abraxaslogs | [Open] Call Me Little Sunshine

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?"

Ten years ago, Kelly Kline probably wasn't even out of college. Much less shacking up with the President. Ten years is a very long time, and despite all Jack knows, thats time his mind doesn't really grasp fully given how fast life goes for him. One world ending crisis to another.

Reaching up he pushed his messy wet bangs from his face, before he considered the question. "It's pretty bad... but we're doing our best. Doing what we have to do." He didn't want to tell her about Chuck, or any of the terrible. But, he felt that was enough. If he could spare someone from the pain he had, wasn't that enough?

"It's a long story... but they were there when I was born. I've stayed with them mostly since." Deaths and a few runaways aside.

That sounds a little too much like the constant normal. She would have said that was what it was back where and when she'd come from. But something else sweeps in there more importantly and far more easily pickable. Arguable. Her forehead furrows even as he says it; Jo may not have done more than a semester at college, but one did not need college to know that didn't add up.

"That doesn't make sense." She ticks it off with a finger out. "You're what, 17-18 at most?"

Way too fresh-faced for what Jo even expected of someone that old, but hell, she avoided most of the world where she could have unless she needed them to foster the next step on one of her hunts. But ages weren't hard. At 17-18, she'd still been in high school, surrounded by kids her age, even that number was all they had in common, and they existed in wholly different worlds: one that was real and one that was a paltry oblivious lie.

He was watching her. Only reaching down to where his ignored plate to lift the drink and take a drink. Having his soul back made flavors really pop again. He had missed that. He was holding the mostly empty glass as she realized the issue of what he had said.

That smile turns awkward. "Do I look that young?" He always liked to think he passed for twenty-one or twenty-two. But maybe that's why the shopkeeper kept refusing to sell him Dean's beer even with the fake IDS. He looked around, no one really paying attention to them and yet.

"I'm..." He needed to tell her. "Four years old." He spoke, lifting the glass awkwardly taking another drink. "I'm not fully human. I was born looking like this." He looked at her. That same sincerity was there, with more awkwardness returned. "I'm not supposed to talk about these things."

Jo raised her eyebrows—in a doubtfully unapologetic 'Are you kidding me?—at that first question and his ludicrously hopeful thoughts on his age, as though to say no one was going to buy him as a fully-fledged adult-like this. Even his response smacked of something that was too hopeful and crestfallen about not hitting the optimistic head of that mark.

The rest.

Jo stares and goes rather still. She can feel the pickle on her shoulders and upper arms, upper back muscles tensing; that would be a chill if it weren't for the blasted arid wind of this unending desert the base and The Free Cities in total found themselves in. Four. Years. Old. Born looking that old. Four years old. Not supposed to talk about those years. Four years old???

"What?" It is more of an outlandish explosion of sound than anything else. "Yeah, I'm gonna go with that really doesn't work for me. You're gonna wanna explain what that means, and—" Her voice growing a little sterner, stiller, closer to steel; but not louder. "—what that makes you."

That eyebrow raised and Jack knew. He just knew she didn't buy that he was an adult. That's that same look Dean gives when he does something that nearly gives them away. Without the exasperation, anyway. Or the random attitude. He misses Dean. He always knows what to expect, and yet this world, he knew nothing.

The way that she stays quiet lets him finish draining the glass and sitting it aside. The human side of him still needed to eat, sleep and drink. While not as much as normal humans by any means.

"Can we...." He started, feeling awkward as he looked up. "Talk about this somewhere else?" His eyes shifted around to the others around the busy room. "I promise I'll answer."

Jo's torn almost instantly between getting his uncertainty toward people and there being no trust anywhere in this equation about the idea of being alone with whatever this kid who distinctly said he isn't, wasn't, and that being on par with the greatest of stupidity. She's still got her sword and she's got that new power, but she's not as good at it as she'd like, and while there are soldiers everywhere she'd rather not be in the debt of them.

"You can't seriously think after saying something like that—" And connecting her to people like Dean, Sam, and Cas. "—that I'm going to let you take me into some kind of alley for this conversation, so where are you thinking?"

Beat. "Cuz I'm not taking you back to anyone without having a better bead on all that."

Jack was watching her, he carefully sat the glass down back on the table, and crossed his arms. Mostly, to try to look less uncomfortable than the whole situation made him feel.

He had a feeling it was a no before she spoke up. It was expected, he remembered how Sam and Dean reacted those first weeks he was alive. It was expected.

"I was hoping... I admit." He spoke quietly. "Just... please..." He started to say to not tell, but who would she tell? He didn't know if anyone else was here. What would it matter in this new world. "Never mind, it's fine."

Taking a breath, he looked down at his feet and less at her. "I'm a nephilim. Half Angel, half human. People have been trying to kill me, or use me for their purposes, since I was born." He added the last bit, as a means to let her know why he was less inclined to share around the people near them. "I would show you... but my powers are not working."

[Open] Call Me Little Sunshine

CW; cosmic self harm mentioned

Re: CW; cosmic self harm mentioned

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