Joanna Beth Harvelle (harvelle) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2010-11-21 00:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, jo harvelle, kitty pryde/shadowcat, seeley booth |
Who: Jo Harvelle, Kitty, Dean Winchester, Seeley Booth
Where: Camp Chitaqua
What: Jo confronts Kitty - oh noes!
When: Tonight before the Strike Team leaves
Rating: PG-13 for language and ANGST
Status: Complete! Part 2/2
Kitty wasn’t going to argue with Jo, she couldn’t argue. Yeah, she should have done that. It didn’t matter that she had no medical training. It didn’t matter that the shot was one that Chuck probably wouldn’t have survived even if Kitty had stayed and tried to help with (in her opinion). No matter what happened, Kitty could only see herself as the one that had made the mistake in this. She was the one that had killed poor Chuck, even if it were an accident. Try as she might, she was never going to forget that. She was never going to be able to just overlook it. Jo didn’t realize that Kitty didn’t need any help beating herself up over this, she was doing a pretty damn good job herself. All Kitty did was nod. “I know.”
The small woman didn’t move, her feet were planted firmly in place. If this weren’t the situation at the moment, Kitty might have phased automatically before Jo could even take a swing. It was taking all of Kitty’s will to keep herself solid right now. She was focusing on Jo’s words. She knew that she had done something that she could never take back. She had robbed not only Chuck of a longer life, but his child the chance of getting to know him. She knew it, she felt horrible for it.
Kitty stayed solid. Jo’s fist met her jaw and Kitty’s eyes closed automatically as she tensed. It hurt, hell yes it was painful, but Kitty could take a punch. Even though the force knocked her back, causing her to take a step, Kitty could take a punch. She wasn’t near as fragile as she looked. The mutant didn’t even bring her hand up to rub the spot that Jo had punched. She kept her hands at her sides, looking at Jo. She knew that this wouldn’t make her feel any better. She knew that none of this was going to make a difference to her, call it an intuition or whatever. She just knew.
Seeing Dean step in to stop her from another shot, part of Kitty was thankful. The other part of her just wanted Dean to let Jo go and give her the chance for a few more shots. It wouldn’t make a difference with what had happened to Chuck, he’d still be gone, but maybe if she had the chance to let a little more of the anger out she’d bottled up. Maybe it would give her at least the door to start grieving properly in the future.
She let him pull her away, but then she jerked her arm out of his grip and stood for a moment, glaring at Kitty. Jo would have felt better if the woman had fallen, or at least been forced back more than a step. But it looked like she’d have to content herself with the one shot. A single tear welled in each of her eyes, then fell slowly down her cheeks. She wanted nothing more than to kill Kitty at that moment, but...it wouldn’t bring Chuck back.
She looked away, taking a few steps past Dean as she stiffened her back. “If I ever, ever see you again...there’s going to be another accident. One no one will hear.” She walked off a few more feet, then stopped and knelt. She had stopped in the very spot where she had found Chuck. His blood still stained the grass - probably would, until it rained again. Something had caught her eye and she reached out, picking it up. It was a gun, the one she could only assume Kitty had carried that night.
With a swiftness, the blond Hunter stood, gun in hand, and turned to Kitty. For a moment, as she raised the gun, she considered firing, finger twitching, nearing the trigger. But instead, she threw the gun at the woman’s feet, then turned and walked away.
He watched Kitty take the hit and inside was proud of her. She didn’t flinch or hardly react. She was tougher then she looked, and Seeley mentally took that into account. Jo started to walk away, but Booth didn’t move. He’d been through enough training to know that the threat was still real, and still there. Jo was still within a few arms length of Kitty, and he didn’t like it. It made him edgy and uncomfortable.
Then when she turned back to Kitty with something silvery in her hands, Booth recognized it instantly. Jo was holding a gun.. Her finger was too close to the trigger. He could feel nothing but red flags fly up mentally and pulled his own shot at her feet. It was literally inches from her left shoe. If Jo had done anything further than that, Booth would have gone for the kill shot. But Jo was walking away again and he took a breath of relief.
Shooting Jo would have been bad for their camp’s relations with Dean’s, and he was trying to keep things at least on a decently sane level. They had enough issues without adding fighting each other to the list. The shot he took was skilled and accurate, and Dean likely knew what Booth was capable of by that point in time. But even after the dust cleared from where the bullet struck, the sniper couldn’t be seen.
Dean had thought the threat was over, when Jo turned and walked away, when she knelt down on the ground near where Chuck’s body had laid (he could see the bloodstains, the red on the brown leaves on the ground, and he wondered what she was doing, why she would go back there; he hadn’t been able to be in the Winchester house in Kansas without feeling like he was being shredded open, and that was years after the fact. He’d never been able to set foot back in Cold Oak, even though Sam had come back and as good as died again, saying yes to Lucifer). He’d expected her to break down, or something, and he had his back to her, about to speak to Kitty (something as reassuring as he could manage, which probably wasn’t going to be even close to what would be needed, but something that hopefully said he had no hostility towards her, he understood it was a mistake, something) when Jo’s movement back towards them drew his attention, and he whirled to face her.
She had a gun.
Where had she gotten a gun from?
He stepped towards her, expression grim - he was glaring, reaching out towards her - when she threw the gun down (and there was a shot from somewhere, it hit the ground and had Dean whirling to look off into the trees to see where the shot had come from, before looking back over to Jo to make sure she was really leaving, not rushing back or something). He didn’t exactly know what the hell he was supposed to do, here. Once Jo was pretty much gone, he turned back to Kitty. Ordinarily he’d try to offer some kind of smile, or some kind of reassuring tone when he spoke, but he just didn’t feel it right now.
When he spoke, his tone was flat, weary, but not completely cold. It was the best he could do. “As a whole, we have no hard feelings towards you. It was an accident, we get that. If you need anything, you’re still welcome here. But I would advise avoiding Jo. Indefinitely.”
Kitty was paying complete attention to Jo. The other woman had Kitty hanging off of her ever moment at the moment. It was because Kitty knew that she had done something that had grave consequences. Kitty had killed someone and she deserved more than a damn punch. Kitty deserved a lot more, but Jo probably wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything. Kitty doubted that the other woman was satisfied with just punching her either. If it had been Kitty, she wouldn’t have been satisfied either.
Blinking as Jo began to speak, Kitty fought back the flinch. Her tone said it all. She was serious. The diminutive mutant had no desire to die. She just needed to do what was right, she needed to atone for what she had done, but this didn’t help anything. This didn’t make anything better for her. She wished there was more she could do. She wished that she could bring Chuck back for Jo, but Kitty couldn’t do that. There was nothing that was going to make this better.
Because she was watching Jo so closely the moment she had the gun, Kitty’s entire body was buzzing with fear. Her mutation was highly tuned into the things going around her. Kitty was positive that if Jo took a shot at her, she would phase before the bullet got through her. Relief flooded through her as the other woman, rather than shooting her, threw the gun at her feet. Kitty made no move for it, but phased automatically at the sound of a gunshot. Turning in the direction that it came from, she knew it was Booth. Part of her wasn’t even surprised by it.
Calming her thundering heart and her buzzing body, Kitty faced Dean, who hadn’t gone yet. “Thank you.” That was all she could muster, her voice slightly hoarse, Kitty could feel the difficulty in her throat from forcing the words out. That was all there was to it. It seemed so anticlimactic, but there was nothing more that Kitty could say, nothing more she could do, that would change anything.
The small mutant took one last look at the gun lying on the ground before her eyes moved back up to Dean. She wanted to say something. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, how she had just been protecting herself, but she knew he understood that part of things. There was nothing left to say or do. “I’ll probably stay away. That’s for the best.” With that being said, Kitty turned, moving to walk away from the camp. She was going to head home.