abraxaslogs | 𝒢𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝓌𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝐼 𝒽𝒶𝒹 𝒶 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓂 𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔

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𝒢𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝓌𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝐼 𝒽𝒶𝒹 𝒶 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓂 𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔

Who: Jo Harvelle
When: November
Where: Cadens, Libertas, Nocwich, Bad Lands, Horizon, Execution
What: June Catch-All
Warnings: Drinking, Swearing, Flirting, Hunting

𝒜𝒾𝓃'𝓉 𝒾𝓉 𝒻𝓊𝓃𝓃𝓎 𝒽𝑜𝓌 𝒾𝓉 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓁𝓈 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊'𝓇𝑒 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝑒𝓁𝓈,
𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝒷𝑒𝓉𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝑔𝑜𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝑒
𝒴𝑜𝓊 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝓈𝑜 𝓁𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒸𝒶𝓃'𝓉 𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓃 𝒾𝓉 𝑜𝒻𝒻,
𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝑔𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒿𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓃 𝒾𝓉 𝑜𝓃

𝒮𝒽𝑒'𝓈 𝒶 𝒽𝒶𝓇𝓅 𝑜𝓃 𝒶 𝓇𝑒𝒾𝑔𝓃, 𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝓁𝒾𝓅𝓈 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝒶 𝒻𝓁𝒶𝓂𝑒,
𝓈𝒽𝑒'𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒻𝒶𝓋𝑜𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝓈𝑜𝓃𝑔
𝒲𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒶 𝒷𝑒𝒶𝓊𝓉𝒾𝒻𝓊𝓁 𝓂𝑒𝓈𝓈,

𝒜 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝑔𝑒𝓁, 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒻𝑒𝒸𝓉, 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝒶 𝓌𝓇𝑒𝒸𝓀
𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓀𝒾𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝒻𝓁𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝓎𝑜𝓊'𝓁𝓁 𝓃𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝓉

[ ᴀʀᴄᴀɴᴜᴍ: xɪɪɪ ꜱᴛʀᴇɴɢᴛʜ || open & closed starters
November Planning Plurk || Will match prose or brackets
wanderlustlover & ɑรรɑรรiɳcɑptɑiɳ#6353 for contact/planning ]

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The Hunter House continues to stand, and time continues to pass. It's becoming oddly more normal that there are only three of them in the house that was bought to house more. Jo can regularly be found outside the house practicing her sword forms—and even more so, the blossoming bladed magic she can do with it. Pushing herself again and again and again until the magic effect of the sword circle blossoming out from her, like a many-bladed flower, can happen in rapid succession rather than only once or twice.

Newly, she can also be spotted free-running the rooftops closest by.
It's crazy, but she doesn't question her sword masters. (Much.)

~~(And, honestly, she's weirdly taken to it.)~~

She drops into Mag's Tavern a few times a week to check on friends, other Summoned, passing news, and for a meal she doesn't have to cook. She's open to discussions with people nearby and doesn't mind the company of a friendly face. She takes the usual trip to Libertas to touch-base with the contacts she made there during her Year 1 rebuild contracts. She takes on a few more contracts in The Bad Lands, guarding caravans and travelers, clearing out roads where monsters have been terrorizing the region, making sure to keep wide of the bandits still hunting her and a few others.

Edited 2023-11-05 02:43 (UTC)

The tavern is where Adrienne tends to be when she wants a change from the barracks, different (nicer) food and a drink to de-stress from the day (or the still being here situation). For all that this place was becoming slowly more familiar it still hadn't settled with her yet.

Which is why she tends to seek faces out at times, familiar ones if they appear or someone new to distract herself and at least find some normalcy in conversation. She can hope, anyway.

"Sorry, do you know what's in that?" She's pointing at one of the more unfamiliar drink bottles on the shelf, a colour of a whiskey or similar but an unfamiliar label and a bartender currently too busy to answer as she decides.

Jo looks up from writing in a beaten leather journal—more notes from the last caravan path clean out—to see the unfamiliar woman pointing. Her eyebrows went up, but she followed the pointing finger to the bottle, which Jo tilts her head but doesn't squint at.

"Yeah." She says it matter-of-factly. "That one's a dark ale."

Beat.

"Better than some of their lighter ones, but it's a kick in the pants every swallow, too."

"A kick in the pants can be a distraction when you need it."

Though that really depended on how much of a kick it was. A few weeks ago? She'd have probably taken as strong as she could get to distract her from being here and now?

"How much of a kick? Or is there a better one to recommend?"

"Like you said—" Jo throws the woman a golden half-smirk before looking back to the wall with an appraising air. "Depends on what you're looking for."

"I like it, but I usually save it for the nights right after I get back from being out on a hunt or guarding a caravan. Doesn't help I've got my own stock at home since we all moved out of here, too, and it's curated to what I like best."

She could say "we" on that part, but she doesn't. The Winchester would drink whatever they could get, and Jo, who was raised in a bar, has a lot higher standards even for her swill options, no less her must-have.

"What kind of a night are you having?"

"Not that kind of night."

She definitely wasn't seeking that kind of hard, not struggling quite so much after a few weeks here than when she'd first arrived. Maybe she'd come back to that in a few days if she felt the overwhelm again.

"It's been an okay day. Let's go... strong but not going to ruin my night?" She wasn't thinking about the morning, that was a future problem and she was more than used to that part.

"It feels silly to ask if I'll recognise anything but... will I?"

Jo gave a small whistle and raised some fingers to let the barkeep know when he had a moment, they needed him. If she still lived here, she might have just rounded the bar & got it to help him (especially if it'd been Inej on shift instead). But her mama raised her to have more class than that, even in the backend of a nowhere rough and tough hunter bar.

"I'd say that really depends on where you're from," is honest, if even that much has her sounding doubtful as she finishes. "But nine times out of ten, no. Usually, the familiar stuff is in the horizon or comes out of one of the weirder powers people get."

Rey isn’t much of a chef, even after spending a year with the Resistance. She can cook things so they’re edible, but tasting good is an entirely different set of skills. Fortunately enough after a day’s work there is food available in the tavern part of the inn.

Most of the time, unless she’s with Finn, she sits alone in a corner. She’s still settling in to life in the Free Cities, so different than Thorne, so she’s hesitant about putting herself out there and meeting new people.

Of course one day she’s a little later than she usually is, and the place is already quite busy. She looks for an open space wherever there is one, and when she spots the blonde woman with a free chair at her table she walks over, eyebrows raised.

“Do you mind if I join you? There’s nowhere else to sit.” She could take her food up to her room, of course, but she probably should put herself out there more.

Jo looks up first, a dedicated sort of once over, without her gaze actually flicking to anywhere by Rey's face, before Jo nods, with a shrug and an easy flicker in of a warm smile, shifting to sit a little straighter in her chair.

"Sure. No problem. I'm just waiting on a friend as it is. You have anyone else coming with you?" It's mostly a check to see if she needs the whole table, were Jo to offer to leave earlier than planned. She's taking up a seat on a busy night, and she knows it. She could always practice running on the walls out back before Castiel gets here, too.

After Jo’s approval she moves to sit, shaking her head.

“Just me.” It might not have been that way were she still in Thorne, but she’s not, so it is. Setting her bowl of stew down she gives Jo a brief smile.

“I’m still sort of new here. I’m Rey.”

Jo settles back in her chair a little more, relaxed a touchback.

"Jo Harvelle. Nice to meet you."
Forthright and amused.

"How's the settling in going? You staying here in the inn?"

Once introductions are done Rey tucks into her bowl of stew. She isn't particularly elegant about eating, she eats like someone who has been starving before, who knows that every meal is a gift and the next one is never guaranteed. As she eats she nods her head to Jo's questions, a one shouldered shrug as she chews and swallows.

"It's very different here from Thorne, but I like it. It feels less like we're hostages." They of course still are, in her opinion. Taken from their world and stranded here. There's obviously a way to go back, but try as she has to remember how it was she had returned to her home and then here again, but somewhere else, she can't.

She does—eats like someone who never had enough food and packs it away in case 'not enough' comes around again tomorrow—and Jo notices, though her expression doesn't change. There were hunters like this Rey across the bar at home. Men and women who hadn't seen a drink in too long and ordered food in mass amounts only to eat in bare seconds, like someone might take it, or it might vanish if they weren't touching it.

All the while trying to play it cool. Like the darkness of the road wasn't still nipping at their heels and baying at their back even in the safety of The Roadhouse.

"You came from Thorne? I thought people couldn't change locations."

Jo doesn't comment on the other. She doesn't have a nice thing to say about it. She still feels just as captive here, even out in the far, empty Bad Lands with nothing and no one for miles.

Rey wrinkles her nose at Jo's question, chewing on her food for a moment before she answers.

"I don't really know how it happened. I was there one day, then home, and then back again, but this time I was here instead of there and a year had passed." She's had a lot to process in the past few weeks, and likely more still ahead of her. She had partly expected the Free City authorities to lock her up when they realized she'd been in Thorne, but no one had said anything. Given how all the Summoned seemed to be connected she doubted they didn't know, but she also hadn't reached out to any of her friends in Thorne since arriving, unsure of who was still even there.

"That's—" Jo sucks in through her teeth, looking at the girl head-on. "—a lot."

It makes her think of Jack and Sam home again, and that big, rambling house the whole lot of them had bought together going to waste on only three of them to haunt its space. (Even if that 'haunting' had a lot more laughter and equally inappropriate things in once public spaces that couldn't have happened with other family still in the house.)

"Did you remember this place once you got home? Try to get back, or anything?"

She hasn't told many about her little time travel stint, or whatever it was. Jo's reaction is really why. Frowning she considers the question, before slowly shaking her head.

"I feel like it was a dream now, almost. I didn't have any memory of this place while I was there, but the second I woke up here, I knew... exactly where I was." Or well, she knew what was happening, at least. She hadn't realized she was not in Thorne until she'd been pulled from the water.

Has Altaïr come here to spy on Jo's efforts with the sword? Maybe. Maybe not. It could be that he was on his way elsewhere and stopped when he saw Jo at practice. He doesn't try to hide his presence but he doesn't interrupt her either, only speaking when it looks like she's pausing the forms routine on her own.

"You've come a long way since the first time I saw you with a blade."

Jo smiles, and it's one of the rarer ones. She's half out of breath from her last spin of making the blades come out around her on command and a little sweaty, but her shoulders widen a little and there's that pride, almost a little chagrin, at someone telling her she done good. The smile is small and rare.

Before that moment of unguarded reaction folds like a swallowed flicker into the flashing gold of bold arrogance that is more her style. "I must have had some good teachers or something."

There's pride in her smile, but it's not the dangerous, puffed up kind of pride he once had that set him apart from others — to everyone's detriment. He would never have Jo learn that from him, but her pride comes from a lesson well learned, a job well done; she's earned it.

"One or two," he acknowledges her with a small smirk. "There's more to learn, always. But I wouldn't be afraid to have you watching my back in a battle."

Jo spent more than half her life being cut down from any pride she earned in her skills—no matter how many other people trained her or told her she'd be fire once she got out the door and hunting—because her mother missed no day of her life much in implying Jo was not cut out for it, couldn't do the job, would just get herself killed.

Her mom's fear that she'd weaponized so well for so long until Jo had walked out into the night, never to come back, never knowing it would burn down before she could return. She might have no doubt in her skills or that she was good at her job, but it was never something that owned itself to pride all the way. It was a visceral, jagged thing that had cost her everything she loved and everyone who loved her and the sanctuary her family made for hunters, all given up on the altar to be one.

It's hard for her to let any of it in. Out.
Allow someone else the chance to crush it ever again.

"That's an honor." Her mouth tugs a little crooked.
"Maybe we should have a field trip sometime, then."

The compliment is intended — hard work leading to results should be recognized, not taken as a given. An honor? He's not sure about that, but he'll let it stand. Altaïr supposes his opinion being considered an honor is a compliment itself.

"Perhaps," he says with a nod. "If you have something specific in mind, I'm glad to hear it."

"I've got another job in a few days' time. Bet they wouldn't mind another tagalong with a sword."

As though that's it. The easy swing from the compliment of a man who is several times her better, whom she's aware must have done some pretty serious stuff with the baggage he carries around, said or not, and then referred to like a little brother someone 'wouldn't mind, it's fine, you can come, if you must.'

"If you get bored, you can try to make me run off cliffs in our breaks."

Altaïr smiles at the casual comment and doesn't try to hide it. No, he is sure they would not. And what a bargain they would get, whether or not they realized it. Even if their skills with the blade aren't equal, raw talent and carefully applied effort can take one a long way. And it has, for Jo.

"If I get bored, I'll try to come up with something considerably less predictable," he says, amusement sparkling in his eyes. "When I can stop surprising you — that might be when you no longer need a teacher."

It's not something he expects to happen anytime soon. But one day, perhaps. If she stays on the path she's begun walking.

It's rare; her respect and esteem in equal measures. She'd spent her life surrounded by women and men of means and training, some that trained her and some that simply came and went with the wind.

"The horrors." She intones back, smirking.

"I don't see that whole learning thing happening any time soon, so I guess I'm stuck with your masochistic surprises for the foreseeable future." It's not quite as forward as her original approach and request for Ciri to keep teaching her after 'survival skills' had been check-boxed, and she still wanted to know more, but there's an ease to it.

To being fine with both of the people she's learning from knowing she isn't planning to move on anytime soon. And she's known Altaïr long enough at this point to be fully certain she's only scraped the very top of how skilled he has to be and what several things that might be related to.

"Then we'll continue."

Part of him is surprised that he's glad there's still a need. One more way time and experience have changed him, he supposes; and this has been good for them both, for different reasons.

"You know, a year or so ago I wouldn't have guessed I'd even be anyone's teacher," he says. "So in a way, we are both learning."

Jo's expression is tinged only a little smug, a little too pleased. That in itself is not all that new to her. How many men and women did she convince to teach her whatever skills they had—fighting and researching and stocking piling—even though her mother made it clear to anyone who came near her that she was entirely against her daughter becoming a hunter, having what it took?

"Well, you haven't done too shabby, if I do say so myself."

Who else could convince her to run rooftops and leap over weird things,
when not doing it specifically while chasing a demon?

"Did you never think of it back home?"

It means more to him than she might guess. He has a lot to live up to, back home, if he ever makes it there again — and if he can't teach, how can he truly lead?

"I didn't think that far ahead," he says, and it's more honest than he'd care to be most of the time. "It was the job of others to instruct the novices, and our mentor — the man who led and taught us all — seemed as though he would live forever. I was content to do my job well by myself."

Many things have changed since then. He's changed. The Assassins, too, will need to change.

Jo gives herself the weekend and takes it to Nocwich for the one open weekend. Rents out a small flat in case the (her?) boys decide to tag along; gives herself three days reprieve. Her first day is spent out in The Hunting Grounds, working on crossbow skills (missing her sword more; and her gun ever and always the most) and selling what she kills off piecemeal to all the shops that can use it: meat, bones, skins, all of it.

There's no drive or excitement to it for her, and that's starting to wear in. This is just for surviving. Coin in her pocket. Food on their table. The bills for the house are down to just them. It has nothing to do with hunting itself, except in a textbook definition. It's not what she's missing, and it's carving out a hollow just a touch deeper every time. The Badlands isn't it, and this isn't.

Day two is back to The Gambling Halls for a circuit of the tables.
(A different two picked each time, and not hit again for at least three months.)

Winning and losing enough to make it look natural, normal, fluidly uncontrollable, as though she isn't throwing away as many, if not more, hands than are necessary. If Nocwich is staying open, the game plan has to run long. During the weekend, she can also be found at different taverns, taking a soak at the bath house, and wandering the shops on the street to restock their storage, making notes in a leather-bound notebook.

The Roadhouse keeps its doors open per usual so long as Jo or Dean (even Cas) happens to be upstairs and inside the bar at the time. Ready and willing for those looking for a drink, a place to meet with people, shoot the shit, get a drink, play a round of pool or knife chess, take in some music, or watch some tv or a movie on that big screen Dean installed that Jo's just left there. The jukebox is always playing somewhere in the background and sometimes it seems to shift what it's playing with the moods of it's runners.

The Bunker is, as always, off-limits to all but those who belong downstairs.

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𝒢𝑜𝓃𝓃𝒶 𝓌𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝐼 𝒽𝒶𝒹 𝒶 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓂 𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔

ꜰʀᴇᴇ ᴄɪᴛɪᴇꜱ | ᴄᴀᴅᴇɴꜱ, ʙᴀᴅ ʟᴀɴᴅꜱ, ʟɪʙᴇʀᴛᴀꜱ

★ mag's tavern

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ɴᴏᴄᴡɪᴄʜ

ʜᴏʀɪᴢᴏɴ | ʀᴏᴀᴅʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ, ʙᴜɴᴋᴇʀ, ᴇᴛᴄ