𝕊𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕒𝕚𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕒 𝕓𝕖 𝕔𝕣𝕒𝕫𝕪

[tobeclosetohim]

Who: Jo Harvelle
When: September
Where: Cadens & Horizon
What: September Catch-All
Why: Up early 'cuz I'm off to DragonCon starting Sept 1st
Warnings: Sass, Flirting, Drinking, Fighting, Swearing, Violence, Etc Hunter Things

Comments

𝕆𝕡𝕖𝕟 𝕥𝕠 ℂ𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕤 / ℍ𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕫𝕠𝕟

[tobeclosetohim]

Month two after her arrival, she finds the whole world upside down. Cities are being bombed, fields being set ablaze. The entirety of any peace in the giant mess of Caden's upended entirely, and everyone Jo's met there with it. All her original complaints about being stuck in Caden's the month previous slide to a backburner as Jo starts doing what every sane person should be: helping out.

• For Cadens: Jo can be founded running supplies for Nadine, helping with the refugees who've been moved into Cadens, around Mag's Inn, listening closely to those who've been here plan, and, in whatever spare moments she can find (and hours she can't sleep) practicing her sword work with a single-minded focus (and sometimes mile-long almost-mania). Feel free to bump into her anywhere.


• For the Horizon: Jo can be found in Harvelle's Roadhouse. Small things have been changing around the bar since she's been staying longer and longer, details shoring themselves up that weren't remembered earlier. She's always up for a drink, a round of pool or knife chess, settling in for TV watching. Plus, all of that and more is on offer for everyone else. More than most, she gets that people pulling the hard shifts need somewhere to take a brief breather from working themselves to death for others.

Swordwork!

[aquilus]

Altaïr is no healer, but having heard what has befallen Libertas, he feels the same fierce restlessness that so many in Cadens seem to. The urge to leave, to visit the scene of the atrocity and do what they can to help.

What would he do? He doesn't know. This is not the Crusade that plagues his homeland, and he cannot take the role he once did, acting from the conflict's shadows. But there is so little else that he can do without his brotherhood that he does know that he cannot do nothing. If he knew the land better, if he could be sure that he could offer significant aid as a single person, he would take the chance and attempt to sneak past road the road blockages. But he doesn't and can't, so he won't, so he's passing the time keeping his skills as sharp as he can.

It seems he's not the only one. Altaïr watches the woman practice her swordwork with a single-minded focus for a few minutes before stepping forward. She's not a complete novice, but clearly no expert. "You're off-balance."

Sword Master Ahoy!

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's issue with her inability to leave the city used to be contained to just not being able to hunt, but the buzz under the whole city's skin, the inability to get out and help bombed Libertas, has replaced hers with the lightning of theirs. Of a greater need down in the marrow of her bones to help those who actually do need helping.

But they can't leave the city—none of them. And there's the curfew.

Nothing to do but wait, and Jo hates waiting when she knows she should be somewhere else.

Which has her outside practicing everything Dean added to her teaching last week. The muscles in her arms aren't complaining about the weight of the sword much anymore, in so much as it's there, but it's ignorable now. Like most wounds, once you don't let them talk. It still doesn't feel as smooth as she wants it to. As watching Ciri looks. It's not one of the weapons Jo's been practicing with since she was eight.

She could already wield a sword if necessary to hack something down.

But actual sword fighting? And defense? Without a gun?
It was not needed where she'd come from.

The comment from behind her grates on the same note in her own thought, and she turns, expression pinched with some annoyance, even more so because she hates to be chagrined in the face of a stranger. Her gaze sweeps over him, trying to decide if she wants to reply to this stranger calling her not good enough.

[aquilus]

It's possible Altaïr should mind his own business. He has never been a teacher; the training ring was Rauf's domain. At most he taught by example and by beating his training opponents into the dirt. It is not his obligation, and moreover, it may not be wanted — the look on the woman's face doesn't exactly reflect gratitude for the free advice.

And yet. He strides forward, pulling his own sword from its sheath as he goes.

"Like this," he says, lifting the blade to demonstrate an improved version of her previous stance. "Keep more weight on your back foot, and thrust—" He does so. "You can run your opponent through without over-committing your blow and leaving yourself open to an attack from his allies."

This world is dangerous, and this land is likely to descend into open war. If he can act to help people be more likely to survive it, he will.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo isn't expecting that.

Which shows, when she stays there still, sword in the air, posture all but demolished, watching hill into a stance next to her, geing at his own foot and then thrujust to throw out that comment at her flawsted him to just throw out that comment at her flaws and walk on. There's something almost too close to home, to him just stepping up and demonstrating. Older hunters helping newer hunters in the bar. No prior claim or knowledge of each other most of the time.

It freezes her a second. Leaves her questioning why. Before she looks down at his feet with a slight frown, and shifts herself to mirror him. Her movements are as smooth and determined as his, but she is copying him. "Thanks. This is all kinds of new."

There's vague gratitude and a complaint in there both. She knows where she wants to get, and what she has to do to get. Which she will do. Will learn. But it's been a long time since she had to learn something from the ground up scratch. At least Dean set a time, and not a measure of how good she had to be by then. (Maybe it was smarter of him in the long run; she might never have slept, ate, went anywhere else if he chose a marker she could bullhead into at the sacrifice of all else.)

[aquilus]

He can tell it's new to her — which is what he doesn't say, barely remembering this particular social grace in time. Still, there's no actual shame in being new to the blade, and considerable wisdom in practicing wielding one before it is needed.

"You'll improve with effort," he says, keeping a sidelong glance at her as he demonstrates again, slower this time so she can see everything she needs to. "Good. That's better."

There's a strange nostalgia to this. It brings up memories of his own first days with a blunted sword, back when his limbs were gawky and growing and not nearly as under his control as he'd have liked. The woman is clearly far more grown, but still. It's a brief, rare moment of sentimentality.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo does it again. Then, again, as he talks.

She's not looking for praise so much as to avoid censure again, which is its own brand of fucked up. She knows. But she's not looking for anyone to tell her how good she is. She's heard too much of the reverse. Even when she knew it was lies all twisted up in anger made of fear, blown at her like she'd be a stack of cards and fall down under it. Even the lies have knit themselves into her skin, her bones, her mind. The whisper of what was expected of her. Demanded of her.

Like she wasn't Ellen Harvelle's daughter.
Bill Harvelle's. What they made her. Together.

She does it a third time. It still feels weird. She was striking at the blank air. But she knows she shot arrows at trees and bullets at cans long before she got to aim them at anyone else. She steps back, with a glance back at him finally. This one is less hostile than the first and is less distant than the second. It's more centered, the collected side she keeps in her pockets for all times.

"How long have you been using a sword?"

swords, early sept.

[wiedzminka]

[ It's a short while after Dean asked her that favor. With everything else going on, Ciri's at once distracted and desperate for more distractions, edging on the sort of restlessness that'd have her riding Nixie a week into the hills-- but she can't. Not now. Not with Jaskier still healing, the military tripling patrols on all the gates, soldiers in the streets.

They don't bother her. Those at the gates recognize her well enough by now; that's not the problem. It just doesn't feel right, heading off, even though she knows there are certain things she could probably offer to help with. At least a few more days. At least until Jaskier is home.

Viktor and Nadine are better suited to organizing things like donations and figuring out what might be useful to the next round of relief efforts being sent over. Ciri's itching to do something more... physical, perhaps.

She remembers Dean's requests; she finds Jo. ]

[tobeclosetohim]

[ Jo looks up at the approach of footsteps, as surprised as unsurprised to see Ciri appear around these parts. They didn't quite have anything as specific as days picked, but the way everything's going in the city, people have been popping up everywhere. The tension is thick enough that you could bite it, while they're all asked to go on waiting. ]

Hey. [ Jo let her sword rests against her shoulder, trying not to breakneck backcheck whatever she might have been doing wrong in every part of the last thing she was practicing. Set it aside, (even as it, too, clambered into her veins) for catching that same unblunted edge in Ciri's face. Or maybe it's her eyes. A slight frown turned Jo's mouth. ] No change at the gates yet?

[wiedzminka]

[ Ciri shakes her head. ]

Wouldn't expect it anytime soon. More likely to get worse than anything.

I don't think anyone will bother you for practicing in the courtyard, though. Just don't go swinging that thing in public.

[ She watches Jo handling the sword, propping it up against her shoulder like she's a fucking lumberjack with a hunk of wood, and sighs. ]

Where'd you get that sword, anyway?

[tobeclosetohim]

[ The longer she's with Ciri, the better she gets at reading those shifts in her expression, just like she did with the barely expression rock walls of hunters at the bar as grew up, mastering minutiae as a language, but this one would be clear even with that. She's done wrong with her sword again, and she moves it, but it sort of ... hovers in mid-air. Because she has no clue what she should be doing with it.

Like is it just as bad if she puts the tip in the dirt?

It's not like she'd be holding it like she had been if it was covered in blood.
She wouldn't care back home. But it'd be a hack job back home.
And there was like fucking sword etiquette now. ]

Dean.

[ Small shrug. ]

But no clue where he got it.

[wiedzminka]

Doesn't matter where he got it. Let me see.

[ Ciri puts out a hand, waiting for Jo to hand her the sword.

Last time they'd spoken, Ciri had told Jo that she was asked to give her a few lessons, since most of the weapons available here are unfamiliar. But Ciri had mostly given her some basic information and taught her a few forms, then offered demonstrations with her own blade. She'd asked Jo to explain any experience she already had with a similar weapon (Dean had mentioned a machete). They haven't worked with a real blade in Jo's hands yet. At least, not together.

She examines the blade, tests the weight in her hand. Then hands it back. ]

It's fine. Where's the scabbard?

[tobeclosetohim]

[ She watches Ciri look over the blade, and not for the first time since these started, there's a small teethed biting desperation to know what exactly she's looking at. When was the last time Jo felt so entirely out of her element with the training she needed? When was it the last time she needed to be trained by someone who wasn't a familiar weathered old face? One she knew the skin lines and eye cracks of like the back of her hand already, enough to wheedle them into what her mother never truly wanted her to know so entirely as she pushed and fought for?

How young had she been, then? ]

Over there.

[ She gestures to a bench not far from them, where her new bag is resting next to the scabbard with the thick belt still snaking out in a pile under it. ]

libertas; post-retaliation.

[gynvael]

The rubble and destruction are no strange sight. He's walked streets just like these a hundred times. The distinction is normally, he's passing through. Rarely does he ever stop while a war is raging across the land. Sometimes villages burn, cities fall. It happens.

It's different now that he lives here. He wants to say he isn't attached to this place, but part of him is. Started to some time ago. He isn't certain what that means, how he feels about it, but the fact is, the days when he would ride around the chaos are over. And so he finds himself amongst the others, picking through the wreckage and clearing the roads. Some of it strikes a bit too close to home, cracking open old memories between the smell of smoldering flames and the bodies trapped under fallen stone. There are melted sculptures, broken statues, that only a few weeks ago were standing on display when he visited with Jaskier. Back when Jaskier had hoped some art would distract from thoughts of war.

Not that Geralt ever expected it to work. But it doesn't mean he likes being proven right.

Of course, navigating the city is one matter. Leaving it is another. Between cordoned off roads, dozens of small fires, collapsing towers—he finds himself retracing his steps several times, climbing over rooftops only to have to turn back, and eventually he realizes he's simply. Trapped. In a small southwest section of Libertas.

Which also happens to be about the same time he spots a familiar head of blonde hair. Right. Why not? Who else to best spend the next while walking in fucking circles with?

If Jo turns around, he'll lift a hand in the most deadpan greeting imaginable. Perhaps he won't be shot at this time.

[tobeclosetohim]

It hasn't been all that long since their group broke off, scattering in different directions, looking further afield of the main path, with the plan to meet back up in that same spot with anyone they found or to bring each other to those people if they couldn't be moved yet due to debris or condition. Working with these new people has gone better than she expected, but it's also been undeniable how much it matters to those who've been here much longer.

Working with Dean is only strange in that,
it's becoming long-term rather than an unexpected fluke.

She's absently constructing the edges of whatever joke to spin at him—about being surprised he let her breathe without his supervision for five minutes; a flimsy blanket against the destruction and dead bodies—while ducking under another fallen doorway; that's all precariously balanced chaos when she realizes she's traced this space more than twice now. No one here, but debris walls and still burning sections each time she tries to puzzle the maze back out from where she knows she came into this area.

Jo frowns toward the skyline, all broken and shattered buildings that still give and go tumbling down with no more provocation than the wind blowing on them and the flames continuing to gnaw at what's left of the seams. There should be a way, but she keeps coming up short with another collapsed wall, another section still on fire. Paths she's sure weren't down only—ten? twenty? minutes ago; probably longer; how long has it been now?

At this point, it's starting only to be circles, and Jo is turning around in the street, counting off that she's already tried every open path from this point when she spots Geralt. It's not pitch black this time, but it's just as unexpected as last time (even if she's vaguely getting used to seeing him across the room now and then at Mag's). Still. He's conspicuously recognizable. A brick build painted in black.

When she's staring down the road, and he's the only one there. Slowly raising a hand in a non-verbal signal that he's seen her, too. And. That's just great. Jo's never asking this place to give a girl a hand again. Trying not to frown but feeling less than enthused about being found stuck here by someone if it had to be him, she raises her hand in return.

[gynvael]

They've made eye contact. The fire isn't going anywhere. Nor is the pile of shit on the ground getting in their way.

He sighs, and makes his way over to Jo. Above all, he's practical. No point in circling around each other like territorial sharks if they have the same goal of not being trapped. That aside, he can't exactly let a building collapse on top of her. For Dean's sake, at the very least. There's blood staining the streets, oozing out from under the rubble. But he can't hear any heartbeats, so with only a brief glance down, he steps over it.

"What happened to your guardian?" Dry, but a little curious, too. Dean has a habit of hovering, apparently, when it comes to his people. Which is a new thing for Geralt to witness. Up until now, the only one from Dean's home is Castiel. Not something in need of supervision.

He looks up at the flames atop the crumbling wall. Tries to consider how the hell else they can escape this rubble prison other than hunkering down and waiting for the military to clear a path. No one's waiting on him, but. He isn't keen on leaving Jaskier for too long. (Maybe he's hovering, too.)

[tobeclosetohim]

If Jo was attempting to keep a neutral face, it screws itself entirely the moment he gets to the word Guardian. Like she's just some child that Dean is watching over. There isn't an audible click, but she nearly grinds her teeth. Great. This is just great. This is just what she wanted, what she needed while she's out here actually getting to help with something.

Her gaze is hard and unimpressed, looking up at him.
The last word alone is petulantly unnecessary.

"He's still out there." So helpful.

Then. "The rest of our team, too." Alas, she doesn't know to name at least one of them. She doesn't yet have the context of who all is tangled up in the loop Geralt's in with. She follows his line of sight up to the flame because she can at least pretend to make an attempt a little further, too. "Yours?"

[gynvael]

That is, in fact, more genuine information than he was expecting out of her. In return, Geralt grants the same. What passes for information coming from him, in any case.

"We parted."

He'd been with them to assist—but at the end of the day, he works quicker alone. A handful of hours was all he was willing to give before he ventured on his own. Hence.

Here they are.

Behind them, a sharp crack like lightning. He snaps his head around, in time to see a distant roof collapse. Dust and debris to spray into the air, adding to the already thick smoke and ash. He takes a breath, and exhales. At least one building looks as though it's standing solid. After a second, Geralt starts towards it. If nothing else, he wants to get on higher ground. A swathe of broken jagged rocks and glass line the path.

He doesn't invite Jo along—but he doesn't exactly leave her behind, either, keeping a fallen beam lifted for her to duck under if she's coming.

[tobeclosetohim]

If Jo were someone else, maybe she'd assume he'd restarted what she had, only in different words, but there's something far more final in it. She doesn't want to think about it. Picking apart his words and whatever they mean under the few of them is not her job. Or concern. It's whatever it is. Concise. Laconic. Barely verbal.

The cacophony of the falling house tenses all of her muscles. The sound of raining debris echoes in every direction, briefly outmatching anything around them, as the piece domino through their near total collapse. Even the fires are silenced by it. It sends a shiver down her spine, looking at the dilapidated fall, and she tries not to think about the thing she's been trying not to think about since she got here.

(It's not about her. None of this is.)

Geralt takes off but pauses, holding up a beam—that she's pretty sure should take more than the no effort it looks like it takes him—as though he's waiting for her to go under it, without looking at her, to see if she gets it or if she will. Jo gives the destruction around her another searching look as though to plead with a universe that hasn't listened to a single wish since she got here for some other option to appear magically.

But it doesn't.

He's the only option.

Jo head's that way and ducks under the beam, thinking if it were anyone else, she'd say thank you, but the only prevailing thought that remains loud enough to drown out the gnat of its passing is that she still doesn't want her back to him. Especially now that they're somehow the only two people trapped in this corner.

{ my mother said, when you gonna live your life right

[tobeclosetohim]

[ Backdated. Post-"The Meeting." ]




The meeting breaks up fast enough after Dean introduces everyone to everyone else, with not too subtle a look at Jo once or twice, when saying it was important everyone knew who everyone else is. She'd stared him right back each time, unruffled to the degree that was nonchalantly remorselessly. That said he could look at her all he liked. It wasn't going to shift her posture, leaning on the bar, or expression, neutrally but very alertly watching this all. She still didn't like it. She still didn't want it him in her bar. Whether it was actually hers or not didn't matter in that equation.

But Geralt and Ciri slip off rather quickly after introductions pass, and Jo's focus shifts to the girl two bar stools down from her. Claire. Biker Barbie. The irony that she ran into Claire, without knowing who she was, where she was from (that Claire's family in the ways that matter most) and yet they'd appeared at the same time, run into each other nearly the next moment from both being there.

"Small world."

[waywardsister]

"Yeah. Positively quaint."

Claire gives a crooked smile. It's a little tight lipped, a little more tense than she'd been in their initial meeting. Still weary, but for entirely different reasons now. Because suddenly people here are connected. Suddenly, this random woman who seemed kinda badass and on Claire's wavelength is someone who matters to Dean, who in turn matters to Claire, who in turn doesn't matter in the ways she should, 'cause he doesn't remember.

A headache is building. Still, not like it's on Jo that the situation went from murky to floating belly up in shit. And it's rough - the fact that the name doesn't really mean anything to Claire, that the Roadhouse is something she only ever heard in passing from other people as a thing of the practically ancient past, at least in terms of hunter years. There's a part of Claire, a part that's cozied up to loss so much it's become a friend rather than a stranger, that wonders what happened to Jo, if she died or left, and how long ago that was for her presence not to ripple through to Claire reaching young adulthood.

There's part of her that grieves that, too. 'cause she's not exactly one for instant sisterhood, but still. There was a comfort, briefly, in working alongside Jody and Donna and Kaia and Patience and Alex, in knowing it to be so different to braving seedy bars with seedier patrons on her own.

"So. Hunters."

She winces a little. Not exactly skilled at small talk. But hey, there's an attempt to open a conversation.

[tobeclosetohim]

There's always a wariness to their kind at the beginning, even when they'd come looking for the Roadhouse, either through rumor or word of mouth sending them to it, to the Harvelle's, to that one port in a storm where hunters were known, welcome, helped, kept. It's so familiar Jo doesn't take offense or place on it any greater concern than it earns at first blush. It's always a surprise when it's someone as young as Claire. As she, Dean, Sam, and a very rare pack of other kids across the spectrum of years and families raised in it were.

Not that she knows if Claire was yet. Only that's she's in it early.
And she's been in it long enough she knows Dean well.

Jo snorts at the latter words.

"Yeah, that's a starter."
Jo gave nods behind the bar.
"You want a drink to go with this?"

No, Jo does care to ask if Claire's old enough. She doesn't care what the rules here or at home are about that. If you're old enough to go up against the dark as a hunter, you're old enough to get your dues in several ways. This was just a smaller one; she didn't mind brushing off that fact for Claire, or Dean if need be.

[waywardsister]

A smirk flickers across Claire's face, something a little too ugly to be softly pleased. More triumphant. More like barking a sharp 'hah' in someone's face. Suck it, Dean. She can drink if she wants to in dive bars throughout America - and here, too. It's nice to have the freedom not just secretly and illicitly, but by way of peer approval.

"Sure."

It's different when someone offers than if she has to talk her way into one, or flash a fake ID. She can imagine Jody sputtering, and clings to the sharp hurt of that mental image - like curling her hand into barbed wire on purpose, and relaxing her shoulders into the hurt even as she keeps that sharp curl of her lips outwardly.

"So, you're pretty at home with all this."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo slips off her stool and heads for rounding the bar to the opening for the first time since finding this place in Dean's Horizon. Small celebrations calling for a small amendment to her pride (as though a far greater one for the whole farce of the last some thirty).

"Not this whole kidnapped world," Jo said, coming up from the inside, across the bar from Claire now. "But the rest of this?" There's a loose raise of hands gestured outward, as though to mean the room at large, and Claire, and Dean, and this meeting, with it. "Yeah. The real Roadhouse was my home." Ghost of a shell that it is, and Jo smirks rather than taking it down any of the dangerous forks that touch that statement. "Hard not to be home-y at that point."

The smallest beat.

"You have a favorite I should make? Or just anything?"

[waywardsister]

"Surprise me."

It comes without thought. It's how Claire cases new locations, often. Pleasant interactions with a bartender. 'Surprise me' - it tells her much more than people would assume. The bartender's mood, for one, and how they perceive Claire. It's also just good fun, even though Claire wouldn't exactly admit to that. Doesn't always get her a proper drink, of course. Sometimes it's an eye roll and a cheap beer. Sometimes it's a soda and a stern look.

She starts looking around with a different eye, then. Tries to see this place as a home, not a bar. Can't - but then, visualizing anywhere as 'home' has become an impossible task.

"You mean literally, the home thing? You grew up with this?"