Dean could start a fight in an empty house (6buckstomyname) wrote in notebookthreads, @ 2015-06-15 17:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 30 points, ! closed, ! complete, dean winchester, jo harvelle |
Characters: Dean Winchester 6buckstomyname + Jo Harvelle sweetjoannabeth.
Location: Her place.
Time: 1 June, after his conversation with Jo.
Warnings: Talk of blood, injuries.
Summary: Dean's playing nursemaid.
Status: Closed, complete (Gdoc).
Confused didn’t really cover what Dean felt and neither did panic or elation or worry or anger. Like with most things, Dean felt this as a huge and horrible amalgamation of emotions that didn’t exactly go together let alone work together, but here he was. The last time he had seen Jo (if he could really call it seeing her or not) had been when his guilt was being weighed and she was being used against him as if her soul was just some great pawn in the stupid game of fate the universe insisted on trying to foist on him all the time. That pissed him off back then, but it came with all the same accoutrements that he had with him this time too. Jo had been like a sister to him and he had been utterly devastated when she was killed. It was hard not to blame himself for it, so he did and he’d been carrying that guilt for almost seven years now. Thinking back on all the people he’d lost over the years, since Heaven and Hell started going for each other’s throats with Earth smack dab in the middle, it was hard to believe that some of his losses were that old; they still felt brand new like wounds that were still bleeding. It was only a matter of time before he bled out, but he was still going somehow. Right now, all he knew was that Jo popped up on the network, showed up here in Test City and she was bleeding and starving. It was almost comical the way he reacted like some kind of overbearing sibling, ordering her to stay where she was, but Dean just didn’t want to lose her again, especially not before at least getting to see her alive one more time. Picking through the aisles, Dean picked up anything he thought could help someone who was healing even though he didn’t know too much about how to really heal those kinds of wounds. His remedy of choice had always been a lot of whiskey and pure stubbornness, but that wasn’t so much a treatment as just accidentally not dying. Confident with the array of food and first aid supplied he’d dumped into his basket, he rushed himself through the self-checkout lane and over to Jo’s place. Knocking on the door, he called out through it, not wanting to barge in but his voice had the slightest sense of urgency in it. “It’s me. The door unlocked?” --- Jo didn’t know that her soul had been used against him. She’d feel awful about it if she knew. Jo never wanted to be used against any of her pseudo family. Dean, Sam, John - they were family even if they weren’t related by blood. She felt awful about dying anyways. She knew she’d saved Dean from the Hound but it didn’t matter, she couldn’t help the fight by dying and then her mother going with her? That was painful. She felt bad about dying, but she never regretted it. It was what was necessary at the time. She hadn’t reconciled that whole thing yet. She was ignoring it as best she could manage - after all that’s what they did. They bottled everything up until it exploded and things died. Or got hurt. She really was not great at facing down things like emotions and feels. Jo was like every other hunter she’d ever met, really good at drinking away the pain and bottling it up so no one dealt with it but her. Jo lifted her head and smiled a bit. She’d camped out on the couch of the apartment and decided to not move more than five feet if she could help it. She’d made herself a cozy little bed. “It’s open, come on in” she called out to him as she sat up a bit. Sitting up hurt. Standing hurt. Everything hurt. She hated this. She knew she’d heal. It’d just be awhile. She just wished it was going to be sooner rather than later. She sighed a bit as she adjusted and bit back a whimper as she did so. The pain was annoying. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, and waited for him to come in. She brushed her hand over the couch as she took a peek under the blanket at her wound. It hadn’t bled anymore so that was good. It looked okay, as far as she could tell, they’d all had their fair share of wounds but this was a little out of her league. She tucked the blanket back down and looked up at him, a half smile on her face. She was obviously sore, but she looked cheerful enough. Might be the fact she was alive. ~*~ With something akin to a sigh of relief, Dean pulled the door open and stepped through, balancing the grocery bag in his other arm. Some part of him had expected that she would be gone already if she was really here and he was just walking into a trap like some stupid asshole, but trap or not, he had to come. There was no way in hell he’d abandon her like he did the day she died. Even if everyone around him swore up and down that he couldn’t have changed anything if he was there, just knowing that Jo and her mother died because of him was all he needed to blame himself all these years. Seeing Jo sitting up, even if she looked obviously in pain, brought the faintest of smiles to Dean’s face. He only wished that Sam was here to see her alive again too, but even the most passing thoughts of Sammy tended to bring his spirits down and while he didn’t want to ignore them, Jo was the one right in front of him that he needed to take care of at the moment. “I got pretty much anything labelled chicken soup,” he commented, fishing out can after can and dropping them on the coffee table with no real attention to whether or not he was scratching the probably cheap wood. “Got some more supplies and,” Dean paused to reach into the bag to get a bottle that had been individually wrapped. “Little whiskey couldn’t hurt.” It just wouldn’t be Dean if he didn’t try to use alcohol to help solve his problems and he could hear that nagging voice of a conscience (that sounded a hell of a lot like Bobby ironically) chiding him for that. The chances of Dean changing his stripes this late in the game were pretty close to zero and well, sometimes you just needed a good drink. “What do you want first?” --- Jo watched him for a moment. She thought the last sight of him was going to be him just before she shooed him out to blow everything mile high. She never expected to be able to see him again. And not in any state of life, she figured she might see him in the afterlife if she was real lucky. But she didn’t count on it either. It was nice. Not worrying about dying tomorrow. Or later. Or anything. She trusted this place would throw them back into chaos soon enough but for right now. She was going to savor the moment. She wanted that much. Life could get on with it’s crazy self tomorrow. She just needed one day of relative calm to really absorb the fact she was alive, and he was here, and she was hoping Sam would be here. It’d be nice. Jo smiled a bit at him. “What? No pie?” she asked in mock horror. She only was teasing a little because she half expected a pie in the bag. “Let’s see. I’ll have … the chicken soup with a side of whiskey?” she grinned up. Alcohol made things numb. Right? Right. She smiled up at him as she tucked her legs up to make room. “Think you can manage that?” She didn’t care if he scraped up the cheap furniture. She was used to beat up, cheap stuff anyways. It was more like home if that happened. ~*~ “Like I would forget pie,” Dean quipped, giving Jo a mock look of consternation. “Pecan, but that’s for later.” It was for celebration, but he needed to make sure that Jo was doing okay before he really celebrated anything. “Forget pie,” he grumbled as he set the near empty bag down on one of the other tables in the living room. “I think I can handle a microwave.” Snatching up one of the cans and the bottle, Dean headed into the kitchen, digging out a microwavable bowl before popping the soup can open and pouring the contents out. Never really one for food coming out of cans (not for the health aspect because he basically lived off of fast food on the road), he was surprised at how good the lukewarm soup smelled. Tossing it into the microwave and punching in some numbers, Dean left that to heat up while he fished around for some glasses in one of the cabinets. The sound of the cap twisting off felt like picking off an old scab and letting the wound bleed again. Off and on the past couple of years, Dean had been battling what people would call alcoholism which he called self-medicating. It’d been a while since he’d cracked open the hard stuff, but no one was here to hound him about it. He poured a generous amount into one glass then poured out a more reasonable amount into the other. Before he headed over to where Jo was sitting, he tossed back half of his making it look like both glasses were even. When the microwave beeped, he dropped a spoon into the bowl before making it back to the living room. “Should be hot enough,” he said, handing the bowl over to her and putting the glasses down on the table. He took a seat on the couch and looked her over. It was still hard to believe she was here, but unless he was hallucinating, there she was. There was no arguing it. ---- “Good. I’d have to check you for a fever if you forgot pie.” she laughed quietly as she smiled at him. She settled back and watched him head into the kitchen out of her sight range. She closed her eyes and took a few easy breaths. It hurt to breath. It hurt to move. She hated this. Such awfulness. She toyed with a strand of blonde and stared up at the ceiling. She hated being laid up like this. “I hope so. It’s a microwave.” she teased as she closed her eyes again. Waiting quietly for him to bring soup and booze. Booze was probably very bad for her injuries, but she’d declined pain killers, out of some age old desire to stay awake and alert when she was in a weird place. But she was regretting it now. She moved when he returned and reached for the soup and took a few spoonfuls as she sighed happily. Food was good. And canned soup might not be the best meal on the planet it wasn’t too bad either. She set the bowl back down and lifted her glass. “To this crazy place.” she took a sip and smiled a bit. She enjoyed the bite - and the warmth that followed it. “You’re looking at me like you still can’t believe I’m sitting here.” she looked up at him and smiled lopsidedly. Jo took up her bowl and spoon again to take a few more bites as she watched him. ~*~ “Hah.” It was always strange how the smallest things were what he missed the most, like the way Jo would get on his case. As the years went on, a lot of the humor drained out of his life and so, too, went some of the honesty. At times, it felt as if everyone had a mask or two they paraded around in (himself included) and the reality of it all was that it was easier to hide behind lies and half-truths than to be honest. There were a lot of secrets piled up inside him, from the extent of his experiences in Hell to his constant fighting for his life in Purgatory, to his guilt and all his hopes. All of those secrets aged him, tethered him to this type of existence, but they were so deeply ingrained in him that letting them all go seemed impossible. If he let them go, how much of himself would even be left? That was a question Dean didn’t need or want the answer to, and was content to leave both the answer and question behind a locked door whose key he intentionally misplaced a long, long time ago. “Cheers,” he replied as he picked up his own glass and raised it in salute as well. Unlike Jo, Dean downed a good portion of what was left in his glass. Feeling that old familiar burn brought back bad and good memories alike, all of them old and worth remembering either way. Sighing, Dean looked away from her, fixing his eyes on the glass in his hand. “Because I can’t,” he answered truthfully. Seven years. It had been at least seven years of carrying her death around on his shoulders but here she was, alive and talking. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.” --- Jo smiled gently. She was tired and sore but there was something comforting about getting on Dean’s case like she used to. It was familiar in a place where nothing else was. She wished she knew what happened after she died - she knew she died there was just no coming back from something like that normally - how the world had changed him and his brother. She cared deeply for them both. Somethings were better unasked, though, and that was one of them. She didn’t get into deep conversations with the boys. It just wasn’t done. Even if she was utterly worried about them. She was there for them, they had known that and Dean would learn that she was still there for him here. Once things settled and got less (or more) weird. Some habits die hard. Jo wanted to drain her drink. But she felt that might be a bad idea with her injuries. She had no desire to get wasted and pull everything back open. That would end poorly and ruin a good night. So she was more mindful of her intake and careful about it. She wanted to stay in one piece and not bleed all over the place. She dipped her head a little bit and smiled sadly. “Yeah, I get that. I’m here - but why? And what’s the price?” she asked as she shrugged a touch. “But I’m here and we can figure that all out and deal with the other shoe dropping. Because I’m not taking it for granted. But I know there has to be something, some price to pay for this.” she was feisty as always. She was happy to be alive but she wasn’t naive enough to think it came without a hefty price tag. ~*~ Getting into deep conversations with anyone was something Dean tried to avoid if he could help it, his brother included. Real, honest dialogues had the tendency to rip open old scars or reveal wounds that won’t heal that he liked to keep on the backburner where only he knew about them. Dean liked to keep his innermost emotions to himself, not wanting to burden others with them (no matter how much they said it wouldn’t) or, honestly, admit they were there. So long as Dean didn’t have to think about them, the easier it was to carry them around. Everything felt heavier once you acknowledged it, and he was carrying enough as it was. The cumulative weight of it all could crush him if he ever really stopped to think about it and he still had a long way to go and a lot of things he still needed to do. Dean was keeping a pretty watchful eye on Jo because while he had brought the whiskey, letting her get wasted off it and potentially hurting herself was completely out of the question. Keeping a subtle watch on people was something he had really started to get good at with all the times he watched over Sammy without his brother really noticing it. Of course, Dean wasn’t always secretive when it came to taking care of the people who mattered and he didn’t hesitate to make his thoughts known on the matter, most of the time as he was trying to remedy something without waiting to be asked first. He knew there was probably a price to pay, but he couldn’t really figure out what that was just yet. Whoever was coming to collect this debt wasn’t going to come quietly, that much he anticipated at least, and Dean would be expecting them. What was left twisting in the wind was what exactly would be demanded and that made him uneasy. “We’ll deal with the piper when he comes.” Whenever the other shoe dropped, he didn’t think Jo would be sitting in the sidelines and he wouldn’t be either, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. That kind of thing had the tendency to sucker punch him and it always ended up with someone getting hurt. “Then here’s to not taking shit for granted,” he said, finishing the rest of his drink. --- Jo avoided those conversations too. They led to her thinking like a girl and well she prided herself on being one of the boys. Not a girlie girl. She was a pro, like the rest of them, at boxing everything up until she really was alone and ready to let it out. Then she’d be fine the next day and move on with things. She had learned quickly she couldn’t let emotions get the best of her, especially not in a working situation where lives were on the line. Even her own life was not worth making a mistake over. She’d acted without thinking about her own safety. That was a blessing and a curse, it allowed her to save Dean, but not herself. And to think her mother had gone out with her? She thought about it now and hid it behind draining the rest of the glass of whiskey. The burn was nice. She sighed, happily, it really must have been the medicine of choice because it really helped her think about something other than the mental pain. or the physical pain. “Of course we will. We’re capable of such - we won’t pay without a fight and I’m not going to let them take this away from me.” she was fierce in her decision. She wanted to survive. To be here. To live. She was scared of going back and dying. She didn’t want to see that happen if she could help it. She liked living too much, even if she’d accepted what she’d done for what it was. A price that had been paid to help. Worth every penny even if she still hated paying it. She lifted her bowl of soup to the toast, as she’d drained her drink, and nodded. “Here’s to not taking shit for granted.” she finished off the soup and laid her head back, tired already. The effort of keeping away was exhausting. “Sorry, a little tired.” she smiled warmly, though, comfortable enough. ~*~ Sighing, Dean could only imagine what the road ahead of them would bring, but he didn’t let himself try to actually pinpoint what he expected. Getting himself stuck in the possibilities would only make it harder for him to see the truth and he wanted to be on top of his game when the time came to fight. The least he could do this time was actually try to fight to save her. Some small, pessimistic side of Dean told him not to get used to seeing her again because at any moment she could be gone, but he couldn’t help it. Even in a weird town like Test City, Jo would get a few extra hours in her life. “I’m always going to go down swinging.” There were a few times when he didn’t think he would and maybe a few times when he didn’t really fight as hard as he should have. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he should fight, but if there was anything Dean was good at in this world, it was fighting back so that’s exactly what he was going to do. Dean collected the two emptied glasses and rinsed them out in the sink, leaving them upside down to dry. “It’s probably not a bad idea to get some rest,” he replied from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I can head out for now, but I’m only a call away if you need me.” On his way out, he grabbed the bottle to take it back with him and gave Jo as reassuring a smile as he could manage before closing the door behind him and heading back to his apartment for the night. He told himself at least half of what was left in this bottle should be in it the next morning, but dawn was still a long ways away. |