Jo Harvelle runs on 100 proof attitude power (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tobeclosetohim) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
abraxaslogs2023-03-04 04:39 pm
tobeclosetohim) wrote in abraxaslogs2023-03-04 04:39 pm
ɢɴᴀꜱʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʀɪᴍɪɴᴀʟ ᴛᴏᴜɴɢᴇꜱ
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
When: March
Where: Cadens; Horizon; Nocwich; Event Locals
What: Catch-all for March
Warnings: Mark of Cain, violence, alcohol, more to come
ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ꜱᴇᴇɴ
ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴇꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴜꜱ ʏᴇᴛ
Sam.
ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜʟᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴛᴏ ɢᴏ
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?"
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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.
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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.)
no subject
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.
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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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"I know what we did," Sam starts, a hand pushing into his hair, "but when I looked into it here—" Eyes flicking away for a moment, he's listening for anyone that might be eavesdropping, but still lowers his voice. "It wasn't feasible here. The artifacts required alone are— they're Earth-bound items." He ticks them off on his fingers, rapidly, "Something made by God, but forbidden to man; something made by man, but forbidden to God; the caster's heart.
"And I can tell you — from experience — that the cure didn't work out how we expected. It— That was the last thing we did before I got pulled away to come here—" And never mind the guilt he's had to swallow down because of it. Home's suffering something they've wrought upon it (again) and Sam's not sure he can risk it happening in Abraxas, too. The only balm to soothe his chafe is the knowledge that Jack is from further ahead so they must resolve the secondary problems, too.
"Death told Dean it's called 'The Darkness'," Sam adds, recalling the last few words he and his brother had shared before being enveloped by a literal dark cloud. Sam hadn't even had time to grasp it all before a whole new world and a whole new war were tossed in his face. Not to mention an angry chicken.
no subject
Part of her viscerally, fingers made of merciless steel pushed into all the soft, wounded, still ripped open and bleeding places in them both, grateful land it lands a little like a slap, to snap him into business. Part of her spiked with hot envy that he could flinch back from it, that some part of her desperately wants to. Deserves to, if anyone does. But she can't. This is the smallest of things she can't flinch through if she's going to make it through the ones that make her bones want to lock up even standing right here, thinking about them, with only Sam in the room.
"Something worked, somehow," Jo says, and there's something like strength in getting to be obstinant, to driving her nails into that mountain she never doesn't feel like she's climbing, shoving herself into places she knows the score on but never quite feels right in the place of, and that only makes it fiercer. "Jack comes from somewhere after it. When things are better, years past it enough, he doesn't even know about it."
Better is relative. Better is Dean not trying to kill people in their own house.
"I don't want to think about the other options." Of course, she has. They all have. Maybe they haven't said it. But they all have. And they haven't because they won't, because they aren't options. "But we can't let him near other people like this, and we can't stop him from getting out there while things are like this. It's a goddamn no-win situation, and we can't do that either, or we're just inviting more of this."
no subject
"We have to keep him close, yeah," Sam agrees, although his mind is still lingering on the fact that there's no proof Jack's from a future where Dean's cure comes about exactly the same way. Would they roll the dice on a hunch? They had before, but not here, where unpredictability stays Sam's hand more often than not.
He stops his pace to stand square with Jo, the severity of this situation rounding Sam's shoulders more than usual. Reaching out, he grabs both of Jo's shoulders, squeezing, holding. "We'll all go together. I've got your back," he tells her, trying so very hard to mimic how Jo appears when she's leaning on spare confidence alone to get through the day. She makes it looks easy and it's anything but.
"We'll get Cas back and we'll solve this. It's going to be fine."
no subject
It was here. There. Gone now.
She has to hold too still when Sam stands in front of her. Close. Absolutely innocuous, and some part of her wants to take several steps back, and she spends the seconds of his words ordering her muscles to relax, to stay relaxed. Like one could bludgeon relaxation by a chokehold. But it's that second thing after that he says that catches in her throat. I've got your back. This acknowledgment that she's not alone, and especially won't be alone in whatever they're about to do, whatever could happen. Again.
There's a wrinkle in expression. A wobble-press, repeat, to her lips.
Then, she makes herself skip it. Focus on the words after. "It has to be."
Too much has happened. And it has to be worth it. There still has to be a way out.
"I should—" Jo gave a tip of her toward the doorway, letting her words trail off rather than repeating them. She needed to go do the one thing the world shouldn't dare ever need of her, and Dean Winchester needed more than anything in this world could ever stop her from trying to give him. Especially now. At any further added costs on top of all of this in the silence and scrapped away appearances around them.
no subject
But they're adults with agency, perhaps more important here than anywhere else. This is how it needs to go (but make no mistake, Sam will be awaiting Jo's all-good.
"Call me if you need me," he adds.