"Dean, you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you."
That was the last thing Amara said, standing in that garden before she faded away with Chuck and Dean found himself in the middle of a thicket of tangled trees he can barely make his way out of. "Come on!" He mutters, shoving tree branches out of his way, squinting into the darkness as he raises his phone in a weak effort to find signal. "Where the hell am I?" His question falls on no ears to hear it as he stumbles out into the middle of a clearing.
He's barely started to get his bearings and his footing when he hears something in the distance. A voice. Femenine, but sharp as a knife's edge. He can't quite make out the words, she's too far away. "Who's there?" he calls out as he follows the direction of the sound, seeking the owner of it for either a fight or information, whichever seemed right in the moment.
She was somewhere else a second ago. She's sure she was. Which makes no sense, because she can't, for the life of her, place where it was. And that's just idiotic, isn't it? Except she can't, for the life of her, place where she is now either.
Bramble bushes and trees in every direction. Darkness and streamers of light. She blinks at it. All of it in focus, but not. Because none of it seems quite right. Entirely solid. Except it is solid. Is real. Just not. Isn't. Familiar. It's going on in pretty much every direction around her, which makes it disorienting. The not knowing. The having any idea which direction. The how she even got to here. Why. How. Everything feeling fuzzy. Disjointed.
There's an opening she heads for, that looks like more level ground, more open ground, and less ... darkness. Which somehow feels right. Wandering further out of the darkness. Deepest shadows. When it's fifty-fifty on bad and good odds, she knows somehow, as she raises her hands, and calls out, "Is anyone out there?"
It's answered, unnervingly fast, that barely even to the next second, by a crash of noise from within the trees not far in front of her and a man's voice. And it makes her. There's something. It tugs at her memory, that voice, even as something sharpens in her thoughts and as her hands raise, without quite being a thought, feeling down all her pockets, front and back of her jeans quickly, in search of ... something.
Still with Amara's words burn, burn, burning in the back of his mind, Dean can't help let the possibilities spill over and under every thought, tripping over each other in their assumptions and guesses. Not that it matters, because he won't know until he knows and--
He blinks when the figure in the shadowy half-light forms just the other side of the clearing he'd stumbled into seconds ago himself. Once. Twice. One more time for good measure, because--
No.
It isn't.
Can't be.
Wouldn't...Couldn't.
Is it?
"Who's there?" He says it again, hard and sharp, the kind of question that demands nothing less than answers. Now. Because if he doesn't get them in the next few seconds, he's going to fight you for them instead. Because that's all he knows, and all that he is. Especially this far down this rabbit hole road.
The opening puts more light into the dark, dense of this place. The clearing giving up space to diffuse it, but still throwing the long shadows of the trees everywhere, like it was compressed darkness unwillingly giving up its prey, even as everything was making it fracture and sway. Winows down to putting light on the figure that had called out the question, just as it's shouted again.
The voice, the sheer leveled slice of its sound and the face that it's coming out of. Clicking like the snap of a gun. (Somewhere else, it's not a gun. Hand wrapped tight. Not a trigger. Not a shot. It's so much louder.)
As Jo blinks, she can't help that it ratches out of her mouth -- "Dean?" -- more surprise than confusion, though the later was there. A ground under it. A diffused almost out of place thing itself. Like she'd found him in the wrong room of a house he'd hadn't been in when she entered it, and suddenly he was just there. "What are you--" But it's not just him, is it? "--we doing here?"
There's a thread there that doesn't like the uncertainty, but just as much there's something like the backhand of relief. That it is him. Making her look to a side because it's all connecting like magnets clicking together, a little faster with each new one, and where there is Dean, there should be Sam, but it's just them and the trees and the empty, still air. "Where's Sam?"
Dean is still staring at her like she's a puzzle-mystery he has yet to figure out, a thing out of place in a picture that is too obvious to ignore. Like despite everything he's seen, done, been through, knows exists, this can't be real. She can't be here.
But as is always the case, that second question shatters through to him--while the first is skipped over, entirely, because more important ones are waiting for answers. The answer is more knee-jerk than thought-out, a half-mumbled, "Safe."
A beat. A frown.
"I think."
"Earth will be fine. It's got you. And Sam."
That's what Chuck-- God, and man is Dean not sure he'll ever get used to that-- had said, before, right? Earth was safe. Which meant Sam was safe. Probably back at the bunker. Safe.
"Yeah." The word is molasses slow making its way out of his mouth, answering no question that had been asked for it to exist at all. "I- I don't... know. Where I- we...are."
Can't, can't, can't. Can't be right. Can't be real. Can't be here. Can't do this.
Dean is staring, but that's not really anything new, nor is the whole being tight-lipped about Sam, but there's not a reason to prick that bear. It's nearly on her lips to flick up an eyebrow and question You think? like there's something there to be concerned about. If he's mumbling that Sam is fine, but in that not entirely certain fashion. Like he's convincing himself as much as here.
Jo's posture shifts almost too fluidly at the words that come after. Weight shifting to a hip, head, tilting just barely, eyebrows rising. Everything about it a dramatic categorical calling him on the fact that what he just said can't be true. Like she needs him to not be playing around right now. In the middle of the woods.
Which definitely leans into the fact, the next second she starts walking toward him, crossing her arms under her chest. There's the hazy edge of an almost accusation, definite correction touching her voice this time. "That doesn't make sense."
Someone has to know that. There has to be a reason they came here. Except -- and there's a small frown turning her lips flatter -- "I don't remember coming here."
Getting more serious. "Why don't I remember coming here?" A second later, "What happened here?"
"Neither does the rest of our lives. When's no sense ever stopped the world from spinning?" Now that she's seeming to get her own bearings in the moment, Dean finds it easier to slip into something familiar, though he can't stop thinking about all the reasons he shouldn't trust this. Her. That it's an illusion or a cosmic joke because of course it couldn't be her, real.
"I don't know." Which is only a half-lie. He knows how he got here, even if snapping him into the middle of the woods in God-knows-where (ha! sorry bastard) makes no freaking sense. Could have at least popped him into a diner with good food. "You--" Died. "You're--" Dead. "What do you remember?"
She doesn't have the patience for his mouth, which may be her expression gives up with unchecked clarity. Dean Winchester and his mouth could find a better place to be glib about nonsense than standing in the middle of a woods having not a clue where they are. And doing it before saying he doesn't know. Again.
Before starting two sentences that do make her have to pay attention, but he doesn't finish either of them. Starts. Stops. Starts, stops. Asks a question instead of answering her question, but she's already looked to the side, trying to think it before she can ever think about tell him anything about being unhelpful. Because. What does she remember?
It's not nothing. She her mother's face, and Ash. The Bar. In a strangely close, and strangely distant blur. Her truck. Her childhood. Her dad. More names of hunters than books would ever know. It's like a culling list. The backbreaking waiting of half her life, with angry screaming or chilled silence. The taste of tequila, and the the feel of a kiss. It's all clear. It's all backwards. But what does she remember last? There's a furrow to her brow, blinking, as she looks up at Dean, again. Tries to place, again, why he's here. They're here. What brought them here.
Together, again. The last time she saw him was --
It flickers. Flashes. Fingers, then palm, against his cheek. His eyes closing. Pervading it suddenly, like a blossoming pain up the center -- Cold.
She remembers being cold; so so cold. The breeze from the window. The swirl of salt. Smell of gas.
C'mon, Dean. I used to hunt ghosts. I know the tricks.
Used to hunt ghosts.
Used to hunt.
Used to.
Jo stumbled back a step, maybe more (I had a good life. Really.), drawing in a sharp breath through nearly closed teeth. (He's making me do this.) That ribbon of pain expoding (You would have done a good bit for him; followed him in to any battle), even as her hand came up defensively to hold her stomach (It's okay. It's okay, that's my good girl), where nothing hurt at all.
He sees it, that flicker-flash of annoyance that doesn't quite get a chance to take root for the frowned question as she has to consider the answer. He watches that, too, spill too easily across her face and then her entire body as she steps backward, like she was pushed by the force of remembering, hands finding her middle and he can't decide if it's pain or relief of it that shadows her face.
He wouldn't have ever, in any universe, wanted to do this to her if he had a choice. But if they didn't rip this bandaid now, it would come later at the worst, wrong time, and at least this clearing in these woods seems otherwise unoccupied aside from the pair of them standing in the middle of it, having their own personal crises under moonlight.
"Jo...?" He wishes her name didn't taste sour on his tongue, like the most damning kind of curse that shouldn't be spoken. When was the last time he had spoken her name? He couldn't say. The days, weeks, months, years had passed since she died. Since, even, she had been used as a pawn against him last. Too many seconds and hours and days to count. It's been so long.
So why doesn't this feel like the literal god(dess)-given gift she was supposed to be? Why, instead, does it feel more like swallowing glass just to look at her?
Invisible claws shredded skin. Her organs. Blood pumping through her fingers, soaking everything. (Like daddy, like daughter.) The wheel of the lighter against the pad of her thumb. The inability to move her legs. The cracking of the window. And more, she knows there's more. She can feel it like a mountain pressing on her. The just out of reach nearness. Her mother's voice. Ash's laugh. Dean kissing her forehead. Her mouth.
The feeling of something that had been just under her fingertips. Smooth. Like wood grain. (This might be the very last chance you have to treat me like an adult.)
Her name rips her focus from some part of the storm. It doesn't abate, but her eyes snap up. Find Dean. Remember he's even there at all. He shouldn't be there. She shouldn't be there. Eyes widened from momentary surprise widening even further, fear having it's own smell. Not sweat and salt and dirt and gunpowder. Icy, with claws, desperate necessity that went deeper than muscles, bone... whatever being was.
"What am I?" It glaring. Harsh. Hard as a brick, sharp as a knife-edge. Shaking. Cut from her bleeding chest. Horrified. Maybe even terrified. "Am I dead?"
She didn't ask that last time. (State your name for the court.) Except. Except. She died. She could remember everything fading all around the edges. Her mother's voice so far away. The edge of her vision is blurring. Eyes burning suddenly with it all. Air feeling impossible to handle and yet the solidness of her ribs compressed back, on not breathing in, on her arms and her feet. It's all so completely solid everywhere. It hadn't felt like this last time. She hadn't. What was happening? Why was she here? What was she now? Was he here to kill her this time?
Even though she is only bone-deep trained to cut to the quick, there is still a raw fear shining in her eyes, shaking her voice that Dean can't ignore. Can't say he hasn't felt himself on more than one occasion. That gut-feeling of knowing that you know this is it. Again. The distant thought wondering how many times you really need to feel this, to suffer this same, bloody fate, before the universe gives you up and lets you rest.
"Nothing," is maybe not the best word-choice for an answer, but it's what comes out of his mouth, rough and ragged, like something jagged stuck in his throat. "I mean..." His mouth moves but no sound comes with it for at least a second, maybe two. "You're just... you. Just... alive."
And saying it out loud does not make it any easier to believe. That this, she, is real, and really happening.
It's out before she can even process the thought to think about what he's said, or even the follow up that the Winchester might have a million rumors about dying and undying, especially, but she was not a Winchester. No one else was. No one was. No one came back
to
life
Jo's arms wrap up. Her arms are solid under her hands, but that doesn't seem quite real enough either. Like somehow solidity isn't proof enough. She can remember touching things. Last time. That time. The stove. She remembers, can feel, in the memory, she thinks, holding the knob as she turned on the stove. Past the pilot light, to just release the glass.
His cheek against her palm. The relief that she was fading fast. Suddenly. Without warning. Him still alive. Not someone she killed. Not even forced to do it, her will gutted. She remembers that touch so well her fingers almost twitch to rub together.
Her fingers dug into her skin. Her arms. Human claws. Seeking purchase. Like somehow it might ground her. This skin. This body. From the storm, that kept washing up and over her mind. Bringing with it so many other things. No order. No sense. All of it. All at once. "How?" Or even better. "Why?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
{What you need most
Date: 2019-02-18 07:11 pm (UTC)That was the last thing Amara said, standing in that garden before she faded away with Chuck and Dean found himself in the middle of a thicket of tangled trees he can barely make his way out of. "Come on!" He mutters, shoving tree branches out of his way, squinting into the darkness as he raises his phone in a weak effort to find signal. "Where the hell am I?" His question falls on no ears to hear it as he stumbles out into the middle of a clearing.
He's barely started to get his bearings and his footing when he hears something in the distance. A voice. Femenine, but sharp as a knife's edge. He can't quite make out the words, she's too far away. "Who's there?" he calls out as he follows the direction of the sound, seeking the owner of it for either a fight or information, whichever seemed right in the moment.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 12:57 am (UTC)Which makes no sense, because she can't, for the life of her, place where it was.
And that's just idiotic, isn't it? Except she can't, for the life of her, place where she is now either.
Bramble bushes and trees in every direction. Darkness and streamers of light. She blinks at it. All of it in focus, but not. Because none of it seems quite right. Entirely solid. Except it is solid. Is real. Just not. Isn't. Familiar. It's going on in pretty much every direction around her, which makes it disorienting. The not knowing. The having any idea which direction. The how she even got to here. Why. How. Everything feeling fuzzy. Disjointed.
There's an opening she heads for, that looks like more level ground, more open ground, and less ... darkness. Which somehow feels right. Wandering further out of the darkness. Deepest shadows. When it's fifty-fifty on bad and good odds, she knows somehow, as she raises her hands, and calls out, "Is anyone out there?"
It's answered, unnervingly fast, that barely even to the next second, by a crash of noise from within the trees not far in front of her and a man's voice. And it makes her. There's something. It tugs at her memory, that voice, even as something sharpens in her thoughts and as her hands raise, without quite being a thought, feeling down all her pockets, front and back of her jeans quickly, in search of ... something.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 01:42 am (UTC)He blinks when the figure in the shadowy half-light forms just the other side of the clearing he'd stumbled into seconds ago himself. Once. Twice. One more time for good measure, because--
No.
It isn't.
Can't be.
Wouldn't...Couldn't.
Is it?
"Who's there?" He says it again, hard and sharp, the kind of question that demands nothing less than answers. Now. Because if he doesn't get them in the next few seconds, he's going to fight you for them instead. Because that's all he knows, and all that he is. Especially this far down this rabbit hole road.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 02:04 am (UTC)The voice, the sheer leveled slice of its sound and the face that it's coming out of. Clicking like the snap of a gun.
(Somewhere else, it's not a gun. Hand wrapped tight. Not a trigger. Not a shot. It's so much louder.)
As Jo blinks, she can't help that it ratches out of her mouth -- "Dean?" -- more surprise than confusion, though the later was there. A ground under it. A diffused almost out of place thing itself. Like she'd found him in the wrong room of a house he'd hadn't been in when she entered it, and suddenly he was just there. "What are you--" But it's not just him, is it? "--we doing here?"
There's a thread there that doesn't like the uncertainty, but just as much there's something like the backhand of relief. That it is him. Making her look to a side because it's all connecting like magnets clicking together, a little faster with each new one, and where there is Dean, there should be Sam, but it's just them and the trees and the empty, still air. "Where's Sam?"
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 03:04 am (UTC)But as is always the case, that second question shatters through to him--while the first is skipped over, entirely, because more important ones are waiting for answers. The answer is more knee-jerk than thought-out, a half-mumbled, "Safe."
A beat.
A frown.
"I think."
That's what Chuck-- God, and man is Dean not sure he'll ever get used to that-- had said, before, right? Earth was safe. Which meant Sam was safe. Probably back at the bunker. Safe.
"Yeah." The word is molasses slow making its way out of his mouth, answering no question that had been asked for it to exist at all. "I- I don't... know. Where I- we...are."
Can't, can't, can't.
Can't be right.
Can't be real.
Can't be here.
Can't do this.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 03:26 am (UTC)Jo's posture shifts almost too fluidly at the words that come after. Weight shifting to a hip, head, tilting just barely, eyebrows rising. Everything about it a dramatic categorical calling him on the fact that what he just said can't be true. Like she needs him to not be playing around right now. In the middle of the woods.
Which definitely leans into the fact, the next second she starts walking toward him, crossing her arms under her chest. There's the hazy edge of an almost accusation, definite correction touching her voice this time. "That doesn't make sense."
Someone has to know that. There has to be a reason they came here.
Except -- and there's a small frown turning her lips flatter -- "I don't remember coming here."
Getting more serious. "Why don't I remember coming here?" A second later, "What happened here?"
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 03:47 am (UTC)"I don't know." Which is only a half-lie. He knows how he got here, even if snapping him into the middle of the woods in God-knows-where (ha! sorry bastard) makes no freaking sense. Could have at least popped him into a diner with good food. "You--" Died. "You're--" Dead. "What do you remember?"
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 04:26 am (UTC)Before starting two sentences that do make her have to pay attention, but he doesn't finish either of them. Starts. Stops. Starts, stops. Asks a question instead of answering her question, but she's already looked to the side, trying to think it before she can ever think about tell him anything about being unhelpful. Because. What does she remember?
It's not nothing. She her mother's face, and Ash. The Bar. In a strangely close, and strangely distant blur. Her truck. Her childhood. Her dad. More names of hunters than books would ever know. It's like a culling list. The backbreaking waiting of half her life, with angry screaming or chilled silence. The taste of tequila, and the the feel of a kiss. It's all clear. It's all backwards. But what does she remember last? There's a furrow to her brow, blinking, as she looks up at Dean, again. Tries to place, again, why he's here. They're here. What brought them here.
Together, again. The last time she saw him was --
It flickers. Flashes. Fingers, then palm, against his cheek. His eyes closing.
Pervading it suddenly, like a blossoming pain up the center -- Cold.
She remembers being cold; so so cold.
The breeze from the window. The swirl of salt. Smell of gas.
I used to hunt ghosts.
I know the tricks.
Used to hunt ghosts.
Used to hunt.
Used to.
Jo stumbled back a step, maybe more (I had a good life. Really.), drawing in a sharp breath through nearly closed teeth. (He's making me do this.) That ribbon of pain expoding (You would have done a good bit for him; followed him in to any battle), even as her hand came up defensively to hold her stomach (It's okay. It's okay, that's my good girl), where nothing hurt at all.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 04:54 am (UTC)He wouldn't have ever, in any universe, wanted to do this to her if he had a choice. But if they didn't rip this bandaid now, it would come later at the worst, wrong time, and at least this clearing in these woods seems otherwise unoccupied aside from the pair of them standing in the middle of it, having their own personal crises under moonlight.
"Jo...?" He wishes her name didn't taste sour on his tongue, like the most damning kind of curse that shouldn't be spoken. When was the last time he had spoken her name? He couldn't say. The days, weeks, months, years had passed since she died. Since, even, she had been used as a pawn against him last. Too many seconds and hours and days to count. It's been so long.
So why doesn't this feel like the literal god(dess)-given gift she was supposed to be? Why, instead, does it feel more like swallowing glass just to look at her?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 12:23 pm (UTC)Invisible claws shredded skin. Her organs. Blood pumping through her fingers, soaking everything. (Like daddy, like daughter.) The wheel of the lighter against the pad of her thumb. The inability to move her legs. The cracking of the window. And more, she knows there's more. She can feel it like a mountain pressing on her. The just out of reach nearness. Her mother's voice. Ash's laugh. Dean kissing her forehead. Her mouth.
The feeling of something that had been just under her fingertips. Smooth. Like wood grain.
(This might be the very last chance you have to treat me like an adult.)
Her name rips her focus from some part of the storm. It doesn't abate, but her eyes snap up. Find Dean. Remember he's even there at all. He shouldn't be there. She shouldn't be there. Eyes widened from momentary surprise widening even further, fear having it's own smell. Not sweat and salt and dirt and gunpowder. Icy, with claws, desperate necessity that went deeper than muscles, bone... whatever being was.
"What am I?" It glaring. Harsh. Hard as a brick, sharp as a knife-edge. Shaking.
Cut from her bleeding chest. Horrified. Maybe even terrified. "Am I dead?"
She didn't ask that last time. (State your name for the court.) Except. Except. She died. She could remember everything fading all around the edges. Her mother's voice so far away. The edge of her vision is blurring. Eyes burning suddenly with it all. Air feeling impossible to handle and yet the solidness of her ribs compressed back, on not breathing in, on her arms and her feet. It's all so completely solid everywhere. It hadn't felt like this last time. She hadn't. What was happening? Why was she here? What was she now? Was he here to kill her this time?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 02:18 pm (UTC)"Nothing," is maybe not the best word-choice for an answer, but it's what comes out of his mouth, rough and ragged, like something jagged stuck in his throat. "I mean..." His mouth moves but no sound comes with it for at least a second, maybe two. "You're just... you. Just... alive."
And saying it out loud does not make it any easier to believe. That this, she, is real, and really happening.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 05:19 pm (UTC)It's out before she can even process the thought to think about what he's said, or even the follow up that the Winchester might have a million rumors about dying and undying, especially, but she was not a Winchester. No one else was. No one was. No one came back
to
life
Jo's arms wrap up. Her arms are solid under her hands, but that doesn't seem quite real enough either. Like somehow solidity isn't proof enough. She can remember touching things. Last time. That time. The stove. She remembers, can feel, in the memory, she thinks, holding the knob as she turned on the stove. Past the pilot light, to just release the glass.
His cheek against her palm. The relief that she was fading fast. Suddenly. Without warning.
Him still alive. Not someone she killed. Not even forced to do it, her will gutted.
She remembers that touch so well her fingers almost twitch to rub together.
Her fingers dug into her skin. Her arms. Human claws. Seeking purchase. Like somehow it might ground her. This skin. This body. From the storm, that kept washing up and over her mind. Bringing with it so many other things. No order. No sense. All of it. All at once. "How?" Or even better. "Why?