abraxaslogs | Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

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Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

Who: Winchester & Co.
When: September
Where: Free Cities, Libertas, & the Horizon
What: Quests, training, or Roadhouse socializing.
Warnings: Suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, other psychological traumas.

Aɴᴅ I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴏᴡɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴏᴛʜᴇs I'ᴍ ᴡᴇᴀʀɪɴɢ
Aɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴏᴀᴅ ɢᴏᴇs ᴏɴ ғᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ
Aɴᴅ I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ sɪʟᴠᴇʀ ᴅᴏʟʟᴀʀ
Bᴜᴛ I'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʟᴇᴛ 'ᴇᴍ ᴄᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴍᴇ, ɴᴏ
Nᴏᴛ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʟᴇᴛ 'ᴇᴍ ᴄᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪᴅɴɪɢʜᴛ ʀɪᴅᴇʀ

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Jo nearly laughs, and the looks she tosses him at the first question is more one would give a child they were amusedly humoring than a peer eliciting obvious concern. Like he's misworded the actual question: Are you sure you want to breathe? There's nothing she sure of more. Nothing she wants more.

(Aside from getting off this rock.)

"I'm saving up for a gun," has that same dry-amused sound as that first look. "Even stopped by the guy's shop to talk specifics during the whole Libertas thing." Thing. As though the first thing to come to mind isn't bodies and breakage in every direction. The noxious scent that got stronger every day there was so clear in her memory that it was all she could smell again for a few seconds.

Then, a little more pointed,

"You said two months. This is two months."

She even got two extra teachers on top of him. Jo's not sure she would have made it to the end of this month if it hadn't been for a combination of all of that. Libertas. Dean. Ciri. Altaïr. Enough people that needed her in another way. Enough people to fill the in-between places with the promise of freedom after Libertas cleared. It was barely enough at that. But she had made it.

He sighs deeply, tiredly, the sound of a resigned dad coming to terms with the fact that his kid's going to prom and there's not a damn thing he can do about it.

"Alright, well, in that case. I got you something." He dips over a little, reaching down into the saddle bag on the side opposite her, obscured from her view. A second later, he comes up hefting one hell of a crossbow that he holds out to her.

It ain't dainty. It'll hit like a god damn truck, and it'll take her a solid grip to wield it — but he remembers the day they met. It wasn't a pistol she levelled at him, it was a heavy shotgun that seemed damn near as tall as she was at the time.

It's a gift for himself, a little, frankly — using this thing means her keeping some distance between herself and whatever they're hunting. It's smart. Ciri's advice made sense to him.

Jo ignores that sigh with so much less effort than the actual rebuffs of her mother for well over half a decade. Which means she's absolute one hundred percent not expecting his following words, and she looks back in confusion, half double checking if she heard right. Half dreading whatever child-safety leash nonsense might be about to be waved at her after that last several questions to reconsider.

There's a blink when Dean produces a sizeable crossbow and hefts it in her direction. No witty remark, no smirk; Jo stares at the thing thrust into her hands like she can't translate what it is. It's clear she's been startled from her usual cool, true or fronted. It catches up with the next one as she tilts it, looking at the scrollwork.

Then, shifts it entirely. More solid grip. Takes in the weight as something that isn't only catching it solidly being handed over. Heavy. Solid. Capable for bludgeoning, too. Lines it along one arm; shifts to both; checks the sightline. Eying the bolts, the lines, the soldered joints, leather closures. Archaic in comparison to anything she'd used back home.

There's no grit, no scuffing, no rust. New oiled.
And it is. Nice. Nicer than she'd ever gotten herself.

Nicer than anything she's been given in the last three years.
(Fuck. Has she been given anything in that time at all?)

"Burying the lead much?" The words are too shaken off the track. It's not a challenge, not a retort. It might be a question she wouldn't ever put on her tongue; when she looks up, her copper eyes still softer than her attempt to make her voice ask a business question through it."I assume you've tried it out? It shoots straight enough?"

He watches her assess the thing when open interest, something soft scrawled into the knit of his brow. Awaiting judgment, like this is something that actually matters — because it does. He spent a good chunk of time looking through options, weighing, considering. Shooting down more than a thinks a few shop keeps were entirely thrilled about, but for something like this you don't settle.

"Wouldn't give it to you if it didn't," he answers seriously.

You bet your ass he tried it out. Put it through all the trials. Only a few of 'em did, and he picked the best out of those.

A beat.

"Oh, right. You're probably gonna need these-" he dips over to the side again, digs around for a short quiver of crossbow bolts. It's leather craft, full of thick bolts, and it has a thigh holster reminiscent of one you'd use for a gun. Meant to be strapped somewhere just beneath the hip for easy reach and reload. And because he has to help kill the vibe here: "Those're all you're getting, by the way. You're on your own for re-upping the ammo, so. You know. Don't miss."

He goes digging for the only things he could be rummaging could be going for, but as he rummages, Jo stares at him anew. Again. Parsing through too many thoughts. Even this long later, she is still ready for that promise be jerked from her at the gates to being opened. Experience is a piss poor helpmate to hope, and the only flavor she has of it says standing tall even as everything else burns.

If her mother had ever, even once—

Plaintive wheedling to the contrary, but then this the next breath. This act that showed so much louder the expectation the first was never going to work even though it had to be tried a hundredth time. The time, the effort—the understanding—that had to go into that. It's bareness that Jo feels at a loss for how to close right back up. A disjointed ache for being seen.

"Here." Jo is handing back the crossbow even as she's taking the holster and listening to him add the warning. Whether he balks a confused note or not, Jo shifts in her saddle and slides down out of it entirely. One hand against the horse's shoulder to calm it, reorient it to her location, before she turns to work at her sword belt. The fitted one that came with her sword from Victor and Jayce after she called in her chip on the payout from working the mine.

"If I keep shooting like I did last time—" In the Hunting Grounds; at the wrong target. "—that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Plus, retrival's always an option. They are bigger than bullets."

She hefts the crossbow at him and he fumbles to catch it, blinking in dumb confusion. For a second there he thinks she's shutting down the gift for reasons beyond his immediate comprehension, but his shoulders relax a little when she hops down off the horse and he pieces together the motivation.

Feels good, seeing her strap that on.

...not in a creepy way. Is that creepy?

He averts his eyes after a maybe too-long assessing beat, and settles his gaze on the gate.

"Yeah, well, let's hope whatever you're shooting at doesn't catch it this time," he says absently, maybe a little impatiently. "Hurry up, before Walking on Sunshine starts playing and this turns into an outfit montage."

It slides on soundly enough. The boots Jo has don't even need taking off first. She gets it up to her thighs, holding it between both as she slides the top section through her belt. She can't tell if it is taking too long, and it makes her hazard a look up as she's sinching her belt. Just as Dean's suddenly looking away. At the gate. The unmoving, uninteresting, still unchanged gate.

Jo found the strange, still not-quite-checkable, smile added to with an unexpected flood of heat in her cheeks as she looked back down just as fast. She finished fastening the belt with slightly clumsier fingers as she tried to push that right back down. So much as any of it wanted to listen to her at all. Not when her blood was still racing too far ahead of her, and those gates, and the next five or ten or however many minutes. Already galloping even as she stood still.

Throwing a foot back up into the stirrup and shoved herself back up on her horse without some steps (which was still something she was figuring out how to master gracefully, but she powered through it like the best). Settling herself back in the saddle. Checking the set of the thigh holster and tugging it so all the bolts were arranged upward and only the flat strap was under her thigh.

"C'mon," Jo held out a hand for the crossbow, smile still a little too wide—all the way to lifting her cheeks and brightening up her copper eyes—even though her words were chiding at him. Like he was the thing that had held them up another five minutes, and not her, on the ground, off her horse. "We better go see if you have good taste."

Spoilers: he has excellent taste.

They ride. Hunting here is a little like hunting back home — it involves packing up, it involves hours or days of travel, hunkering down in suboptimal conditions, tracking the thing down and not coming home until you kill it. The difference here? No motel rooms. No witnesses, no pretense. Just them, the desert, the ground, and a big-ass something ready and willing to tear their heads off.

Dean doesn't typically travel as far out as Geralt. This means he doesn't stay gone as long, and the monsters he tends to hunt are smaller. He makes a little less money for it, but the jobs come a little more frequently, so it balances it.

They're headed for an infrequently travelled caravan road that passes a little too close to the badlands. There've been reports of larval sandskids migrating a little too close for comfort, and getting a little too ballsy. A couple of 'em took down a trader's horse, the driver was lucky to get away with his life, let alone the merchandise.

They need to be brought down before they can mature. They're dangerous as larvae, but that doesn't even compare to how hard they are to take down once they reach adulthood.

They're getting paid by the head here — meaning there's more than one or two. No idea how many, could be anywhere from three to six or seven, more if they're unlucky.

They ride from sun up to sun down before they finally stop to make camp — two bedrolls and a fire, no need for a tent. From cool weather to hot weather to cool again. Further and further from city lights, from civilization, until they lose sight of it entirely, and it's just the two of them, the desert at night, and the potential to get eaten pretty much any time now.

Feel good to be back on the job, Jo?

It doesn't take her long to be grateful for the rigid, rigorous (and not so annoying now) focus Dean put on prepping her for the desert. If part of her had low grade settled on the over steady sun, heat, and dry air of Cadens, this was nothing like that. All the structures and all the shade were gone. Sun beating down on the gravely sand and beating right back up from that it, too.

Not to mention the ever-present feeling of exposure that didn't fade, sunk in deep claws, as a vibration at the core of her bones, refusing to shut up. She'd been to forested areas, inner cities, suburbs, swamps, a few different coasts, and so many other places in the last few years. But nothing this empty and yet this expansive all at once. Scrub some things, dottings of trees, the odd flowering bush, clumps of hills, weird massive rock formations, and random cliffs, but mostly just endlessness in every direction. The sky and the desert were divided only by that blurring line where they tricked the eye into thinking they touched.

Jo's quiet most of the time, alert, grits her teeth, and, without much in the way of word or noise of complaint, figures out how to adjust to the barrage of the sun, the constant needling of the heat, of thirst while conserving water, being on a horse so many hours. Night's are a strange new thing; too exhausted not to fall asleep, too aware of the endless openness, the types of creatures roaming out there, to sleep anything more than successive short jags through them.

It's weird. It's new.

But Dean has a direction,
and they don't stop.

Jo's a little grateful when they finally start to see in the far-distance the worn-in path that must have been dug by constant caravan wheels winding through the landscape. When it wasn't currently under attack. "Signs to look for?"

Eventually, they slow to an amble — a patrolling trot, Dean's eyes sharply scanning the planes stretching out before them as best he can through the waves of heat that distort what should be clear and flat.

"They travel in small packs. There's gonna be at least three or four of 'em. You'll see 'em kicking up a little dust, disrupting the earth, leaving trail lines. Cross between a scorpion and a snake, almost, the way they skitter-slither flat across the dirt." That's what he's looking for now. Dust trails. Moving lines. "When they stand upright... could be anywhere from two to eight feet tall, depending on how old we're catchin' em. Once they get big enough, we're talking full-on Tremors."

Pretty sure he doesn't need to say why they wanna catch 'em before that happens.

"Joy."

They're probably hell as they are already. Even bigger hell just took the terrorizing, destruction, and death to another higher level. Her eyes skimmed the sands, twisting and shimmering, in the distance. Days of staring at them had not made staring at them into a skill she could just push through. Not that she ever thought that was possible, but it was a nice dream squinting into the distance.

"Have you gone after them before?"

"Yeah, totally," he says with... arguably strained confidence. It sounds less than one hundo even to his own ears, and he grimaces gently. Concedes to an amendment of, "...Once."

A beat.

"On accident."

He was hunting something else, he was super unprepared for these goddamn things.

Grimly: "They ate my first horse. Whole damn thing. Hooves and all."

Cost him the entire damn contract's worth of coin and then some. Lesson learned, and after that the stable master was only willing to rent him exactly one bitch horse for like the next two months. Some kind of douchey horse probationary period, like he's going around using them for bait or something.

It's a little interesting to watch. The unconvincing confidence that bites back one step at a time on each of the words that follow. The concession that turns quickly toward a confession of it being once on accident and one Dean was just lucky enough to walk away from. Literally.

"Fuck." Her whole imagination widened the picture of the full size of each mouth on this multi-headed monster to each one potentially able to eat a horse. "That takes 'don't get eaten' to a whole other level, doesn't it?"

And, maybe it tucks the question about this being her first on something he couldn't manage before into its own pocket because she's not asking it. It can set into the back of her teeth and the line and her spine and her eyes going back to the silent, still, stretched ground that wouldn't be so forever.

Doesn't occur to him to specify they hadn't eaten it whole as in one bite, but rather that a pack of three or so of them descended on the thing like equestrian freakin' termites in the world's most morbid cartoon. She'll see soon enough anyway.

"Yeah," he exhales a breathy agreement. She's damn right about that. This world's a little less find the corpse with its throat ripped out and more try to identify if that scrap of leftover meat used to be human-shaped. Provided there's any left over at all. It's a whole different experience here. "Wait 'til you see the Geralt Jrs."

Which is a statement that probably absolutely bears clarification, but it's at that moment he spots it. All joking switches off in an instant, and he jerks his head in direction of the dust trails.

"Alright, showtime. Stay back, keep moving. I'm gonna get in close and keep 'em busy while you Duck Hunt." As in, pick them off from the sides one by one while he preoccupies and directs the center. Seems like the easiest way to give her the breathing room to line up a shot she wouldn't otherwise get if the both of them tried running around in circles like jackasses trying not to get a leg torn off together. "Oh, and uh. Mind the fangs, the venom's a paralytic."

Probably useful information to know, right as he kicks his horse into gear and starts galloping toward their quarry.

Of course, there are monsters named after Geralt. Or he has monster offspring. She'd say she wasn't surprised, but she's not in for the flavor of insulting Ciri in that. It doesn't matter anyway because Dean hitches to attention off in the direction where the ground is hazing rock and dust from a shaking ground, moving fast.

"Nice of you to remember that now," Jo calls after his vanishing back.

Go time. Jo's only said she wanted this for weeks. Her toes press into the stirrup, and she pulls up the crossbow from its side carried, stripping one of the bolts from the thigh holster. She gets it comfortable on her lap and pats her horse on the neck.

"We've got this," she says quietly.
Not sure how much of it is for herself.

She's wanted this for weeks. She'd been doing the job for years. The nerves and the fear don't actually stop. You just learned to walk through them. She settles a hand on the crossbow and sends them into a trot in the same direction. Letting Dean have his lead, but getting closer still to wherever that stopping point is about to be.

Twenty or so yards away, Dean hops off of his horse and sets into a jog. Tempting as it might be to ride the thing into combat, at the end of the day, this is a civilian horse. This is a loaner, a rental, one that sure as shit wasn't bred for combat. Even if he fully owned her, he wouldn't be able to trust for certain she wouldn't throw him off the moment one of those things erupted up from the ground. You know what's more dangerous than being on your own two feet?

Being on your back. No, thank you. It's not worth chancing it.

The things that he's content to refer to as sand worms feel the vibrations in the dirt even from as far away as they are. It's obvious enough they detect him when the momentum seems to suddenly stop, and then the dust clouds promptly redirect. Oh yeah, they're coming for him. He'll draw his sword once they're within fifteen or so feet, but for now?

He shifts the rifle strapped to his back. Brings it up, levels it carefully at the dirt, and then pulls the trigger.

One of them bursts from the ground, maw gaping, an ungodly pissed-off gurgling sound roaring from its gullet. He fires again, and the bullet tears through its head in a splattering of gore and viscera. It takes one more shot to bring it all the way down, and by that point they're close enough for him to quickly switch weapons.

It's about to get risky.

Edited 2022-10-16 11:21 (UTC)

Dean sends the horse off running for any number of reasons she can put to the guess, and it really is a commentary on all of them. They'd spare animals they have no stake in, where they don't choose the same path for themselves. Hand bracing the crossbow, eyes on Dean, she has the second to catch the flicker of it. The one that starts with that's a special level of insanity right there, one small man, with the whole roll of land and that threatening cloud, and ends up in bone-deep, grim, glinting respect, solid as a diamond, and just as hard to shift.

(A little bit of awe that gets one breath before she's banishing it down hard. No distractions.)
The crossbow gets leveled, with his ability to get a wide arc of movement across her viewpoint.

The ground settles, the dust hangs in the air, and even before it can have the chance to float down, the ground erupts with a monster. One, and then another, and Dean's working one side, and she starts with the center. Not shooting too close to him, considering shot time is longer than a bullet for it to land, but aiming to shoot through the head of whichever one realizes what Dean's doing to its closest neighbor.

Dean finishes off one, and her first is sailing toward the ground dead or not quite yet (he'll be able to tell better than her from here; it's part of why she doesn't like distance all that much either), and she sends another bolt pegged for it still. Safer than sorry. But more heads are pushing up out of the ground and the cloud of dust, all the more angry-vicious for the smell of blood, death screams, and flying viscera.

One small man though he may be, he does have a few things that help balance it out. Maybe baseline, maybe back home, this would've been damn near suicidal. Here, now?

Well, maybe he gets to show off just a little.

The first time one of them gets too close for comfort, he throws out a hand and blasts it back a dozen yards with a flash of white light. It doesn't kill the thing, but it does a good enough job stunning it long enough for him to chop off another thing's head.

The second time he gambles, and it pays off for the first time outside of training — that goddamn shield, that sign he spent forever trying to get right and just couldn't until not too long ago. One of the sand worms bashes itself into the thing over and over, but it doesn't falter. Gives her plenty of time to take aim, fire a bolt, and put it out of its misery.

A tank and a marksman, it's a classic combo. You gotta love it.

Jo isn't expecting either thing, but it's becoming a bit normal with Dean and this place—and there's no time more than a vague flicker of annoyance, here and gone, full focus demanded already elsewhere. Because. Powers were sprouting up out of people and things that never had them to begin with all over this world. She's starting to accept that—more of a speed bump, less of a personalized flash of fire to the face.

But. Maybe it delays Jo a second longer than it should. The comically weird, unmovable trainwreck pause of just watching the monster bash its head again and again toward where Dean is standing and, each time, get stopped by a near-invisible wall. It's only the glitch of the record, and then she's reloading and aiming for that one. Rage-confused and single-minded. One shot. Two.

There's a prickle of something she's trying hard not to label this early, about being this far away. Left out of range, like there are still kid wheels. On her horse. Whatever. I want to do more than sit somewhere out here, playing Duck Hunt, safe as houses, the way none of them ever were or are.

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Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

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