The moment his hands touches down, her shoulders shift. Out flat, back, slightly down. A precarious balance teetering fast as lightning between her muddy head, her bleeding heart, and that sour guilt in her stomach. It's not a relaxation into it. It's a reminder to all but stand at attention.

Of who she is supposed to be.

Of the worst fights in her life, in this room, where tears were never an on-the-board option because she wasn't the kind. It's not this room had never seen them; people'd been triaged on the pool table and gotten too drunk to keep it in, among so many other things. She didn't care. She didn't cave. She never allowed it. Always had to be ready to take whatever it was a sling it back twice as biting. She was Ellen Harvelle's daughter.

Her mom. It stabs into her chest suddenly, in this room that is all her mom, connection to a hundred things Dean had said yesterday about being stuck here. An ache rifting her rib cage open wider. That she slams close mercilessly at the moment it's born. Later. Later she can think it. Later. Later She can deal with it.

Jo closed her eyes, rolling her eyes behind her lids, pulling a breath in her nose, and it's all the little static prickles and wetness of the tears that still haven't gotten beyond swimming in her vision. She swallowed. Rough, thick, sticking. Let it out as a slow breath that made no noise, but likely Dean could feel through her shoulders.

When she opens her eyes again, it takes a second to blink, and her head tilts before giving a sweeping look over everything in front of her, right to left, trying to smother it, too, back. Even as every new small and large thing her eyes found beat a fist harder on the back of her sternum to get out. Instead, she kept her voice as close to the direction of even as it could be forced.

"It just appeared here, fully formed?"