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anythingbutgreyfor the record, this was not a part of this meme, but I am writing a bunch of five things fics for that and Xander/Cordlia will be posted later this evening if someone is willing to do a quick beta of it? I apparently take my fics too srsly. Le sigh. ANYWAY.
Title: A Lion-Hearted Girl (or: five things that never happened to Jo Harvelle)
Ship (Fandom): Dean/Jo (Supernatural)
Spoilers: Through 5x02
A/N: Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacyevans for the beta! The title is from Florence and the Machine's "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up).
Summary: Jo hears when Dean dies. Everyone does – it is the sort of whispered hunter talk that passes from state to state on the backbones of soldiers, whispers trapped in the dried cracks of their hands.
1.
Jo hears when Dean dies. Everyone does – it is the sort of whispered hunter talk that passes from state to state like whispers trapped in the dried cracks of their hands. For her, though, the call comes from her mother, just like her mother called when it was Ash's body they had to burn in the ground. Both deaths make her insides burn with the scalding of coals, makes her body ache with the sensation of someone reaching in and turning her inside out, piece by piece. The deaths are different, though. She can't explain, but it hurts in different places, in different ways. Jo stores Ash in a corner of her heart where she can still remember laughing, being children, hitting each other the way siblings do, playing chess games, never winning. With Dean, it's something different, and empty, and a constant whirlpool of what never was and what she had dangerously hoped could have been.
2.
She hears when he's alive too, this time from Bobby, and she will never forget the scene. Her mother is washing dishes when the phone rings, and Jo puts down the pistol she's cleaning and answers the phone. Bobby doesn't even say hello, doesn't even seem to register that it's Jo talking, not Ellen, and rushes to say, "He's alive."
Jo asks who he means, but the words are barely out of her mouth when she knows. No people matter more to Bobby than the Winchester boys, and only one of them is recently dead. Jo has been trying to think of Dean as dead as often as possible, hoping one day she will get used to the idea and maybe even be okay. Bobby rattles off some long explanation, something about angels and things she doesn't quite process, but eventually Bobby hangs up the phone and the receiver slips from Jo's hand, dangling and buzzing above the floor. Her mother's still washing dishes, which makes Jo think the conversation wasn't as long as she thought, though she feels like it lasted for eons.
Ellen turns to her, sets a plate down on the counter, and has the sort of look in her eyes that Jo recognizes as the fear of losing someone else. Her mother’s hands grip the table ledge.
“And?” Ellen asks.
Jo’s eyes close. “Dean’s alive.”
When her eyelids slide open, her mother is crying. Jo hangs up the phone, walks to her mother, and, for the first time in years, so long that she can’t even remember, Jo sobs so hard she cannot stand.
3.
She doesn’t call. Ellen does, once, gestures to see if Jo wants to speak on the phone but she can’t do that. Let Dean go on fighting and surviving and Jo will do the same and maybe this way if he dies again – a probability – she won’t hurt as much the second time around. All the same, Jo thinks, hopes, dares to dream sometimes, that one day this will all be over, and on that day she knows he will be the last one fighting, the last one to put down his guns. Dean doesn't know any life but this, none of them do, but for Dean it runs deeper and coarser than the rest of them. He fights to save the world because he recognizes the world as important, but he doesn't fight to save himself because he doesn't recognize how vital he truly is.
On the day this is all over, if Dean isn't an idiot going down in a blaze of final glory, Jo has every intention of teaching him just how important he is. Until then, she keeps on fighting, keeps on moving further from the sound of his voice in her head, keeps trying to forget.
4.
When the war in Colorado is over, when it's Dean and she knows it's Dean, she's too tired and stunned and mixed up in all the combustible emotions that come along with Dean Winchester to formulate a proper sentence. It's pathetic, it's girly and Jo Harvelle is never frivolous or shy or such things, but all she says is, "Hey," and he smiles, just a half-lilt of the mouth, but something so genuine and real and missed that something deep and low and forgotten inside her aches.
There's a half-second when they're alone together before she runs from this town as quickly as she can -- she can already tell the memory of her mother with pitch black eyes will turn into the sort of dream she has even when awake, whenever she keeps her eyes closed for too long or sometimes even when she blinks. Jo has those kinds of nightmares. Things she can't forget. Things she fears. It's a terrifying sort of moment, the two of them staring at each other and praying the other will speak. She imagines the ways she wants emotion to fill the room, fill her up, make her human again. This life can make anyone hard. Sometimes she still thinks she sees Ash or her father on random street corners. When Dean was in the ground, she saw him too.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive,” Jo sputters and Dean smirks, packing up salt bullets. He looks different than what she’s used to. Something sad, something new lurks in the shift in his lips.
“And kicking,” Dean says with those same old airs. “How have you been?”
She shrugs. The gesture feels awkward and clunky, like her shoulders were never supposed to move that way. “Same old. You?”
His eyes tick over to Sam for just a second, Sam standing through the doorway, across the hall, where they can see each other but not hear each other, and he feels miles away. For that moment, Jo feels just as far from Sam as Dean does, the empty space, the words no one can manage to say. She’s swept up in someone else’s feelings for just a moment too long and Jo inhales long, deep, trying to break out of it.
It works. Jo retreats into herself, and Dean, after a moment, turns away from Sam, says, “Been okay.”
But Jo already knows. Hunters are intuitive people, they have to be, and, no, Jo’s not the best hunter, but she can see things from miles away.
5.
Jo has learned not to think of things in possessives. Share what you got, forget what you can’t carry with you, this is the hunter’s code. This includes people. Her parents made a mistake, falling in love like they did. There are vulnerable holes when there are other people involved. Jo knows this, but there are still some things that, despite herself, she thinks of as hers. These are things both simple and precious: her toothbrush, her vinyl collection, her socks, her father’s crinkled photograph she keeps tucked under her seat in the car, and then there’s Dean. Who isn’t hers and, if she’s ever honest with herself, probably never will be. But she thinks of him that way sometimes, only sometimes, tries to grasp at him in the night and clench him between her fingertips.
There are things she can’t say, though, and that might be number one. Hunters know when to keep quiet, know when the mission trumps all. After Colorado, she lets him walk away.
*
feedback?
Title: A Lion-Hearted Girl (or: five things that never happened to Jo Harvelle)
Ship (Fandom): Dean/Jo (Supernatural)
Spoilers: Through 5x02
A/N: Many thanks to
jacyevans for the beta! The title is from Florence and the Machine's "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up).Summary: Jo hears when Dean dies. Everyone does – it is the sort of whispered hunter talk that passes from state to state on the backbones of soldiers, whispers trapped in the dried cracks of their hands.
1.
Jo hears when Dean dies. Everyone does – it is the sort of whispered hunter talk that passes from state to state like whispers trapped in the dried cracks of their hands. For her, though, the call comes from her mother, just like her mother called when it was Ash's body they had to burn in the ground. Both deaths make her insides burn with the scalding of coals, makes her body ache with the sensation of someone reaching in and turning her inside out, piece by piece. The deaths are different, though. She can't explain, but it hurts in different places, in different ways. Jo stores Ash in a corner of her heart where she can still remember laughing, being children, hitting each other the way siblings do, playing chess games, never winning. With Dean, it's something different, and empty, and a constant whirlpool of what never was and what she had dangerously hoped could have been.
2.
She hears when he's alive too, this time from Bobby, and she will never forget the scene. Her mother is washing dishes when the phone rings, and Jo puts down the pistol she's cleaning and answers the phone. Bobby doesn't even say hello, doesn't even seem to register that it's Jo talking, not Ellen, and rushes to say, "He's alive."
Jo asks who he means, but the words are barely out of her mouth when she knows. No people matter more to Bobby than the Winchester boys, and only one of them is recently dead. Jo has been trying to think of Dean as dead as often as possible, hoping one day she will get used to the idea and maybe even be okay. Bobby rattles off some long explanation, something about angels and things she doesn't quite process, but eventually Bobby hangs up the phone and the receiver slips from Jo's hand, dangling and buzzing above the floor. Her mother's still washing dishes, which makes Jo think the conversation wasn't as long as she thought, though she feels like it lasted for eons.
Ellen turns to her, sets a plate down on the counter, and has the sort of look in her eyes that Jo recognizes as the fear of losing someone else. Her mother’s hands grip the table ledge.
“And?” Ellen asks.
Jo’s eyes close. “Dean’s alive.”
When her eyelids slide open, her mother is crying. Jo hangs up the phone, walks to her mother, and, for the first time in years, so long that she can’t even remember, Jo sobs so hard she cannot stand.
3.
She doesn’t call. Ellen does, once, gestures to see if Jo wants to speak on the phone but she can’t do that. Let Dean go on fighting and surviving and Jo will do the same and maybe this way if he dies again – a probability – she won’t hurt as much the second time around. All the same, Jo thinks, hopes, dares to dream sometimes, that one day this will all be over, and on that day she knows he will be the last one fighting, the last one to put down his guns. Dean doesn't know any life but this, none of them do, but for Dean it runs deeper and coarser than the rest of them. He fights to save the world because he recognizes the world as important, but he doesn't fight to save himself because he doesn't recognize how vital he truly is.
On the day this is all over, if Dean isn't an idiot going down in a blaze of final glory, Jo has every intention of teaching him just how important he is. Until then, she keeps on fighting, keeps on moving further from the sound of his voice in her head, keeps trying to forget.
4.
When the war in Colorado is over, when it's Dean and she knows it's Dean, she's too tired and stunned and mixed up in all the combustible emotions that come along with Dean Winchester to formulate a proper sentence. It's pathetic, it's girly and Jo Harvelle is never frivolous or shy or such things, but all she says is, "Hey," and he smiles, just a half-lilt of the mouth, but something so genuine and real and missed that something deep and low and forgotten inside her aches.
There's a half-second when they're alone together before she runs from this town as quickly as she can -- she can already tell the memory of her mother with pitch black eyes will turn into the sort of dream she has even when awake, whenever she keeps her eyes closed for too long or sometimes even when she blinks. Jo has those kinds of nightmares. Things she can't forget. Things she fears. It's a terrifying sort of moment, the two of them staring at each other and praying the other will speak. She imagines the ways she wants emotion to fill the room, fill her up, make her human again. This life can make anyone hard. Sometimes she still thinks she sees Ash or her father on random street corners. When Dean was in the ground, she saw him too.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive,” Jo sputters and Dean smirks, packing up salt bullets. He looks different than what she’s used to. Something sad, something new lurks in the shift in his lips.
“And kicking,” Dean says with those same old airs. “How have you been?”
She shrugs. The gesture feels awkward and clunky, like her shoulders were never supposed to move that way. “Same old. You?”
His eyes tick over to Sam for just a second, Sam standing through the doorway, across the hall, where they can see each other but not hear each other, and he feels miles away. For that moment, Jo feels just as far from Sam as Dean does, the empty space, the words no one can manage to say. She’s swept up in someone else’s feelings for just a moment too long and Jo inhales long, deep, trying to break out of it.
It works. Jo retreats into herself, and Dean, after a moment, turns away from Sam, says, “Been okay.”
But Jo already knows. Hunters are intuitive people, they have to be, and, no, Jo’s not the best hunter, but she can see things from miles away.
5.
Jo has learned not to think of things in possessives. Share what you got, forget what you can’t carry with you, this is the hunter’s code. This includes people. Her parents made a mistake, falling in love like they did. There are vulnerable holes when there are other people involved. Jo knows this, but there are still some things that, despite herself, she thinks of as hers. These are things both simple and precious: her toothbrush, her vinyl collection, her socks, her father’s crinkled photograph she keeps tucked under her seat in the car, and then there’s Dean. Who isn’t hers and, if she’s ever honest with herself, probably never will be. But she thinks of him that way sometimes, only sometimes, tries to grasp at him in the night and clench him between her fingertips.
There are things she can’t say, though, and that might be number one. Hunters know when to keep quiet, know when the mission trumps all. After Colorado, she lets him walk away.
*
feedback?
