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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Only ten in the morning and Dean's already had a somewhat busy day. There was getting up, breakfast, cleaning the kitchen to keep it spotless, looking for potential cases and finding a few for Sam to also look at to see what he thought, and finally working on his car.

Which is why he got to be in the middle of looking for the source of a slightly odd sound that shouldn't have been coming from the engine when there's a sound like a thunder-crack happening right there in the garage and he has a weight driving him to the floor, resulting in him getting to lose some skin to the car. "Son of a bitch!"

Having kept hold of the wrench he had been using, he automatically twists as he falls to hit whatever just landed on him. He sure as hell's not going down without a fight in his own home.

Impact is hard. Harder than expected. Metal and solid, slamming her thigh and the already hit shoulder even harder, making her cry out. The scent of oil, mixing with blood that was already there and being ignored. The fight is almost a given. That makes more sense than the black, or the white, or the curtain, or the falling. The feeling of the form as it twists under her and twisting with it, in any attempt to find the ground, purchase, the ability to get even half a foot away. To find her wand and get it back out in front.

The staggering problem is when she sees the face, and the name she's not supposed to say, not on the job, not ever, pops out, with a full body flinch, almost as away as is possible from her position, like it's her face instead of her already raised forearm that catches the oncoming blow from the wrench. "Dean?!"

"Jo?" Seeing Jo was enough to give him pause. To say that he never expected to see her again outside of Osiris throwing her ghost at him would pretty much cover it.

Then his face hardens as he realizes what she had to be and takes another swing with the wrench. "That's not funny, you fucking shape--"

"The hell?" That one is shock again, but a completely different kind of flare.

Because she has to roll. Heart hammering higher, punched and punched again. Dodge, and she can hear the metal slam down hard where she was only seconds ago. Her shoulder is still throbbing, or maybe seeping is the right word, as her eyes scan the ground in fast sweeps, before finally --she spots her wand, point end peeking out from next to a wheel of the, also, all too familiar Impala-- and lunges in that direction.

The might deserve a fight for what she did, but not a wrench to the face.

Edited 2016-03-17 07:00 (UTC)

"You're the one impersonating a dead person," Dean spits, throwing himself at her to tackle her; feeling the assorted pains brought on by his collision with the floor along with the bleeding from leaving some of the skin of his arms and face on bits of the engine. He doesn't know what she was after--he hasn't had time to look--but whatever it was couldn't be good for him.

"Dead?" There's a grunt, for a solid land, and the rebound that makes her shoulder slam the car she'd had to try and dive half under to get close enough to the wheel. Pain spasms her shoulder, and part of her lower body. All too familiar. The fight and the weight. Fingers closing around the wood though for the prices it comes with. "Seriously?"

She rolls the opposite direction, knowing she'll slam her shoulder again, but needing to get her arm under herself and pointed at him. It's an arc, fast and fierce like a knife. Pain slamming down that same shoulder as she threw all her focus, through her wand at the wrench as much as the arms around the lower part of her. The disarming charm slamming through her, and it, toward him, wordless as nearly every spell she used in the field, even as she snapped.

"You chose to go with dead?" She supposed she may even have deserved that. But it hurt.

It made her want to rearrange the pieces of his face. Just a little bit. But her concentration didn't waver.

Dean swears as he's knocked back before he collides with the ground again and gets the breath punched out of him; the sound of the wrench landing somewhere else only dimly registered. That hurt. Then once he can breathe again, "Because so many people survive hellhound attacks."

Did she just use a stick to knock him on his ass?

Don't mind Jo just holding on to the ground a little, even as she levers herself out from under the car. Because her body is not liking any of this. Something is off. She doesn't know what it is. She knows he's fine. He's an Unspeakable. He's always fine. Always been fine. Anytime she pulled the file she doesn't pull. Because she doesn't. She doesn't have the right. But something is wrong.

She can feel it. Behind her forehead, between her eyes.

Somewhere in that word that is more her mother than them. "What are you talking about?"

Her hand is shivering just the smallest bit, but she can tell. Even when she won't take it off of him.
But she's reaching up her alternate hand to get her fingers on her shoulder.
The bleeding burn straight through the jacket and too much skin.

"You didn't go native for the newest sparkler parade." Nonsense was not his thing. "That's not you."

Dean looks at her with a combination of rage and pain in his eyes although he's trying, unsuccessfully, to hide the second. "I watched a hellhound rip into her before we were able to get it off her. You can't possibly be her."

He starts struggling to his feet, not wanting to lay on the ground in a vulnerable position any longer than he has to. He needs to start keeping silver and salt in the garage at the very least after this, he thinks. Not if crap is gonna fall out of the sky at him.

She doesn't stop him, but she takes a step back. Maybe especially because she wants to take a step in. Pain in her hip and thigh, probably from slamming the car and him and the ground, and god knows where there's shoes went. She'd look, but she has the one thing she needed, and she's not looking away or dropping her wand yet. Not for him, not for the blood, not for the pain, not for the fuzzing behind her eyes.

There's no spell in her mouth or in her head, even if there are thousands up there.

At least there were, before she tilted her head. Before her wand did drop some. An inch. Two.
Because of the expression on his face, as much as the words he was starting to say. Which made no.
Except. Okay. Except she knows this face. It's the one you don't fuck with, or poke too hard. She knows it.

"Wrong." Simple. Straight. Confused. "Alive and kicking. Right here. I haven't even been near a hellhound in years."
That was the kind of thing she sent circled in the muggle news, still. Not handled. He knew that. He'd known for years.

"You're not her. 'Course you haven't been near one," he says with a scowl. And just because the really odd piece that's even weirder than having a fake Jo in not much land on him and then proceed to argue is really bugging him-- "The fuck is up with the stick? What--is that a wand?"

At least now his belligerence has been tempered somewhat by being partly replaced with confusion.

"Have." Jo corrected. Not never. Just not in a good while.

There were things you left to hunters, and things you never told them about existing.

"And, of course it is," Jo snapped right back. "You should--why don't have yours? You would never be without yours." He would have actually countered her first seriously rudimentary spell or at least evaded. He'd had a wrench. Which made enough sense in this room, whatever and wherever it was. With the Impala. But he'd never be without his wand. Neither of them ever were.

They'd even been kept on opposite sides of the bed in the back when, the way anyone else might have guns, knives, grenades.

"Are you sure you didn't slam your head on the car when I--" There's a wave of her wand upward toward the ceiling. There was nothing up there, and this was becoming entirely not right. Like none of it was right. Dean being anywhere nearby was wrong to twelve hundred points. But those were personal points. Fucked sideways, never going to dig out of the skin, personal.

The rest was the job. The rest was the rest before, during and after. It didn't change. It wouldn't have ever.
Not after the oath's he and Sam took. They weren't things you could walk away from.
This was the life. Blood. Darkness. Monsters. Father's. Every inch torn out.

"I'm pretty sure some of my face got left on my engine. No thanks to you," he snaps, scowling at her. "Why the fuck would I have one? I'm not some jackass that's been reading too many fantasy books or some such shit. Waving a stick at a ghost or werewolf or whatever won't do me a whole lotta good. That's what rock salt and silver are for."

"I'm pretty sure your brain got left on there, too." This was not how this was supposed to go. Not that this was ever truly supposed to have another go. But in her sentimental, and very drunken moments, this was not how it was supposed to go. There was supposed to be an apology. He wasn't supposed to be bleeding either. But then that one never worked out for anyone, did it.

Which definitely wasn't the words in her mouth or head right now, when she snaps it at him and flicks her wrist hard. Sending the hood from the Impala closing back down. Not disastrously hard -- she liked that car still, it never did anything to her -- but with a resounded clang straight shut. No words, not even looking at it this time. Just the flicked movement, which is lucky it got even that much. Again. Almost too rudimentary.

"Did you forget everything you learned along the way? It just dribble out? Or is this like some turning in the towel crap?"

Dean can't help his eyes widening at the way the car's hood closes with just a twitch of the wand in its direction. The fact that there was something very weird going on here was finally sinking in. Even if he's hardly about to relax his guard around her.

"Has it occurred to you that maybe there's something very wrong here? You're dead." He is not bringing Ellen up. No thank you. "But you're standing here spouting crap about me supposing to be different."

"I'm listening."

Sort of. She, also, took a few steps toward the car and reached out her wand hand, with the wand in it still, to rest it there, along with an evidently large part of her weight which pressed through that hand on the car. Now that the newest wave of adrenaline was wearing off, everything else was returning all at the same time, trying to be louder than everything else all at the same time.

Pain and fuzzing. That odd taste left over from earlier. She needed to sit down. To fix her shoulder, that was screaming even more shrill for her body weight throguh it. To get back to Gil. Who'd never been trained for this. Banquet jacking. He'd been left at the mercy of three of them. He could be dead already, too. And Dean thought she was supposed to be. Dean....who wasn't?

Now that Dean's had time to calm down, other things are sinking in. Like-- "You're hurt. That... wasn't all me or the fall, was it?"

He didn't think it was, but that seemed to be the way things go. If they can go wrong, they will.

"No." Jo pressed her lips, looking at the crowning corner of her shoulder where she'd caught the brunt of that last blast. The small white jacket ripped and red for a good distance already. She didn't want to know, and already knew all at once.. "There was an attack on the ministry. It's how--"

She says it, like she might have any time before. Except then it catches up he probably has no clue what she said, or even that she probably shouldn't be discussing international secrets. Especially so recently to the second. But it's not entirely parsing. Dean, who isn't Dean, who shouldn't, won't.

Beat. Prioritizing.

"If I ask for somewhere to sit down, will you not try to take my nose off with some new tool?"

Yeah, that gets a blank look before he gives her a lopsided smirk. "I think I can manage. There is silver, salt, and holy water in your near future though."

Just to rule out various possibilities. He's not an idiot who'll just take it on faith that she's Jo somehow.

"Sure. Fine." If anything Jo looks pretty okay with the whole idea of that. At least it sounds slightly more normal.
"As long as you wait until after the possible screaming is over, you can douse me in it if you need."

Jo pushed herself off the car, with a wobble this time. Ready for the pain, and not ready at all. Grateful for the half-ward, but aware that if this was only half of it she needed to get it taken care of before it could overrule her. This was already not looking good all over the place. "I'm not really down for salt in actual wounds foreplay."

Metaphorically it was already there every time she looked up at his face, or heard his voice.

That was not a grave she'd wanted walked on tonight, and Sokka and Leah would have a lot to say on that.

There's a tip of her head, mostly with her chin as she looked at the garage around them. Foreign. "Here or somewhere else?"

"We found a clinic-type room here when we moved in. We replaced the stuff in it to make it less fifties, more modern day," Dean says with a tilt of his head to indicate the direction they needed to go to leave the garage before actually heading that way himself. He can look at the engine and clean off any blood he left on it later.

And on another topic... "Could always put the salt in the holy water and make you drink it."

"I do not need a hospital." Jo looked quite insulted by the notion he seemed to think she needed more than somewhere she just wouldn't tip over while focusing. She didn't care if she had been a foot and half in the grave, and only by his grace not both, last time, she did not need a hospital for this kind of flesh wound. "Just a chair, or even a door jam if you're going to be a minger about it. Which you are. Of course, you are."

She ground her heels against the floor, forcing her posture to stay as good as she could get it, as far from swaying in one spot. Pointing at him with her wand hand, wand still in it, up and down the length of him. "I'm sure you've got a silver knife on you somewhere, given you're the one of us still allowed to have clothes today. Here."

She held out her opposite hand. Left, palm up. "You might as well before I start."

Dean gives her an exasperated look and raises one of his arms, displaying the bleeding. "Clinic ain't just for you."

Then he gives her a critical look, changing direction to head back over to her, rolling up one of his sleeves before pulling a knife out of the back of his boot along the way. Then he stops before her, drawing it across the inside of his arm just hard enough to cause a thin line of blood to well up before reversing the knife to give it to her hilt first. "Your turn."

Dammit, today was supposed to be one of the days he didn't bleed. Not outside or whatever he managed through skinning his knuckles or something like working on the car.

There's a flash of something like surprise, or concern, or both, muddying up her expression when he shows off his arm. But he stops and maybe it surprises her a little more that he does himself first. Makes her think about pointing out both that's she's not positive he's not himself and just out of his gord, under a spell, something, or that there are a number of ways he could be holding that form magically that silver wouldn't give a damn for showing.

But the list of people in the universe who knew they could use Dean against her was incredibly slim, like two sets of hands at most slim, if that many anymore, and at this point she was probably sure even Dean wasn't aware of that fact anymore. More things that were her fault, and her weight to bear.

She took the knife, with something of a frown, looking at it in her hand, and saying, "You'd think you'd have had enough of my blood already," as she shifted hands, so that her wand was in her left and she could use the knife in her right. Meaning more that it was dripped all over the room already, but it wasn't about blood and she knew that as much now as she ever had as a kid, before the magic. Jo cut a thin line into her left forearm, without flinching as she watched herself.

She held out her arm and let him see it, too.

Pale skin staying pale, and blood beading up as jewel red there as the rest that dripped and stained elsewhere.

Edited 2016-03-18 02:08 (UTC)

Dean's expression tightens, mind flashing to far too much dark red blood pouring out of his own of her when she removed the hand she was using to keep it in. "I've seen far too much of it."

Then he's reclaiming the knife and wiping it clean on his shirt before putting it back. Considering it's a shirt he doesn't care much about, he'll survive getting blood on it to join the grease and oil smudges. "We getting you patched up or not?"

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