abraxaslogs | [Open] Call Me Little Sunshine

One moment Miss Butters was saying goodbye, the next Jack found himself pulled from the water. An empty feeling washing over him... He was powerless again. He knew that feeling all too well, but the pain inside of him from the recent return of his soul hurt more than any loss of power.

He's been there, done that. Even in his short years, he has lived a lot of thanks to his family. He listens as he is told what is going on. 'You're important, they're grateful to have you.' This feels familiar, but leaves such a sense of dread.

What about Chuck? What about the Winchesters and Cas?

Still, he follows the orders given in his state of odd shock, making his way to the mess hall at first to eat. Then he takes a wagon to see the city of Cadens. He felt lost again, just as he had started to get back on his feet. He wanted to get home, but he was powerless, at least for a few days. Best to make the most of it.

He looked slightly unsure as she had asked the easiest question in the world. 'We save people and hunt things' That would be the easy answer, but it wasn't the one he felt he should use.

He had shared his powers with the kids in town, and where did that get him?

Oh, what had he done... He could lament that later, too.

"We fight monsters. I promise, monsters, demons, and even angels are real. It sounds crazy, I know. But it's true." He spoke in that awkward way. His eyes more green than blue today as he looked back up at her. "Something bad was coming... and I need to be there. Not here. " He mad a deal with Billy... he had to.

Jo eyes brows hike a little more up in an interesting level of outside-of-body bewilderment as she processes that opposite side of a speech she's given but never once heard in her life directed at her. She'd come in at birth. Sure there must have been a point she didn't know and then did know, but it's so far back it's from before she has solid childhood memories.

"Yeah," Jo says, a little offbeat. Then, she gave a shake of her head.
"That sounds a lot like the kind of place I'm from, too."

The earnestness there really doesn't shake off him, even for the seriousness, does it?

"Sad to say, kid. You're probably stuck for a while. No revolving doors in this place, or I would have hit it a long time ago." People did happen to vanish in the night, but no one could definitively say where they'd gone and if gone was home. Which was fuck all not comforting, too. "Hopefully, your family'll do okay carrying the load for a while."

A look of sadness flashes in his eyes as she speaks. "Sorry..." He apologized, as if he caused monsters in her world too. "Kinda sucks, right?" He couldn't even be a kid. He had to be born a full-grown man just to survive in their world. Furthermore, he knew it was hard on hunters, and she sounded like she at least knew.

He should know better than to be trusting, but he's fallen for it all so many times.

"I just hope Castiel won't be upset..." The name-drop was mostly due to his worry for his father figure. He knew Cas was searching for a way to keep Jack from killing himself for the cause. Even if Billy had come up with the plan, Castiel didn't like it.

"They can, as long as things don't get worse." He finally forced a weak smile in place. "My name's Jack."

Jo let that apology fall where it got put out without touching it. Even for all the bad that touches Hunter's lives, and a lot falls under 'the not pretty' carpet pullover act, she doesn't think her life sucks. She does think The Life sucks. There isn't a single thing she'd rather be doing. Anywhere. On any world. In any life.

She'd fought, bled, and sacrificed all she held dear for that truth.
(And she was going to die just like she'd sworn. Doing this job. Not regretting it.)

That name stops her in her tracks. Her eyes narrowed because no, like he couldn't, could he? She gambles on it for broke, because why the fuck not, it won't matter if it doesn't stick at all. "Castiel. Like the Angel Castiel?"

Beat. More pinpointed even. "Like Dean, and Sam, and Cas—Castiel?"

The pretty blonde stopping the way she did, her eyes narrowing. This sent a whirlwind of emotions through Jack. Just hours ago Dean and Sam were telling him to make a wish on the cake that Dean had made. And now here he was, in a strange place talking to a woman...

...Who just said his chosen father's name. For a moment, his face lit up. As if she had just told him he had the winning lotto tickets, or that Chuck had decided to just leave them all alone.

"You know Castiel! And everyone." He was quick on his feet, grinning from ear to ear suddenly. "This is amazing! Are they here?" His powers were locked, he couldn't feel a thing power wise. Yet, it all felt too good to be true. "Yes, exactly them. They are my family." He spoke, a touch of pride in his tone. Even if that will likely crumble again soon. For now, this was everything. All hope rested on the shoulders of this woman. She must be like Jodie, Kaya and Claire.

Okay. That's...weird.

It's wholly antithetical for her to even connect this guileless, earnest, awkward kid with the boys. She coughs in something beyond outlandish surprise when the kid—Jack, she didn't miss his having a name—is suddenly pushing up from the table, all sunshine and lollipops smile, and calling them family.

"Uhh.." Jo lets that note drag out there.
"Yeah. I think I'd know if Dean decided to adopt himself a kid."

Maybe. God knows. Dean was doing a zero-for-zero job lately of telling her anything deathly important. But this? This was just insanely ludicrous.

She'd get used to it. Jack had somehow turned out to be both a very sweet and awkward kid, and also the type to dwell and brood in his room when no one's around. One of those sides of him very much came from being raised by the Winchesters. The rest, maybe Dean's goofier moods? Or, Kelly's DNA really came in strong.

Probably uncle Gabriel?

When she drug out the sound, he blinked a bit before giving an awkward smile. "Dean didn't adopt me. Not really." He spoke, "It's complicated. But, we're family." He reassured. Not wanting to drop his life story in the middle of this place. Demons or Angels or anyone could be around.

"What's your name?" He asked with that same earnest look. Like he really cared, and in that moment he did. She was his lifeline to his home. Someone who knew the boys.

Right. So basically, a teenager.

Jack's correction sounds a little more on par with some kind of Dean-normal. Not adopted, not really, but still family. That sounds about Dean Winchester's brand of stupid complicated. Jo knew all about being in one of those kinds of boxes, didn't she?

"Jo Harvelle." There's a vague pause between the two names, saying her first name and then attaching her last, even though she doesn't expect he'll recognize it in the slightest. No one around these parts does, and no one possibly ever will. Given that whole being dead thing back where everyone else was merrily living on.

"What year did you come from, Jack?"

Dean had a habit of making people love him despite his gruff ways. Jack was a shining example of this. He was terrified of Dean at times and yet, Dean was the person he immolated the most in his formative days.

"Nice to meet you, Jo." He spoke, that earnest look refusing to fade. "It was May 2020." He wasn't giving the full date, he had his own reasons, but it felt more enough. "What year was it for you?" He assumed she was from the past.

Mostly since they may not have a future.

Jo stands there.

Taking in that number.

2020.

2020.

2020.

A whole fucking decade later? That's. She doesn't. A decade after her. Time enough to be less than a footnote in the furthest of put-away memory, and still some part of he—the part of her trained to take charge in seconds like this, seconds when she's blindside decked into the face—wheelhouses it into brass facts instead. The important part.

In 2020, Dean and Sam are still alive,
and Cas is still with them.
That's not nothing.

Jo makes her mouth work, whether it wants to or not. Gives a breath out her mouth and shakes her head, like it's just some impressed surprised. "A long time before you. 2009."

Something in the way Jo freezes up gives him all the answer he needed.

Much like Jodie. Or Bobby. He heard enough stories on long nights in the Impala to cases and while the refugees from Apocalypse world were in the bunker. Had he heard of Jo? Had anyone told him, or was it too painful to recall the downfall of Harvelle's Roadhouse to tell the young angel?

When she spokes, he nods, trying to look just as happy. But that's wow. Ten years was a long time. At least for someone whose technically only four years old. "Wow. Well, I am very happy to meet you, Jo. I look forward to getting to know you." All earnest and truthful words. He said it, he meant it.

Ten years is a lifetime.

Ten years ago, she was a child.
Ten years from now ... she's just gone.

"Yeah." It's an uncertain word. Just hedged out there. Like a rock in a stream. A word because there was supposed to be one. Because the kid went out looking surprised-cheerful and still so earnest, and she kept feeling that number hit a little harder with each heartbeat, even as she was shoving it down harder for each, too.

She bunts with questions that don't require her focus so much as open the floor for him. It's easy, old hand, very bartender. She needs a breather, and details can't hurt. "What are things like for all of you there?"

Beat. "How did you end up with them?"

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( continued from here if you're game? )

You're younger than the Dean I know.

The statement earns a frustrated curse under Dean's breath, and a fleeting eye roll — not directed at Jack so much as at the situation. At reality, at his life, at all of the above. Freaking time travel, he's getting so god damn sick and tired of time travel.

He scrubs a hand over his mouth, over his stubble, reeling himself back in and steeling himself for a whirlwind of oncoming bullshit.

Okay.

"Complicated," he echoes dubiously. "How complicated is complicated? I'm gonna need the scoop now, okay, I can't do another worst case scenario goodbye letter confessional."

The one Claire left behind about how he was a good dad to her after she was gone, after it was well and truly too late, is the first and last time that's ever gonna happen.

Jack sat there awkwardly. His fingers lacing as he squeezed his own fingers. Trying to not just throw open the carriage door and bolt into the passing woods. There were times he wanted to bail out of the Impala too, but he never had. Sometimes it just never hit him, he was powerful enough to just vanish.

But that was cowardice, and he was raised better than that.

"...Yeah." He spoke as he looked up, those hazel eyes much more blue than normal, they seemed to adjust with the light or colors around him. "Well, let me start with, you, Sam and Cas raised me, my mom died giving birth to me." That seemed smarter than admitting his father yet. That felt important. A sad smile crossing his face. "You taught me to drive... and took me fishing once." His thoughts jumbling, but he felt laying out that Dean had let him drive Baby, even the once, was a sign he knew him.

"My name's Jack Kline, I'm four years old." He spoke honestly, very honestly, his eyes full of hurt as he looked at Dean. "I'm not human. But, you raised me as a hunter." While the truth would set you free, and he hated liars, he really didn't know if he should say more. He didn't want Dean to freak out on him. He never took that well.

Jack's answer is a long, pregnant silence.

Two or three seconds in, Dean blinks. A second later, he blinks again. There's almost certainly a meme with exactly that expression.

"I'm- I'm sorry, what?"

Look, he was expecting a confessional, sure. Expecting a bomb to get dropped. A bomb, singular, one bomb. That was like an entire freakin' London air strike in one go, and he's-

Processing. He's processing. Give him a minute.

Apparently out of all of it, the first thing he feels worthy of incredulously addressing is, "Four?"

Did you say four years old? Because this kid's twenty if he's a friggin' day, so again: what?

Those few seconds of silence were deafening. Jack could feel his anxiety rising. He hadn't felt this way since his early days. When he knew Dean hated him, when he wished so much he had been normal and not what he is so Dean would accept him.

Here he is, feeling like he's back at the start, but with what feels like a lifetime of memories that they no longer share.

"Yeah..." He spoke softly, pushing the thoughts away. "I'm not human." Well, that was an oversimplification. "I'm a nephilim, the world wasn't safe for me to be born normal, I was born this way." Which is probably why Kelly died in childbirth.

The urge to pull the bell to have the carriage stop was rising again. So he went back to squeezing his own fingers. "I help you, Sam and Casteil hunt."

I'm not human — there's a flicker of an expression on his face that reads I got that part; it's wiped away almost immediately at nephilim, replaced once again with pure, unadulterated disbelief.

Eloquently, articulately, and with great enthusiasm:

"What?" Sorry kid, he's a broken record right now, this is just. A lot. He holds up a hand as though to emphasize an extremely important, profound point — and then kindly informs Jack, "We're in a wagon."

...give it a second, he's working up to a full-blown rant, that's just the starting line.

"We're in a wagon in a magical fantasy land desert, and somehow... that is the least insane thing about everything I'm hearing right now. I'm- you're- I-" Emphatic hand gesture. This.

Okay, reel it in, Winchester.

There's a little bit of visible grappling with his composure, a deep inhale, a silent goosfraba with his eyes closed. He opens them, and tries again, more slowly.

"You're- a four-year-old nephilim. Hunter. Toddler. That I'm-" he points to himself. Can't bring himself to say the word raising. In conclusion: "This is a wagon."

What he means is: this is entirely too much information to have come to light in the back of a fucking wagon.

Edited 2022-11-29 02:02 (UTC)

He knows that look. Biting his lip to let Dean work through whatever he wanted to say. He was terrified of Dean hating him again, but this Dean was younger. And he has a feeling, no matter what he says, he has to start back at the start and be patient.

Though today, he doesn't know if he has it in him. Sometimes thing's hurt, and he had to man up. Dean had told him that before, and right now he was trying his best.

"...Is it a wagon?" He spoke as if the sentence didn't fit the moment. Sure, he had thought it is a carriage with no top, but what kind of farm has Jack ever been around? "I'm not a toddler." He made a bit of a face.

Reel it in, Kline. Don't get upset.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." He more muttered than spoke, looking away from Dean. Looking back to the passing land around them. "Just forget it."

Oh, crap. Well, there comes the guilt almost immediately. It dawns visibly across his features along with a sizable helping of resignation, like he's begrudgingly letting the regret sink in despite how much he'd like to carry on being a dick.

"No- it's- just. Hang on," he sighs, holding up one hand while the other scrubs tiredly at his face. Fingertips press into his eye sockets, then drag down along the stubble of a slightly too long five-o'clock shadow. When he's finished with that, it lifts to gently join the other in a gentle gesture of surrender. "You don't have to apologize, it's good you told me now instead of- pulling a- you know. Us move."

AKA sitting on a deep and impactful truth just because it's a hard pill to swallow, only for it to come up later at the least opportune moment to bite them in the ass.

"I'm just- I'm processing."

He peels his eyes open again, and finally levels Jack with a serious, productive question.

"What year are you from? How far in the future does all this go down?"

Jack was still looking away. Letting blocks fall in place. Realizing just how awkward all of this was. Not just for him, but for those closest to him as well.

He looks back to Dean when he hears that 'No' pass his lips. And just like that he felt the betrayal of hope blooming. Not that he was ever upset at feeling hope. Hope was a good feeling. An amused expression crossed his features. Almost guilty in a way. "I probably would have if we hadn't ended up here." He may not have been born with Winchester Stupid, but he'd certainly grown into it. "It's just weird, you know?"

He asked in that same earnest way. "Take your time, I'm told it's a long ride." He admitted. "It was 2020." He spoke easily, having told the blonde, Jo. Earlier in the day. "I can't tell you how far in the future, I don't know when you are from. I can tell you're younger, though." And that Dean has more beard than stubble at this point. For some reason, that seems odd.

Winchester Stupid is unfortunately contagious like that. Brought down an entire god damn angel of the lord. Tragically not restricted to just people who share the same gene pool. Poor Jack never really had a chance.

"2020," he echoes, a soft an absent mumble under his breath. Gentle disbelief, but mostly distracted while he quickly runs through a few mental calculations. Jack's four years old. It was 2014 for him, or at least it was in those years that shoved themselves into his brain a few months back. A quick split of the difference leaves him with- "Two, maybe three years?"

Depending on the month.

That's how long he's got between what he remembers last, and when he first meets this kid.

Jesus Christ, that's practically no time at all. Two or three years is a blink. Two years down the road and suddenly he's raising a kid? Which turned out, just, so well with Ben the first time, right? Bridging that gap between who he is now and how little he could've possibly gotten his life together in that span of time — he's in no place to be raising anybody, he's a freakin' mess, he's-

Holy crap, wait a second.

"I'm still alive in 2020," the revelation hits and - yes, just being alive is surprising in and of itself, but that's not what's getting him. He rolls his sleeve up quickly, baring his forearm to Jack. Brandishing the Mark, putting it on display while he demands, "Do I have this? You know what this is? Do I still have it when we meet?"

There's no way, right? Cas, Sam, they wouldn't let him within a mile of this kid if he's still losing his shit to the Mark. Which means he's either gotten rid of it, or he's learned to get it under control.

He really never did. Between the Winchester Stupid, and the devil's blood. He was doomed from the start. Kelly's DNA had its work cut out for it.

Jack made a noise of acknowledgement as he looked back to the passing plants and tried to enjoy the bumpy ride. This was important, and he needed to give Dean time to process, so just focusing on the world around him helped. "Mmm?" He looked back to Dean and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess? If you're from 2018. You are definitely older in my time. Not that it's a bad thing, mind you."

Jack can't help but smile, the way that lights up his face when Dean comes to that realization. "Of course, you are." Though, he did think of Cas' words of dying and coming back being a rite of passage. He's snapped from his thoughts as Dean rolls up his sleeve. He sees the mark and his smile fades, a look of confusion. "That looks really bad." He spoke, a touch of worry.

Lifting his hand to place an inch or two over it. Looking very focused like he was trying to do something. But his powers were cut off, and even if they weren't even at home, Jack couldn't have healed the Mark of Cain. "No." He finally said, dropping his hand. "I've never seen that before."

At least Dean got some good news.

Of course you are.

He exhales slowly. It isn't quite... relief that he feels, but it's something. It's space in his chest, where previously things had been tensed so tight he couldn't even breathe. It seems like these days, the best he can hope for is to just buy himself another temporary inch of breathing room until that gets strangled out all over again.

He'll take what he can get.

"Okay. It's alright, that's- fine. It doesn't matter." Not to this kid, and not right now. His eyes open again, new resolve steeling them, something decisive settling into his posture. "Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get you back to the inn, we're gonna get you set up with the dungeons and dragons starter pack. Get you a room. Get me a drink. Then we'll sit down and go over the details. Sound good?"

Rolling with the punches and taking the tiny victories, these were the ideologies he had been raised on. The little victories and the lives saved were worth everything, even when the world felt like it was crushing down on him.

Which, despite him trying to act fine, he certainly did feel like the world was crushing down on him.

He looks back to Dean once again when he speaks. Rapt attention on his every word. "The Dungeons and Dragons starter pack?" Had he ever had time to play? Probably not, but he'd learn it soon enough. "A drink sounds good, yes." He nodded after a second. "But we are heading the wrong way, aren't we?" He really had no idea where he was or where he was heading. He had caught the first wagon he saw going by just to explore.

[Open] Call Me Little Sunshine

Arrival; Free cities (Moved from TDM, feel free to continue)

(Semi Closed) For Jo

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CW; cosmic self harm mentioned

Re: CW; cosmic self harm mentioned

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I'm always game!

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