Not Until We Are Lost

Jo had stepped outside to get some ice during the night. She hadn't been expecting to see anyone else, and she really hadn't been expecting to see Johnny carrying Mary to her room.

Mary. As in her daughter. Jo's eyebrows raised as she watched the pair from her vantage point by the ice machine, she was just far enough away that they wouldn't have noticed her unless she made some noise but close enough to see the pair as Johnny made his way toward Mary's room.

What the hell had happened that he was carrying her daughter? It was only when Jo watched a little more carefully that she realized that Mary was not injured and Johnny seemed to be just cradling her in a way that didn't say he was worried so much as simply caring for the woman in his arms.

It struck Jo that he would be well into his sixties if not in his seventies in Mary's time and that was just... not right. At all. Her first instinct was to go back to her room and get her shotgun and threaten Johnny away from her daughter.

Her daughter. Who was currently an adult. Because that didn't stop being weird.

It was only after Jo took a few deep breaths that she realized that Johnny probably didn't know that Mary was from the future, or that Mary was Jo's daughter. Not that any of that made it better, but Jo busting in and shouting at him or threatening him over a situation he didn't understand might just draw attention to that situation.

It also occurred to her that while Johnny didn't know about it, Mary sure as hell did.

Jo ducked back into her room, seething. She was going to let Mary sleep for now, but come morning she was damn well going to sort this out.

( It runs in the family apparently? )

Jo didn't feel any less weird or any less cranky after the conversation with Mary. She still felt like Mary was holding things back and while she'd downgraded from wanting to shoot Johnny to simply wanting to hit the vigilante, she still wasn't happy with what she'd witnessed the night before or with the very obvious feelings that Mary was starting to develop.

She really did think that everyone involved was going to end up hurt and she just... she just wanted to spare this woman that was her flesh and blood that hurt. Jo knew it was ridiculous to think that she could save a grown woman from getting her heart broken, but that didn't mean that Jo's head had caught up with her own heart, which was saying very clearly that Mary was her family. Mary was her daughter. That meant it was her job to protect Mary in every way possible, whatever it took.

She just wished that it was easier to figure out what it would take to protect her.

By way of getting her mind off all of that, Jo started to look around Electric City for any more answers that she could find. She still had Simon's 10 answers in her mind and she was still making her guesses as to which of them were truths and which were lies. Everywhere she went, she spotted the pupil anomaly. She was beginning to wonder if she should return to the hotel and hold onto Mary and Dean, just in case this was more of a situation where pod people were taking over instead of alien abduction. And even if it was alien abduction, maybe she should be keeping the people she cared about close so they couldn't try to divide and conquer.

She had just decided to head pack when she passed a little shop that looked like it might actually have some legit products among the typical new age crap. If there was a chance that someone in there might be human and might have answers, well, Jo had to take it. She let herself into the shop, the bells tinkling to announce her entrance.