she knew now was a very cleaned up version, of his latest mission.

Or to the first time she saw the Express with him, and it filled her eyes with so much red and shiny. Childhood dreams.

But a world with none of it? Where he was gone?
No deep laughter? No quick smile? No temper like a snake strike?

No breezing in and out on missions with the Ministry and hunts from the bar?

No gagging constantly over her parents, but knowing what she wanted one day?

No wonder her mother hadn't wanted her to leave.

He hands over the money once their orders were in, shifting to the side, once he's gotten his change and the receipt with their order number to wait for the food.

"So. That's how many things I've told you now?" Dean asks with a half-grin, keeping half an eye out for their food. Just making small talk as they wait.

"Fair's fair," Jo concedes, moving out of the way from the very front of the area, so that other people can walk up and order while they wait. They both have, but they were her questions. Her words only related to the things she had pressed at and not even specifically. "Ask away."

Hopefully, she wouldn't regret it.

Even there's a part of her, glancing between his smile and the counter that isn't sure there isn't a part of this she won't.
In some odd, backwards, twisted way. Once she has to go home, and she no longer has him somehere hovering nearby.

Dean takes a moment to decide what he wants to ask about, aware of the injunction not to talk about the wizarding world to people not part of it making choosing questions tricky. "Okay, I know you guys have this whole thing about not talking to people not already in the know about certain things, which makes me wonder how marriages between magic folk and non even happen."

Right. Focus, Dean. Tangent later. "What sort of things do you hunt? Since you apparently don't go after the usual."

"If you marry someone, if would be hard for them not to be know. Especially once there are children involved." Children manifested talents and magical mishaps as often as they still scrapped knees and needed people to blow their nose. At least her own childhood, and the general assumption of it, put it that way. It wasn't like she'd had much to do with children ever.

Or that there'd ever been a truly long window in her life where she'd been considering it. Children.

Though he isn't wrong. She hasn't said a lot of things she could have, both for it and for her own means. She's done far more magic in front of him than most statutes would consider under desperate necessity. But she hasn't stopped either. She hasn't entirely wanted to look at why. Why it's easier to consider treating him the way she once had. Even if he isn't.

Even if maybe she shouldn't be. For his sake. For the ministry's sake.
Definitely for her own, too, at the end of the night. And this trip through.

But she gives him an odd look. Long, but then there's the vaguest edge of a smirk. "Of course, we still go after the normal. If it's-" Her voice tilts slightly lower, and there's a momentary pause because she steps next to him. Shoulders brushing, ignoring it, to be able to drop her voice quiet enough. "It's it's magical, or supernatural, and it's killing people, anywhere in the world, it's on the list. Just a lot of stuff hunters over here cover, is considered a lot lower on the list. More general, and we know people here are handling a small portion of it."

Plus, there were the American wizards, too, but that was a longer story and a lot of politics. And not the point.

There's an odd snort of breath out her nose. Something that isn't loud enough or shaped enough to be a laugh, but it makes the corners of her mouth twitch and the corner of her eye's crinkle. "My Dad had a lot of respect for the people-" She looks at him for that word. The one that isn't people, but hunters, but she's amending for public, where she can. "-out here. He used to say they were made of sterner stuff than a good number his people because all they had was their skin and their own teeth between them and the dark. No magic, just that indomitable American spirit."

"It's a harder job without magic to fall back on, that's for sure," Dean agrees quietly, eyes tracking over to the tray being filled with their food and drink cups, stepping forwards once their number was called. He's picking up the tray a moment later to carry over to where the soda fountain is to get his drink and let her get her own.

It's only a minute until he's taking his drink and the tray over to a corner booth away from the other customers. "I even get the prohibition on talking about things too much. It'd end up like in the X-Men comics. The Muggles freaking and slapping up a ton of regulations on you guys, making your lives that much harder and more dangerous."

Please tell him he doesn't have to explain X-Men.

Jo doesn't correct him. Even though it's on her tongue to. Anyone else she would have. Without hesitation.

He doesn't know any better. Hasn't seen any better. Didn't even know of magic in his world that wasn't witches who fell only into the monster category two days ago. She breathes in through her nose, soundless, the pause, without even a rise of her shoulders, that becomes her too-oft used tic at Ministry parties when she is pretending to the be the five hundredth under-secretary and not The WHD. Not the name everyone knows and the face almost no one does.

She does outclass his monsters. But nature abhors imbalance, and what she fights outclasses her more often than not.

Jo follows behind him, getting her drink, pausing only long enough for, "It really is kind of strange that you know about things in my world, words and names from it, but that you don't know about it all, at the same time."

It's really strange that she even has to put a sentence like that together, after making sure no one was close enough to hear.

"Blame J.K. Rowling. She's the one who decided to go in for kids' books that don't need as much world-building as ones for adults," Dean says with a shrug, settling in with his food.

"Not that I've read any of them. But there was stuff about them everywhere for awhile. Made it hard not to pick up things here and there."

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Ack! I lined it up wrong hours ago!

That explains why you were apparently taking forever to tag. >_>

I EVEN LEFT IT THERE! So you can see it before I delete it. It was 3 hours ago! *facepalm* Sorriest.

Now I'm wondering if lack of tag for Gabe's tfln turned action is related. <_<

Shhh, you. At least you are getting some. It could be so much worse. :P

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I EVEN LEFT IT THERE! So you can see it before I delete it. It was 3 hours ago! facepalm Sorriest.