ɢɴᴀꜱʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʀɪᴍɪɴᴀʟ ᴛᴏᴜɴɢᴇꜱ

[tobeclosetohim]

Who: Jo Harvelle & Co.
When: March
Where: Cadens; Horizon; Nocwich; Event Locals
What: Catch-all for March
Warnings: Mark of Cain, violence, alcohol, more to come


ᴄᴏɴꜱᴘɪʀᴇ ᴀɢᴀɪɴꜱᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴅᴅꜱ
ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ꜱᴇᴇɴ
ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴇꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴜꜱ ʏᴇᴛ

Comments

Jack.

[tobeclosetohim]

ᴋɴᴇᴡ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʙᴇ ᴀ ʟᴏɴɢ ɴɪɢʜᴛ

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo is in her room.

Her words to Cas are still playing through her mind.

Face still stinging a little like she lit the open cuts on fire by washing them. As if that mattered at all to the pain everywhere. The purpling bruise around her throat. The worrying way part of her chest hurts with every breath. She should see someone, but she refuses to let anyone see her. ( But she can't fix any of that (yet?), so instead, she's busy being fucking pissed at the fact Rennaissance Reject World doesn't have the kind of makeup she needs to even begin trying to cover something this.

She has all the training and experience in the world,

and this place doesn't have shit she can use.

[notoftheblood]

Jack had promised Cas that he wouldn't leave the house, that he wouldn't put himself in danger, but it left the half angel filled with a nerve wracking anxious energy.

He had been tempted to reach out to Michael but chose instead to wander around the house. Jack didn't know where Dean or Sam were but he could tell he wasn't alone. Knocking quietly on Jo's door, knowing someone was there he asked quietly through the door.

"May I come in?" A simple request but a big ask, when he didn't know her well and had a lot eating at him. Still, even if he didn't know her well. She was family. And he knew she'd be better to talk too than Dean at the moment, he could tell something was wrong with Dean, but not what it was.

[tobeclosetohim]

For the heartbeat of the knock, Jo's sure it's Sam, but she isn't able to commute the thought of whether she's going to tell him to come in or leave her be for a little while, which is thrown entirely upside down, a car slamming on the breaks, when it's Jack's voice.

Disorientation smacks her in the face because there is one more person still in the house. That she hadn't even thought about it. Him. That Jack doesn't know (wasn't there) unless he's already caught up with Sam. The quick arithmetic on that goes through her head, too, before it, too, is kicked off decks. One way or the other, he's already there. Other side of her door. That quiet, uncertain tone of his.

There's a helpless, reckless moment looking around, but there's honestly nothing she can do about any of it without not-answering-the-door for longer than would be suspicious. And what the fuck could she do anyway? Cover her whole self with a blanket? He was bound to know sooner or later, too, right? He lives here, guilt or not, about her having a tailspin that blacked out his existence for a few minutes.

Jo turns toward her door, and opens it, keeping her tone as level as possible, even if she's well aware of the wreck he's about to meet in her doing that. She's still dressed in those same clothes, sand, and blood in many places. Her face, the left side especially, is a map of cuts and bruises where the color is still coming in darker and darker with each set of minutes. There's a sunken problem between her orbital and cheek where it shouldn't be.

Her voice is as level as she can make it, and her gaze aims a little blankly forward, not because she's trying to blot that sight of him out, but because talking hurts like bitch even for one word, no less many. It's not just her split lip; it's something in her jaw's movement—that sunken space grating, refusing. Each word, maybe a syllable, had its own little explosion of pain radiating through her face, but she made them go out.

"It's not really a good time, kid."

[notoftheblood]

Jack had waited, knowing that the Winchesters always needed a minute or two before they answered, if they didn't call him on in. Back at the bunker anyway. His hands went behind his back as he waited, a very neutral resting look across his young face.

The door slowly opened all of Jack's problems, worries and thoughts evaporated, as worry etched across those features in real time.

The beautiful face marred like someone had dared put hands on her. She was tough, she was a hunter like Claire. And he would have felt the same seeing bruises on Claire, or Jody's face. Who had raised that mindset into him? Did it come from the knowledge from Kelly? Or the Boys?

"Oh." He spoke worry clear as can be. "Please, let me help. I can help." He spoke as his hands came back around as he held them up. "I can't help Castiel, but please let me help you Jo, that must hurt."

He could ask later what happened, what mattered first was helping Jo.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo hates entirely the fact of standing there, watching his shock blossom, and the hiss that nearly escapes her mouth when she tries to bite down to keep herself still and unflustered, only for the action to set off an explosion of pain, black and red spots across her eyes. Her eyes water and it causes her to blink and her refocus on his face, the hands up toward her, like she might shy away like a scared animal (and how much she hates that, too), a little warily.

"How?" Except she already knows that doesn't she?
She's read about it, about Castiel healing Dean or Sam.

But she hadn't thought about it. Perhaps, if Cas was here. But his son?

[notoftheblood]

Jack was watching her reactions. He could see the pain clear as day, Remembering the pain he'd been in when he was stuck as human and slowly dying. Castiel healing him, trying to help when he knew his time was near. Weird to think he'd died again after that too.

Taking a step closer, those eyes staying on Jo, earnest and finally hopeful.

"I just touch you. I know how to do this. I learned back on apocalypse world. Just let me in if you don't want anyone else to see. I wont tell anyone." He promised. "Please trust me, I can help, I want to help. I wont even make you tell me whatever happened." Jack didn't know that Dean had flown off the handle.

He'd understand it, Dean's temper was something indeed, but to harm Jo... That he wouldn't understand. Dean from his time was from years after the Mark of Cain and no one had bothered to tell Jack about it.

[tobeclosetohim]

She's about to frown and ask about Apocalypse World, but then he says the last part.

"Don't say it like that." Jo's voice is sharp as a knife suddenly.
Thrown fast and hard. A barely contained warning. "It wasn't like that."

It was a lot of things, but she's not cowering in her room like some abused wife, and she's not about to treat it like something that people shouldn't be entirely aware of it. It was terrifying and meant things were so much worse than Cas and Sam and Geralt, and she knew. But it wasn't that. She's not that. Dean's not. Whether the kid meant it like that or not, Jo's too many edges and too much pain for even one speck of salt not to burn.

Jo throws the door open, standing defiantly in it, not skulking back.
"Just--" She gave a wave of her hand at herself. "Whatever. Do whatever it is."

[notoftheblood]

Jack blinked, wondering where he messed up. Something in his tone maybe? He just wanted to help and he wasn't sure what boundary he had messed up.

"Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't know." He still didn't know, but TV helped him learn to apologize even when he was confused. Thanks TV.

Walking quickly inside, pushing the door closed behind him, if allowed. He wouldn't fight it. Once she was back inside, he nodded. Luckily his time in Apocalypse World had taught him to do this with his cloaking still up.

"Okay, just relax, Jo." He spoke softly as he lifted his hand up, those eyes of his switching to a glowing yellow as he held the hand close to her. Everything was slower for him hear, the healing wasn't as fast as he was used too, but it was working. "Sorry... this is usually faster. This place hampers my abilities some." He spoke as he kept working on healing her.

Dean.

[tobeclosetohim]

ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴜʀɴɪɴɢ ʙʀɪɢʜᴛᴇʀ

[tobeclosetohim]

Her weight shift between her feet. Right, left. Left, right. The first three fingers of her hand tap the outside of her thigh. Once twice. She stretched her neck just barely. Left, right; maybe searching for phantoms, maybe pulling their fingers off at the knuckle. It's one more breath in her nose as she forces her shoulders back, flat. Her muscles in her shoulders, shoulder blades, and arms, to relax. The breath goes silent out of her barely parted lips, and she flips into movement.

Hand on the doorknob by the time her heart rate skips hard, but she's ignored that a million times before, hasn't she? The door to Dean's room goes open—no knocking, no request; like it's made sauntering in like it's just something she can do, has, has no reason not to—and Jo strides in and one look finds him. All fresh clothes, and maybe more importantly, fresh faced.

Smooth and maybe even a touch exasperated, she says, "I thought you'd be in here."
The door is already getting closed behind her even as her words are ending.

[righteously]

It's a good thing she doesn't knock. Odds are he wouldn't have answered. Odds are, he'd have spent a few seconds debating on whether or not to stand up and walk over to open the door. Seconds would have turned into minutes, and minutes to hours, and he wouldn't have moved from the place he's holed up — against the headboard of his bed, a bottle of whiskey in his hand that he's been taking steady pulls from directly since practically the minute he walked through the door.

It's not doing as much for him as he'd like.

She walks in, and time catches. Snags on something. Hooks his breath with it. His eyes are red-rimmed when they land on her, wordlessly tracking over her features. Over the utter lack of proof on her face that he ever-

Meanwhile, his own lip is still split. His own knuckles are still busted, scabbed over, red and angry, but far more healed than they ought to be given the fact that he hasn't had an angel tend to them.

Just another inhuman thing about himself that he's trying to block out — the rate at which wounds are disappearing. It feels wrong. They should linger.

He opens his mouth, but can't find any words to answer. Instead, what comes out is a soft exhale. His eyes fall away from her, land nowhere in particular, and he brings the bottle to his lips again. Maybe if he can get down enough of this stuff he'll figure out where in the hell to even start with what to say.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo can hear the echo of her words to Jack—you couldn't have left a little bit of the pain?—when Dean looks up. Bright eyes gone dark (but not as dark as when) and desolate, rimmed red, maybe a little puffy even, and the too faster trot of her heart is supplanted by a stab of its own dagger just seeing it—that catch of surprise.

Of her being there. Of checking over every spot, he knows shouldn't look fine.
Doesn't look fine on him. (Might even still have her blood on him.)

But that relief, if you can call anything that black relief, slides right off, water over oil. A flicker drowned back by the dark as his eyes slid away. And she knew. She did. Before she walked in. This was on her, and fuck anyone who said it wasn't fair, especially now. None of it was on any side. And if she was fucked, there wasn't even a color or word for where Dean was. All she had now was mitigation of ever worse damage done not by the Mark but by Dean, his fear and guilt given too long to talk to him first.

His sigh is enough for both of them.
She skips her own, choosing something softer.

"You don't have to hide in here."

[righteously]

The breath that escapes him this time might, in any other universe, be a laugh — though it's so utterly lacking in humor, it doesn't feel fair to grant it the label. You don't have to hide in here, as though he's got the friggin audacity to show his face anywhere else. Hell, if anything, he doesn't even deserve to be in the goddamn house in the first place. If he had any kind of good sense and the right amount of shame, he'd pack a bag and put a mile of distance between himself and anyone he gives two shits about, but especially her. Stay at the inn, maybe. Camp in the desert, maybe. Be somewhere else.

He presses his fingertips to his eyelids. Rubs at them, chasing the burn, chasing the itch. Dry desert air and shed tears. A half-assed excuse to procrastinate looking at her for a few more seconds.

His voice comes out a little hoarse, a little cracked, a lot tired. Midway through, the syllables waver unsteadily. He doesn't acknowledge what she said, doesn't have the energy to argue it. To point out the ways in which she's wrong.

Instead, he speaks into the heel of his palm, "Jack did a bang up job on the clean-up. Kid's really earning his keep."

That scathing note in his voice, that sardonic drawl, is entirely self-directed. All the vitriol, all the irony threaded through the deadpan is inspired by self-awareness. How god damn bullshit it is that he's sitting here making offhand comments, knowing what he did. How absolutely absurd it is that she's waltzing in to have a conversation with him instead of throwing a fist right back, or calling him out, or railing him for it, or something.

We're not gonna act like this is okay. None of this is okay.

[tobeclosetohim]

Dean doesn't move. Or he does, but it's not getting better. From looking down to drinking more to keeping his eyes down and pressing his fingers into his face, like maybe he could blot out her standing there. Like maybe he couldn't even do something as simple as looking up at her, and she's not mad about it. She gets that. She does. Anyone else, and she wouldn't be here. Or. She would. But not like this. With a lot more fire power and a lot more goddamn anger.

But it's not anyone else. It's Dean.

(And it's the goddamn fucking Mark of Cain.)

(And her heart thinks it's a joke to be nowhere near slowing.)

(And she does even know how to explain to her own brain how the
being out of pain is more disorienting now than the being in it.)

And there's a whole big world out there in so much danger from it. And none of them as much as Dean. Dean, sitting there, talking into his hand. Her foot almost taps, and there's a fight she's having with her feet and her hands to walk over and pry his hand on his face even before he grinds out those basic as hell, sideways from anything else, words, mumbled more into his hand than truly to her.

Not ignoring her at least.
Jo takes a quiet few steps closer.

"He might be a little shaken up by it."

Yeah. She chose those words on purpose, too.
Does that count as using a kid? Even if it was an offer?

[righteously]

"He should be," he says, finally peeling his hand away to level her with a look. Flat, direct; he means it to be pointed, but he can't quite eradicate that something subtly desperate lingering around the corners of his eyes. Something profoundly, simply, sad. "You should be. Everyone in the god damn house should be."

He is.

It would be inaccurate to say the dam is bursting. Six half-hearted twigs in the middle of a raging river does not a dam make. He's been play-acting at composure at best. He's been threadbare from the second Sam peeled him away, and it's only because he has a few decades of practice at having a steely resolve as the world falls apart that he's managed to keep himself reeled in this much for so long.

"Hell, I'm not even sure you should be in spitting distance. Not without- Sam, or somebody that can drop my ass on the off-chance. Let's just call a spade a spade, alright? I'm unstable. I'm dangerous. Period. And if I weren't me, if it was anybody else that did- what I did to you, I'd put them down in a heartbeat. They'd already be salted and burned. So I just- can't wrap my head around why you're even here right now."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's not saying she isn't,

but she fuck as all is not going to say it to him either.

She's not giving him the fodder of saying that any part of her is afraid of him; not handing it to him as a weapon he can stab himself with over and over and over. He's smart enough to know the better of it, said or unsaid, and she is, too. Even if it's two different kinds of truth about two different, far too twisted up different things.

He doesn't need her to beat him up. His face already is the making of his own job of it. The words are easy. Maybe there's some gratitude for realizing it as she says it, that she hasn't been lying up a gold storm to herself about it, too. That she can hold his gaze, those red, red eyes and that beaten face, and it's like breathing.

"Because it wasn't you." She knows he's going to toss that out, but she doesn't stop. "I know what you would and wouldn't do to me." Whatever lists and charts they want to put that in: past, present, possible future. Polite. Public. Not. "And that isn't it. You'd never have done any of that if you had a choice in it."

(And maybe with three weeks and a lot of whiskey she'd convince her body of it, too.
To unknot the wary way she thinks she'd jump back if he stood up too fast right now.)

Jo says it, before he can stop her and give her something else to say:
"I'm not going anywhere." Barely a beat. "And neither are you."

Sam.

[tobeclosetohim]

ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜʟᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴛᴏ ɢᴏ

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo doesn't wait any longer than the length of her conversation with Jack before starting her search of the house for Dean, trying with every step and every press of her molars (and fuck but it's weird that she can press them and her head doesn't go off like a five-alarm explosion; even having her balance back is its own vertigo, she keeps trying to correct for the sway and buckle of each step, faltering a little when it doesn't come) to try and still the entirely erratic sprint of her heart. She knows it's worse than playing chicken with the dark for the right reasons.

She knows it'll be so much worse if she doesn't.

(Worse on worse compounded; that where they all are now.
Castiel still missing. Even with more information.
Dean .. Dean sliding wholesale into the Mark.

Her--

They can't afford even worse.)

Jo checked the basement rooms first, furthest of the furthest from everyone. Weapons, and books. Accumulated wards and dark corners with locks. But there's no one. Then it's the first floor, and she only marginally isn't expecting Sam to suddenly be in the third room she slides through the doorway, looking sideways along the length.

If he happens to look up fast enough, Sam might catch it. The momentarily blink, copper eyes soft, trigger wary-reluctant, before her shoulders, spine, and head straighten up like an arrow. A sword. She's got clean clothes, and aside from a few flecks of blood in her golden hair she hadn't managed entirely to wash out from a quick dash at the sink after Jack, all of the damage is gone. She doesn't wait for him to get to ask any of the obvious questions first.

She bites out, though without any heat or hardness: "Where's Dean?"

[outwear]

Finding it difficult enough to navigate through the aftermath of Dean's breakdown, Sam had delved into updating the officials on their progress. Only leaving when he knew Dean was settled (not fine, because who could be?) and only returning after he and Jesper had briefed the officials, he comes back feeling they can't call it a loss, but it's certainly not a win.

Progress is progress, but at what cost? Sam can't help but wonder if it was really worth all that — all this. It's the thought still lingering on his mind as he catches Jo moving out of the corner of his eye — prowling, really.

"Unless he went out a window, he's around here somewhere," Sam says, watching Jo with a keen eye. He's still cleaning blood from here and there — none Sam's, some likely Jo's — when he recognizes that good old angel handiwork. Not Cas, so Jack. Good boy. Seems like he's done a fine job, although Sam knows better than most how outward looks can be so deceiving.

Leaning a shoulder heavily against the wall, he passes a dirty rag from one hand to another. "I was giving him some space." There's a guilty hang to his words. Maybe too much space. Of course, this isn't about Sam so he moves on to his support role. "But I'll help you look," he says, giving her no choice but to take his company.

[tobeclosetohim]

He does the once over, and Jo keeps her expression still, only the barest raise of eyebrows. As though bearing the patience of it, even though she appreciates the flicker of surprise, no surprise, maybe even a touch of relief. There's something to Sam looking at that handiwork that makes it sink in harder than Jack's young, vitally concerned confusion.

Like maybe if Sam looked at her long enough, especially all these months later, he'd see right through her. To everything so much deeper than the healed bruises, cuts, and knitted bones. She knows it's not only her, not by any margin, since it's his brother, and nothing bar nothing was Sam and Dean Winchester, but her response is too set before it's said.

"That's probably not a good idea." If there's a quieter tenor to her voice on these words, maybe it's the admission she knows what she's doing could be regarded as extremely stupid. Especially. But showing up wherever Dean is with the hulking form of Sam beside or behind her will look like she's decided she needs a bouncer to even talk to Dean now.

It'd be smart. Maybe no one should handle Dean alone anymore would be.

(But. It'll make it worse. It'll divide him further in a look.
This a physical example of how much they can't trust him anymore.

How much she can't. Sam can't.

They can't, shouldn't, but she can't do it.
Someone else can. Sam. Cas or Geralt when they're back.
But it can't be her, and it can't be today. Not right now.)

[outwear]

Allowing Jo to her piece, Sam briefly acknowledges the uptick in his own nerves at the idea, the image of her body being violently broken by Dean still close on his mind. He isn't sure how Jo's maintaining, except that this is Jo and if she showed even a blip of hesitation, she'd need to do four times the rework to feel herself again.

Still, Sam knows. How can he not? He sees it in her determination, but the heft of it is so obvious all he can do is hope to be supportive. There's no coming back from seeing that blanked out anger turned toward you, no forgetting, but if anyone can turn something horrible into something productive, it's going to be Jo.

Splaying his hands, Sam's attention drifts as he comes to many of the same conclusions as Jo. Beyond removing alienation from the scenario — Dean certainly doesn't need that — Sam knows that his brother will be hyper aware of what he'd done, probably drinking and cradling his head and flailing at the walls knowing how he'd lost control.

Finally, he nods. Sam doesn't expect another attack any time soon even if it's a gamble to do so.

"What are you going to say to him?" he asks, curiosity not spared for this. He wants to know despite the potential ramifications of butting in where maybe he isn't needed.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo isn't sure if she wants Sam to argue or not. If she wants to fold the idea into words and sharpen them into knives that can be thrown through the air. (If it would feel better.) The kind she couldn't use with Jack. That Jack wouldn't understand. Because Jack wasn't there. Because as much as he's here, and he is what he is, they're all aware he's a kid, too. Maybe she's looking for the scalding shout her mother would have given at those few words.

There's a razor haze to it, and Jo knows a good portion of that is momentum. Keeping herself in movement from the second she got done with Jack as though slowing might let too much catch up to the back of her heels. To make her think. (Make her feel; more than just her skin; more than what she can't anymore.) She's going to cut her teeth on whatever Sam says, and she knows it.

But he doesn't answer at first. He holds up his hands, and Jo can't tell if that pause, that silence accessing her—what she just said, what she meant by all that it didn't say—is worse. If something in the way Sam nods like he's coming half a minute later to those same conclusions doesn't make it suddenly a war not to let her eyes prickle. Some ache she can't name, a weight that had been above her shoulders, slamming down like clamps. Being right, it's not always a gift.

(Or easy. Fair. Right.

Any of those little words.
She is not going to tear up.

That's not who she is. It's not in her resolve.
And the point of it is that she isn't even wrong.

So she can't stop.)

Jo grits her teeth, pulling a too steady breath in her nose and pushing it right back out. The body can't panic while being forced to regulate. She glanced to the side first, her shoulders broadening a little. A shrug that maybe admits she hasn't gotten to what words, maybe still wasn't (chased by a need to get into the same space, to be able to see his face).

"That he's an idiot?" Except that's hyperbolic,
and it's not even jokingly strident. Just sound.

She doesn't excuse it, but she doesn't stop, even as she slides into the actual answer, when she looks back at Sam finally. "That I know he would never have done it by choice."

[outwear]

Jo hides the war within herself so well, but Sam swears that artifice only ever shifts where family's involved, and even there it's barely a shimmer. Her mask is nearly flawless, a hard reminder of how her whole life has been about others, no time allowed to feel openly, not in the way that emotions truly dictate.

Even if he could go with her without sending the wrong message, Sam's not sure it would do Jo any good to have him there. Some things are so deeply personal and lowering your walls for one person is already hard enough.

"I thought he'd killed you," Sam says lowly. Time had slowed and even now he can see those blows landing over and over, feel the kick of heartache that comes with it knowing what would have to be done next. He swipes his face against his sleeve and his guts twist unpleasantly. This isn't the end of it, it isn't even close, and it feels like they're all on a precipice waiting to tumble over.

Sam twists the rag in his hand. "He's not going to take it well, but..." He teeters on that uncertain edge. "He needs to hear it. And I think coming from you — hearing you say it — maybe he won't be so hard on himself. I hope not. It... could have been any of us." It might still be any of them considering how Abraxas exhibits its control.

[tobeclosetohim]

Five words. Five words are all it takes. They land too easy, too fast. Slide between her ribs, strangle her lungs, stab into her heart. No lead-up. No warning. Not about Dean. About. It flickers before her eyes (too fast, too fast, her teeth start to tremble)—Dean's face above her. Rage and unswerving commitment to every punch. The continual impact, each harder, each deeper, each more painful than the last, her body unable to even rebound to a full reaction before it was happening again. And again.

Her teeth lock.

(It doesn't hurt,
and that's nearly dizzying.)

Refusal. She won't. She absolutely will not.
She's not fine, but she's fine. She has to be. For this.
Everything closes in so fast. Hard. Her arms cross over her middle.

But his following words are too easy. Uncertain. Sympathy that she does feel, too, but suddenly everything is doubling, and too razor close, and maybe it's a little too sharp when it comes out. The wall twelve miles thick required between them, his words and her ability to breathe. The edge of near demand in her mouth. Maybe even almost rebuke, like it implies she has to do all this herself. "It could be any of us later today, Sam. Tomorrow. You need to start working on that right now."

They all do.

"No matter what I say to him, there's no way he's going to stay here. Not while Cas is still out there, and people are getting leads, and as long as he's caught up in that--" Even with them there. It's like feeding an addict. Desperation, anger, and the culminating violence brought on by both, by whoever or whatever has perpetrated all of this, on an endless cocktail. Which means they have to be there. Even though being there didn't stop this. Him. Today. Until the last second. "--everyone's fucked."

(The everyone that is her only so far.)

Jo prays to any god who's forsaken them Dean can't hear her.
She shakes her head, and it goes back to what she said to Cas.

"We have to figure out how you all beat it the first time, and we have to do it now. We're out of time." One hand lifts, and she gestures to her face, making a circle with her fingers without letting her expression change. "This is not a get-out of jail-free card."