the missing frame, Jo!

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Vampires might have been illegal to kill, but that didn’t stop Dean from tracking the sons of bitches down and killing them in numbers. Nests made it easy. And if humans wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire and he wouldn’t have really risked his neck with the law, he would have gone straight for the vampire bars, intent on taking as many as he could out. Since he first discovered that vamps were more than a myth, he never had to deal with them often. Now and then they had a real vampire hunt, but for the most part, it wasn’t the most common creature he attacked. But now that they were waltzing about in public and making themselves known, alongside of several species, Dean was more intent on taking out as many as he could. For him, it was as if the bastards were just biding their time before they full on attacked humans. Or, at the very least, they were softening them up and killing them. Vampires still killed humans. That hadn’t stopped. And he was embittered with the idea that they could ever be considered close to human. They were monsters. They ate humans. But, apparently, that didn’t matter to a lot of the population. They were misunderstood characters deserving of rights… He might have laughed if it wasn’t so damn awful. There was nothing funny about it. And vampires weren’t the only worry. There was the attraction of the supernatural to New York City, the idea of an evil law firm that could send whole towns to hell, Satan and his demons running about and his brother to be concerned about. And he was worried about his brother. He’d just gotten out of Hell; a Hell that was a lot worse than the one that Dean remembered. He didn’t have to know the details to be completely aware of that. It probably made his look like a vacation and he worried about him; about his state of mind and what it had done to him. If he’d been able to save him, he would have. He tried to; for months he tried to find a way to pull him out, but to no avail. No amount of research helped, but in the end, he got out and that mattered. He was glad to have him back; no doubt about that. But, he’d always be worried about him, just as he was sure that his brother probably did the same for him.

Tonight, he intended to take out another nest; one that was supposedly housed in one of NYC’s bars (not that that narrowed anything down, really). He figured he’d break in, find out and either lie in wait, given vamps were usually out at night, or kill any that he found inside. Typically, Dean was great at what he did; he could track and kill with the best of them. But, it didn’t mean he wasn’t bound to make a mistake here and there. And tonight, he was making one unbeknownst to him. The location was wrong. The bar he was going towards didn’t house anything, and he’d find that out, but not before breaking in. Dean slipped around the back of the bar, not surprised to find the door locked up tight. That never stopped him before and wouldn’t now. After quick work picking the lock, Dean slipped inside. It was dark inside, though given it was dark outside too, he didn’t have too much trouble adjusting it. Quietly, he crept. Vampires had more sensitive hearing and he didn’t want to be caught off guard. There was no way in hell he was going to be aware of one only when it was too late and their fangs were in his throat. He had one hand near his coat, prepared to grab a stake from the inner pocket at any given second. Nothing so far, he manoeuvred to the main area of the bar. So far, nothing. It was looking like a dead end. Disappointing, but not a huge deal. It wasn’t the first time he made a mistake or was given the wrong information. He was still on edge, approaching the bar itself. The dim lighting did nothing to set his nerves right. Nor was the idea that anything could be lurking in the dark. He grew up aware that there was almost always something creeping in the dark, but being alone in a closed, dimly lit bar gave a certain edge—almost thrilling if anything had actually been there. He liked that little rush of adrenaline that came with the unknown or with a fight itself. Hunting may have been hard; it may have stolen from him countless times and it may have drained him, but at the end of the day, that was what he was. It was in his blood and he couldn’t see himself doing anything else. He tried to do something else and it didn’t work out. If anything, it reinstated he was a hunter and would always be. And just as he seemed to dwell on being alone, he heard a noise behind him. He’d thought too soon.

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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 860
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

It wasn’t that she was paranoid, Jo would tell anybody who wondered why the hell she kept a shotgun tucked behind the bar when she was working alone at night after closing, cleaning things up and generally working her ass off for not enough money so that she could have somewhere to live until she caught up with old friends again – if they were still alive, at least. It was just...vampires could be out and about without having to keep themselves secret, now, and there were still the vast numbers of other creatures that hadn’t announced themselves to the general public, and lone, unsuspecting girl like her in a bar late at night? Well, if she were a vampire, Jo would have considered herself a good snack, at least from the outside. Of course, there was nothing unsuspecting about her, and she was pretty sure that she’d have been fired in an instant if her boss knew that she brought weapons onto the premises – clearly not knowing about her father’s knife that she always had on her, or the fact that there was a handgun tucked in the bottom of the bag that she brought with her to work, because you could never be too prepared. Jo didn’t care; when monsters could wander around like they actually deserved to be there, and she didn’t know the full scope of what they were doing, there was no way that she was going to be in the bar alone and unarmed. She really, really was not that stupid, and she wasn’t going to die again so soon. She didn’t know why she was here, what it meant, what had done it, why her mother wasn’t back too (and god, Jo missed her, she really did), but Jo sure as hell wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth right now. If it turned out that something had brought her back and made her evil, then she’d call up Uncle Bobby or the Winchesters and damn well get them to kill her. Better that than hurting people, always. And she’d already died once. At least Jo knew what to expect, this time.

Jo was drying glasses in the half-dark kitchen when she heard a noise out in the main bar. It could have been anything, of course, but she was not going to take that chance, not when it could have been something. You didn’t take chances, when you were a hunter, not if it meant that some creature might get away because you’d thought that it was just some cat in an alley somewhere. It took her less than a minute to collect her gun – and if that hadn’t been quick enough, she’d have had her knife in her hand, and fought with her fists, because yes, of course Jo knew that she was no match for a vampire, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t try. The shotgun wouldn’t stop it either, if it was one, but it would hopefully hurt it like hell first, and give her time to get something to use as a stake. And if it was just a human intruder – though god knew what the hell they wanted to steal in a bar like this – then she imagined that having a shotgun shoved in their faces would be enough to make them back off. It wasn’t like she’d actually use it on another human being, but nobody needed to know that. She winced as she managed to bash her elbow on the corner of her bar for what felt like the hundredth time that week, the sound loud in the quiet of the place, but she’d already sized up the person here, at least from what she could see from his back—which wasn’t really much, in the half dark. Male, tall...that was about it. She didn’t even know if they were human or not, so she pressed the barrel of the gun into the small of the guy’s back, not ready to take chances. “Whatever weapon you’re reaching for, don’t.”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It would be too easy for someone to sneak up on him in the dark. Not only was he not used to the bar’s layout, but it was half-dark and difficult for him to be fully aware of every corner around him. Silently, he assured himself that he was most likely alone, but even if he thought for sure that was the case, his guard wouldn’t be dropped. It was never dropped fully anyway. Dean was a hunter and his reflexes were easy to call on, because he couldn’t expect every move that was about to come at him. He could be attacked anywhere, anytime and the supernatural hardly waited for it to be on his timetable to spring up. He wasn’t going to be one of those people caught completely off guard and dead for it. But, at the same time, he couldn’t have an omniscient awareness. There was always a chance, but as long as Dean knew how to react, he was better prepared. The second that he heard the first noise, Dean tensed, but it wasn’t until the shotgun was pressed against his back that he cringed, internally cursing himself. Odds were, it wasn’t a monster, unless monsters now thought guns were appropriate weapons. Since vampires were acting the part of humans, Dean probably shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps killing humans with their own weapons was a new way of being integrated into society. It didn’t have to be monster, however. He was in a bar; it could have very well been a human and given that he was the one breaking in, he might look like the threat. That wasn’t the case, but either way it didn’t look that promising for him. Lucky for Dean, he knew how to think on his feet. He wasn’t someone that hit a road block and stopped abruptly, confused and unsure of what to do next. He drove right over it and kept going.

This wasn’t the first time that he had been caught in this position, gun to his back in the middle of a bar—but the last time had been years ago, and the memory now hit that bittersweet pang in the pit of his stomach. Jo and Ellen’s death was still a very personal, painful event. And eventually, he would rip Meg to pieces for it and then some. He brushed past the thoughts fast, in less than a second, or so, he thought he had until he heard the woman’s voice behind him. It had to be a trick of the mind; he was thinking of her, and hence heard her in the voice of some stranger in a bar. That’s all that was. It wasn’t as if people couldn’t sound like someone else. New York was a huge city, there was probably someone who sounded similar to him out there. He removed his hand from his coat and lifted both to show himself unarmed. “Look,” he began, already a plan forming in his head. “This isn’t what you think...” And without further hesitation, he spun around, arm first to grab the barrel of the gun to twist it away from her in a quick move. Guns could be the end all if you let them, but they weren’t completely impossible to escape. It was one of those lessons he learned early on. In close range of a gun, there were several ways to disarm someone. It was when there was enough distance that it became incredibly dangerous. Of course there were impossible angles to escape but that was one that he knew exactly how to get out of. He didn’t plan for any trouble, but he wasn’t going to stand there with a shotgun pointed at his back either. However, he spun around to face her, his face paled, though probably not noticeable under the dim light of the bar. The shock on his face, though, was obvious. He was either hallucinating or—It was Jo. Impossibly, it was her. The thought that some monster could be using any of his friends’ faces enraged him a little. He couldn’t speak though, not initially; it was too stunning. He went in looking for vampires and not once in one hundred years could have imagined that was what he was going to find.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 718
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

There were a lot of things that Jo hadn’t gotten around to doing yet that she needed to do; finding yourself back from the dead wasn’t exactly a normal thing to have to deal with, and she didn’t quite know how she was doing with it. Good, she guessed, because it wasn’t like she was a stranger to weird things, or anything like that, but she didn’t particularly want to be here. She was happy to be alive, sure, but she’d been happy in Heaven, too, and now she was here where everything was brighter and dirtier and freakin’ vampires walked around like they were citizens of the world...it wasn’t perfect, she couldn’t lie about that. And the memories of her death were so much sharper, now, than they had been when she’d been comfortably with her mom – Jo remembered the pain and the fear and the overwhelming need to make her death mean something, and not just be her being mauled by invisible dogs; she remembered the look on her mom’s face, on Dean’s face, how she’d been able to feel the life slipping away from her...Jo remembered it all in vivid detail, and dying like that wasn’t exactly the kinda thing she wanted to keep reliving, thanks. She missed her mom, terribly, and Jo thought that things would probably end up being better when she managed to get in touch with the Winchesters again, if they were still here – and hey, at least it looked like they’d managed to avert the apocalypse, she guessed, since the world was still here, and that was definitely something – but she just hadn’t, yet. She wanted to see them, she really did, to have a familiar face or two in this world that was the same, and yet two years further along, because they were family to her, and now, they were all the family that Jo had left, them and Uncle Bobby.

And she knew that they wouldn’t believe that she was back, and she’d have to go through every damn test there was to prove that she was herself. That was good, of course, and she’d probably have given them some kind of lecture if they just accepted that she was Jo Harvelle without throwing holy water in her face or trying to cut her with silver; that was stupid and reckless and sure, they could be described as that, sometimes, but they were good hunters, too, and that was more important. That kind of instinct didn’t just go away, and it wouldn’t, not while there were monsters just walking around, now; if she could be back from the dead, and still know everything that she’d known, then they’d be dumb as all hell not to question whether she was really her. Jo had questioned it. Still did, sometimes, but she seemed to be able to do all the things that demons couldn’t, so she figured that she was pretty much human, albeit an unexplainable one. Maybe if Castiel was still lurking around, she’d be able to ask him if he knew, being an angel and all...but again, that required her to get in touch with people – and it wasn’t just the fact that the numbers she had for them were out of date, ‘cause she could have found out the new ones by calling Bobby, but she hadn’t. To die like that, and then be back...Jo didn’t quite know how to shout ‘I’m here’ in that way. She’d figure it out, she was sure, and in the meantime it seemed like she had more than enough to think about. Jo frowned at the voice, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her, because she’d just been thinking about Dean, but she couldn’t worry about it for long before he spun around and twisted the gun out of her hand, instincts taking over as Jo aimed a punch at his face, coupled with a whole load of déjà vu. She looked up at him, though, and a smile played about her lips, unable to help it. “Dean?” she said, and, well, this kind of solved the whole problem of getting in touch with him and his brother, didn’t it? “I was just thinking about you.”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

People could come back from the dead. It wasn’t impossible, although for most it was and it should stay that way. When someone died, no matter how tragic it was, it had to stay like that. Because, when something came back, nine times out of ten, it wasn’t the something that left. It wasn’t the same person. It was usually something darker, supernatural, and evil most likely. Dean had been an exception multiple times. He hadn’t stayed dead so far, but he knew his time would come where something finally took him out and he stayed that way for good. And as many times as he came back, most didn’t. Their friends that died didn’t come back. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them to. If he could somehow have everyone he cared about living again, then of course he’d want it. But, something like that would come at a hefty price and he knew better than to even start to wish things like that. When someone died, you had to accept it. No matter how badly it hurt, most death had to be final. It wasn’t always that easy and saying it might have sounded a little hypocritical coming from Dean. After all, he’d spent months of his life trying to figure out a way to bring Sam back after his swan dive into Hell. And he’d been the one to bring him back the first time he died, several years before. He never seemed to be able to accept that his brother was dead or could wind up that way forever. They’d both die someday. But Dean was hell bent on not letting his brother go before him and he’d do anything he could to keep him alive. That wasn’t to say he wouldn’t do his best to keep himself amongst the living; because he wasn’t looking to die anytime soon either. What he also wasn’t looking to happen was to see faces of dead friends.

Talk about complete déjà vu, however, as a punch caught him off guard and ruined that victory of disarming the woman. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled, hand going to his nose. At least it helped cure him of that silent shock he was in. “Jo?” There was disbelief in his voice. What were the odds? The resemblance between this time and the time they first met was uncanny and almost amusing, but instead of being amused with it, he was shocked and concerned that this wasn’t Jo, but instead some monster screwing with him. “Good to know you punch when thinking of me.” His sarcasm and kidding around was nothing more than reflex. Half the time it didn’t matter what kind of mood he was in, he always seemed to be capable of that. Whether he was in a light mood or in a completely dark one. This time around, he didn’t know where he stood. Somewhere between shock and disbelief. Naturally, he wanted to believe that it was her. That somehow she was brought back as herself and that this wasn’t another trick supposed to make his life more difficult. Sometimes, it felt like that was precisely what the world was out to do. “How—?” His expression turned quizzical and he studied her, as if somehow trying to figure it out with absolutely no information. His expression hadn’t even changed during the time it took him to slip his free hand into his coat, withdrawing a flask. You could never be too careful. And holy water was pretty damn handy. He never skipped a beat or gave any warning and instead flipped the cap and splashed it right at her face. If it was Jo, then she should have expected him to take that route almost immediately. He would have been a poor hunter if he just accepted that she was alive again without taking any precautions. He’d watch her carry out each of the tests before he started to believe it. And if it was her, then more questions would arise. How long had she even been back? And if she’d been back for any length of time, why hadn’t she said something? Dean knew that his number had changed since she died. But, there were other ways to get a hold of them. Bobby, for one, had the same number, she could have reached them.

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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 718
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

It was harder than one might have thought, to readjust to being alive again; Jo guessed that she should have been grateful that she’d been pulled out of Heaven, and not Hell, given that eternity in hellfire wasn’t exactly what anybody wanted to go through, but that didn’t make it easier, not really. She didn’t remember much of Heaven, only that she’d been there, with her mom, and she’d been happy. Dead, sure, but happy. At least if she’d been in Hell, she’d have wanted out, but she hadn’t, not really. Sure, it was nice to be alive again, and she wasn’t going to spend forever trying to get herself killed again just so that she could go back, because there were things for her to do here, but she hadn’t actually wanted it. She’d died, and her death, and her mom’s death, had meant something. She’d not been quite sure what she was supposed to do, if she was honest; her mom had always been there for guidance, if Jo had needed it, even when she ignored her and did the exact opposite, because she was too protective and treated her like a child, and now she didn’t have anybody to ask. She should have called Bobby straight away, she knew that, especially when Dean’s number hadn’t gone through. But she’d barely believed it herself, and she’d not wanted the questions that she couldn’t answer, or to go through all the tests to make sure that she wasn’t a demon when she’d already done them on herself, and sure, she thought Bobby would have been happy to see her, when he figured out that she was really her, but Jo didn’t know. Last time she’d been around, she never would have thought that any species would make themselves known to the general public, and yet here she was, in a world where vampires were around and it was apparently illegal to kill ‘em. Screw that, she was going to keep doing what she did to keep people safe. But the point was, things had changed, in the two years since she’d died.

Well, not so much, apparently, since she still had an opening to throw a punch in almost the exact same way she had done when Dean had first come into the Roadhouse, and perhaps she’d crow over that later, when they had gotten over the fact that the one person she’d been thinking about finding had just walked straight into the bar she was working in. It had only been a week or two since she’d been back, so Jo didn’t think he’d have any right to be mad at her for not getting in contact sooner, and at least this way, she didn’t have the chance to worry herself about what he might say, since she couldn’t avoid it now. “In the flesh,” she confirmed, taking the opportunity to snatch her gun back, not that she needed it, anymore. He was the kind of intruder that she could deal with without having to threaten to shoot him, given that he was her friend and all. She laughed shortly, shrugging. “Guess you just bring that side of me out, sweetheart,” she told him, but she’d hit before she’d realised who he was, and it really was good to see him. Last time, she’d been far too close to death, and he’d looked far, far too worried. At the question, Jo just shrugged again, shaking her head. “Been asking that same question. I just woke up and here I am, not so dead. I got absolutely no idea how it happened.” She wasn’t surprised when the water hit her face, merely wiping it away with her hand; it was good to know that his instincts were still strong, at least, and Jo crossed the bar to switch on a few lights, just keeping it low, but enough to see by, stowing the shotgun away again, and grabbing a salt shaker. “I’m not a demon.” That didn’t stop her tipping a small pile of salt into her hand, though, and putting it in her mouth with no more than the face anybody would make at eating salt. She had no issue with doing the tests, because she knew that were the positions reversed, she’d want to see him go through the same motions. “Do you have a silver knife, or do you wanna use mine?”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

No matter how many times he came back from the dead or heard that someone else had, it was never going to be easy to swallow. It was impossible to face someone who came back with a casual smile and a ‘welcome back’. People didn’t just come back. The countless times that he and his brother came back were irrelevant. It wasn’t the norm. It was the exception and Dean didn’t know what they had ever done to deserve several lives. In fact, He was sure that they didn’t deserve it at all. And while he didn’t think that they deserved to die either, they didn’t need to be pulled back every time something finally got the better of them. He didn’t count on it to happen either. If he were to die right now, at random, he was positive that he wouldn’t come back. If a monster ripped through the door and tore through him or if the bar spontaneously combusted, Dean would die and it would be final. There would be no coming back. At least, that was what he thought could be counted on. Death had a certainty about it and a finality that he didn’t really think needed to be altered. Death was tragic, yes. And if you lost someone you cared about, it could rip a giant hole where they used to be and nothing would fill it ever again. If there was someone accustomed to this concept, it was Dean. Hell, it was probably the same for any hunter. They were in the business of losing the people that they cared about, and in witnessing the death of innocent people that never warranted the horrific deaths they were treated to. It might not have been a fact that he liked, but it was fact all the same and Dean wouldn’t do anything to change that death was final and that you couldn’t bring back the dead by normal means. He was all right with it. It hurt like hell and it could break anyone down, but it was how it was. That was enough for him.

Naturally, Dean begrudged his last memories of Jo. She was dying and there had been nothing that he could do to save her. He wanted to, God, he’d have done anything to help. Going in, they knew that their mission was most likely going to end in all of them dying. He had hope, of course, but who went against the devil and lived to tell about it? Still, he would have hoped that if anyone survived it would have been Jo and Ellen. The image of Jo being torn at by the Hellhounds never escaped his memory, nor did seeing her there, fading. He had barely been able to speak, or think ahead. He was close to falling apart with worry, because their friends were dying on a mission that started with them. And perhaps, had he played the scene differently, she wouldn’t be dead; Meg wouldn’t have released the dogs. Dean knew it wasn’t his fault, but it still hurt like hell. And if it hadn’t been for Bobby’s calm demeanour when he contacted him and Ellen’s too, he might not have pushed through as well as he did. He was a good hunter and in a stressful situation, he didn’t usually have a problem. But, even he could have his moments where it was too much for him. In that case, it definitely had been too much. He needed someone to keep him clearheaded and focused. What Jo and Ellen did had been nothing short of brave. He had all of the respect in the world for them, but it didn’t make the deaths easier. “I guess so.” He commented, both with amusement and confusion at the same time. Her being there was still perplexing and incredibly coincidental. “Woke up where? In the middle of a bar?” He asked with a raise of his eyebrows. Of course he knew that wasn’t it. And he mixed his sarcasm in; in his own way asking where she’d woken up. When the holy water didn’t affect her, he slipped the flask away, watched her carry out the test with the salt, relaxing a little. At her question, he withdrew his knife and held it out to her. “Use mine.”

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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 718
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

When her dad had died, Jo had been so sad that she’d not been able to do anything for what felt like the longest time; she’d been ten, and he had been her hero. She still remembered the exact smell of his leather jacket when he picked her up and twirled her around after coming back from a hunt, and she’d sat on his lap for hours and listened to his stories of the monsters he’d killed and the people he’d saved, all the while sneaking glances at her mom, who finally looked happy again. In Jo’s eyes, he had somehow been invincible; she knew that hunters died, of course, because it was a dangerous job, and every now and again, someone would come into the Roadhouse and there’d be talk of someone passing on, but not her daddy. Never her daddy. She’d been so sad that she’d refused to eat for two days, that she hadn’t been able to write in her journal, and when her mom cried—her mom never cried, and it broke Jo’s heart, however hard Ellen had tried to hide it from her. She’d looked at books, then. Big, dusty volumes full of words that she didn’t understand – and probably wouldn’t understand now, if she was honest, some of them – trying to find a way to bring her dad back, because if creatures and magic was real, then there had to be a way, didn’t there? It had been then that she had learned how final death was. How once people died, that was it. Good people, like her daddy, they went to Heaven, but they didn’t come back. It was the one constant in the world, and yes, she knew that some people had thwarted that rule, and come back when they should’ve been dead, but crossroad deals and angelic intervention wasn’t something that had happened here. There wasn’t anyone left who’d sell their soul for Jo, and that was how it should have been. She wouldn’t have wanted any of them to do that for her; she’d died, and that was that.

Except not quite, clearly. If someone had brought her back, it obviously wasn’t Dean, judging by his surprise, and she doubted that it’d be Sam, because of the two brothers, Jo had always felt closer to the eldest. If she had known why she was back, it might have been a lot easier for her to swallow, but as it was...she was here, with no idea what had happened to bring her here, and that was far too many questions for someone like her. She liked being able to find things out, and get the answers that she sought, but so far, all her looking had come up with nothing. It wasn’t as though there was anyone she could ask, really, not like in a normal case, where you got talking to the cops or the neighbours or somebody. Jo was sure that Bobby would be the first person Dean called about this, when he had the chance, and maybe he would know...but if she was honest, Jo was kind of scared of what the answer might be. She seemed perfectly human, but what if she wasn’t? “Some hodunk town in the middle of God knows where. Hotwired a car and made it up here, since this seems to be where all the action is nowadays,” she replied, and at least he’d be able to tell her more about the vampire thing than she’d gotten from the TV and papers – and from a hunter’s perspective, too, which always helped things along. From what she’d worked out, it was now illegal to kill a vampire, which was all kinds of crap, as far as Jo was concerned; if they hurt people, they needed to die, to keep people safe. That was what hunters did. She nodded, taking the knife, twisting it in her hand for a moment as she looked it over, before flattening her palm and cutting into it with barely a flinch, holding the knife back out to him when she was done. “You want some ice for your face?”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Death was difficult; no matter how often he saw it or how many times it personally affected him, it didn’t become magically easier. The finality of death was something that he had learned young. He’d only been four when his mom died and before that, death wasn’t much of a concept at all. People didn’t go away forever. And if they did, he wasn’t close enough or old enough to understand or care about it. At that age, you didn’t think about losing someone. He couldn’t have imagined that one day he would wake up and there would be one less family member. Families grew; they didn’t shrink. Back then, he didn’t think of bad things happening, beyond being a little afraid of shadows or a fake monster in the closet that was easily banished by a quick check or leaving the door open so the hall light could shine into the room. And they were such distant memories now and few and far between, given his age that normality was crushed, or in their case, burned up. He might have been little, but his mom’s death was one that he had remembered vividly. He recalled how it made him feel; the fear and the grief was memorable even then. And Dean had tried to be brave, both for his mom (because he thought that was what she would have wanted) and for his dad and brother. Although he always saw his dad as brave and stronger than he’d ever be, he wanted to be brave and he wanted to protect his younger brother, because suddenly, there was a risk. Bad things could happen and he wasn’t going to let it happen to him. Back then, it had silenced him. He didn’t like to talk anymore and that phase had lasted a little while. When he was older, naturally, he handled death differently. And he didn’t know he handled it healthily now. After John died, he tried to bury how he felt. He bottled it until it exploded in anger at his poor car, and even at Sam. That was hard as hell and to find out that he died because of him, because of a goddamned deal to save him had stung more. He was living because he died. Of course, Dean turned around and did the exact same thing only a year later, but by that point, he figured he deserved to make that choice. He had to save Sam and he’d been through his fair share that he should be allowed to die.

It wasn’t to say he wanted to die, not really. And he didn’t want to go to Hell. That had terrified him beforehand more than he let on until the very end. It was easy for him to bury how he felt and when he was on his way to Hell, he lived as loud and as best as he could. He had fun, and tried to pack everything he wanted into that last year. It was a mixture of a curse and a freedom mixed into one. And although he regretted Hell, he didn’t regret what he did to save his brother. He wouldn’t do it again. Because, they couldn’t keep that cycle up. It was dangerous and the monsters used their loyalty against them each and every time. He’d lived months without Sam only recently and he couldn’t begin to know if he handled it right or if he did it all wrong. He hit the bottle a little more often, but he’d tried to live normal and he tried not to be a huge burden on Lisa or so damaged that she’d want to push him out the door. Though, she never gave any sign of that and he owed her a lot for it. He didn’t regret being a part of that family, as short lived as it was, but it was never going to be his and it was better that way. He belonged on the road and they belonged to be safe, without a hunter waltzing in and out of their lives. They deserved a lot better than that. And the world right now was too screwed up for him not to be out there. And being back in the fight—he couldn’t help but have found his love again for that. “You noticed that, did you?” He asked a bit of annoyance for New York slipping into his tone. The monster population and everything happening here did that to him. He watched her cut and breathed out a sigh when nothing happened because of it. Taking his knife back, he pocketed it. When she offered ice, he brought his hand to his face again and flinched, about to tell her he was fine, but, given it hurt, he nodded. “Yeah, actually. You really should look before you hit.” The latter was mentioned with more of a tease.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 822
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

Death was something that you grew used to hearing about, in the hunter community. Nobody died for what seemed like forever, and then there was a run of guys coming into the Roadhouse, talking about how this creature had got their buddy, or did you hear about how a skinwalker had taken out some hunter over in Texas, or something. It was a dangerous job, after all; it was to be expected, almost. They hunted these things because they hurt people, and therefore it followed that at some point, the hunter might be the one to get hurt; it wasn’t something anybody wanted to happen, but hunters died young. That was how it was, and those that got to start a family first, like Jo’s dad, like John Winchester, they were the lucky ones. But Jo didn’t think it was so lucky, when those hunters died. She’d been ten, when she’d lost her dad, and it wasn’t like he had been around a whole lot before then, always chasing something to the other end of the country and back, and Jo didn’t begrudge him that, not for a second, because he’d been a hero. She was a hunter because she’d wanted to be like him, because it was the only way she’d been able to figure out to be close to him, and the fact that she was good at it just meant that it was in her blood, because her mom had been a good hunter too, even if she’d spent most of her life at the Roadhouse. Death had hung over her family like a big black cloud, ever since then, and Jo understood that her mother wanted to keep her safe, but Jo wanted to hunt. It was the only thing she wanted to do, and she’d been good at it, too. The fact that it had ultimately been what killed her was just unfortunate, she guessed, but not wholly unexpected. Coming back from it, however, years later, with nobody around to tell her what had happened and what it really meant—that was unexpected. People came back from the dead, sure, but not normal people like her. Jo had never expected to come back.

And yet here she was, as alive as ever, without even having any of the scars that she’d used to have, before she died, from hunts, or that time she’d fallen over outside the Roadhouse and cut her knee open on some rusty old nail, and had to go to the hospital to get tetanus shots, or the little nicks on her fingers from where playing with her knife had ended up with her getting cut, instead. This kind of thing didn’t just happen, and sure, Jo was all smiles now, and she was genuinely pleased to see Dean again, but she was worried about what brought her back, because it was never anything good. Even if it had been angels, that didn’t necessarily mean that it was good, because yeah, they weren’t on the side of Hell, which was always a good thing, but it kind of seemed like they were all dicks, Castiel aside, if she was honest, but then she’d owe her life to something, and Jo didn’t want that, not really, not when she didn’t know if angels could be trusted or not. She wasn’t going to turn her nose up at being alive again, ‘cause she was brought up to believe that human life was precious, but not knowing how she’d gotten here, or who she might be indebted to, was troubling. She guessed that Bobby would have to do some digging around on that, when she finally spoke to him – and after she went through all the tests to make sure that she wasn’t a demon for the third time. Jo didn’t think she could get away from performing them for every hunter that she knew, and it made sense, really. But being splashed with holy water and cutting her own hands was getting kind of old – and a little painful, even if the cut she’d made had only been small, and she’d had worse just from chopping food. “Not a fan of the Big Apple, huh?” she asked, amused, heading out into the kitchen for a moment to get him some ice, wrapped up in a dish towel, leaning over the bar to hand it to him. “You really should learn from the last time someone had a shotgun to your back, and not try to disarm them.”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Dean supposed that if there was a family that was to be cursed, his would be the one. It felt that way sometimes; with the way that they were killed and dragged into the supernatural world. How no matter what monster they defeated, another was ready to drag them through the mud and force them down until they didn’t know if they could stand back up again. For all hunters, the job was difficult and hunters never lived for long. They died young and they died bloody. If they didn’t, they were the lucky ones, albeit probably a little crazy and too reliant on a heavy bottle of liquor to get through the day. Hunters didn’t age gracefully. He didn’t imagine himself ever growing old. He was sure he would die young (and he had, more than once), but when it was all said in done, Dean figured that he would die on the job and it wouldn’t be thirty years from now. But, he liked to think it wasn’t going to be in the next one or even five from now either. Dean wanted to be alive. But, he wasn’t naive to the risk or to his own mortality. He was well aware of how little it could take to kill him under the right circumstances. Hunters may have fought creatures that were hundreds of times stronger and with all of the advantages, but it didn’t change that they were still humans with the same weaknesses. They knew how to better protect themselves and how to fight against the supernatural, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be taken out by one gunshot or one deep cut. Hell, he could be hit by a car crossing the street and that could be his final breath. Now, he hoped he never died during something mundane because while he didn’t want to die and was going to fight as hard as he could to stay alive, he wanted it to mean something when he went. He would rather go down fighting than go down because some big hunk of metal speed through a stop sign. Even though they knew that they could die and every hunter was aware of the risk, it didn’t make it less tragic when one of them died. When the group set out to kill Lucifer, they all knew there was a chance they weren’t coming back from that. But, it didn’t change their decision, nor did it change how it hurt when they came back minus two people. The pain was still there and he respected them immensely for dying bravely and to give them the chance to get at the devil. But, it didn’t change that they lost them and that that was painful and difficult to come to terms with. But, when they continued the fight, a part of him fought for Ellen and Jo; for their memory and for what they died for. Of course, his own morale had started to slip, but with the odds that were stacked against them and the games the angels played, it was amazing he was where he was now.

But, seeing Jo alive again... He never thought he would see that. Of course, he wanted it. But, there was nothing that he could have done to bring her back short of a demon deal. And Dean was done with dealing with demons to bring people back. He wasn’t going to send himself back to Hell and he knew that wasn’t what any of them would have wanted. The longer he stayed out of Hell, the better. With her alive, he couldn’t help but wonder how. It looked like she wondered the same thing. There weren’t a lot of things that could bring someone back. Save angels, demons and Death himself. And Death wouldn’t resort himself to bringing back some human. Though between angels and demons, he couldn’t quite imagine which would do it. Or what their motivation would be. Dean didn’t trust angels, not after the last couple of years. Some, were fine, and he absolutely trusted Castiel, but the majority? They were dicks, mostly, gunning to destroy their planet for paradise. Dean didn’t want to see it happen before and he wouldn’t have wanted to see it now. But, what he wanted to know was why she was back. And although he was perplexed by it, he wasn’t unhappy. It was far from that. He wanted to see her alive again, it simply wasn’t something that happened. “Aside from the vamps running around like it’s vampire-appreciation-month? And the demons flooding the damn place? It’s loud, crowded and don’t get me started on the traffic.” He complained. So, he wasn’t really a city kind of guy. He didn’t mind cities, especially not every so often when they needed a break to do something fun. But, in general, small towns were better suited for him, especially when it came to hunting. NYC drove him a little crazy sometimes. But, he supposed being stuck in a small town for a long period of time would be a lot worse. At least he had space and a change of scenery close by. He took the ice with a nod of gratitude, pressing it to the sore area. “You should’ve learned last time not to put a shotgun to someone’s back like that,” He quipped back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 896
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

Jo had never expected to live until she was old and grey – not that she’d ever have told her mother that, because she was pretty sure that she’d have been padlocked in her room until she was fifty, if that had been the case. She was a hunter, just as much as any of the guys who’d come into the Roadhouse had been, and hunters died young. Her mom, and Bobby, they were the oldest hunters she knew – and they weren’t old by normal people’s standards – but she wasn’t sure that she wanted that life, either. She didn’t want to be the one who’d been left behind while the people that they loved had died, being a valuable resource for hunters, helping them out and researching for them when they could, but not actually being out there themselves. Sure, Bobby’s legs had been a problem, and her mom had always been taking care of her, but Jo had never wanted to be like that, herself. She’d wanted to be out hunting since she was a little girl, and her mom had held her back and held her back, and eventually, she’d had to go and prove that it was something that she could do, and do well. Her dad hadn’t sat in the saloon all day, putting together files, and yes, Jo knew that that was what had gotten him killed, but it was what got every hunter killed, and if she was honest, she’d rather die killing some big monster and saving people than she would sat at home of old age. It was just a universal fact that with what they did, hunters died young, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do to stop it, not really. And maybe not as young as she’d been, sure, barely into her twenties, yet, and maybe not the way that she’d died, torn apart by Hellhounds, but at the end of the day, Jo hadn’t been surprised by the fact that she was dying. She hadn’t wanted it, and she had been so, so scared, but it wasn’t a surprise, because they were all going to die, sooner or later. This job had risks, and they’d all been pretty sure that facing Lucifer would be the end of them, anyway. But she’d died fighting; she’d died buying the Winchesters some time, and that was what was important, really, ‘cause here they were, and Lucifer wasn’t running the world, at least not that Jo could see. That was a very, very good thing in her eyes.

It was bad enough here, she thought. It was bad enough that vampires were considered citizens, now, and that there were freaking activist groups for them, actually talking about how they deserved equal rights, and they weren’t all as evil as they were made out to be. Seriously? Come on! They were vampires, they drank human blood, and to do that, they had to kill people. That wasn’t exactly human friendly, was it, and Jo was pretty sure that all this vampire stuff was just some way to distract people like her, and Dean, from the fact that they were trying to take over the world, or something. Everything seemed to want to do that; demons, the devil, even the goddamn angels, so why not the vampires too? She might not have been here long, or know all there was to know about this thing that was being dubbed the Great Revelation, but even Jo could see how this was definitely not a good thing. Sure, they might always have moaned about the fact that people were so damn ignorant, and how they might have been able to save themselves, if they’d just known the right thing to do, but not on this scale. This could only lead to bad things, she was sure, because it had upset the balance of the world, and it had made it harder for hunters to do their jobs. What they’d done had never been particularly legal before, but now it was downright illegal, and that just made it harder. “Oh, sure, the traffic’s on the same level as the whole vampire thing,” she replied, laughter evident in her voice as she got two beers out, and pushed one towards him without asking. This job didn’t pay enough as it was, it could spring for two bottles of beer, and she figured that he might need one, what with being punched, and finding out that his friend had come back from the dead with absolutely no idea how that had happened. “Why’d they reveal themselves anyway?” It didn’t make sense, if you asked her; from the vampires’ perspective, wasn’t it better to be able to feed on people that had no idea that you existed, rather than ones who knew? And everything was being regulated, now, so Jo really didn’t get how it was supposed to benefit the vampires at all. She shrugged, her smile still teasing. “And yet you’re the one who’s gonna have a black eye.”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Even when Dean had tried to live normal; when he’d been going through the motions of an average person (which was harder than it looked, to be honest), he didn’t see himself as continuing that forever. In the back of his mind, he still imagined that he’d end like a hunter. Of course, he didn’t sit around thinking about dying either. He wasn’t that morbid even when he was hunting. It was just known that hunters died young and that they died fighting. And everyone heard the stories. Someone died bravely or died stupidly, but either way it was a monster that finally took them out and you knew, regardless, they probably died as heroes. Because, even if he didn’t agree with some hunters and he sure as hell didn’t get along with all of them, there was respect to be had and they did something that most people didn’t even consider. Before vampires came out, hardly anyone knew there was anything out there or any reason for a hunter. They fought and risked their lives without seeing gratitude or recognition. And now that vampires were known, they still couldn’t let people know they were the ones saving their asses. Because, killing a vampire was illegal. It was easy to sit back and complain about how ignorant the world was. Just because they could hang out after a hunt and complain didn’t mean that they necessarily wanted to see that kind of change to the world. And if Dean was able to give his honest opinion, he would be the first to say that the big reveal was a lot worse than keeping them in the dark. For a few, it gave them a chance to be safer and more aware. But, for a lot of them, it also gave way to a new infatuation. Activists fought for their rights for Christ’s sake. By no means did he want to live to see the day where vampires were deserving of the rights of humans. They were monsters. That one word needed to be thrown around more, but it didn’t seem to bother those that were sympathetic to them. He was never going to look at a vampire and consider it to be misunderstood or secretly good. Even if it had no choice as to what its nature was, it didn’t change what it did and what it was capable of doing. A lot of monsters didn’t have a choice in what they became, especially those that had once been human. They changed and while it was sad that someone had to be lost because of it, he had to be concerned with saving people. The most important part was to make sure that people lived longer and didn’t have to worry about monsters invading their lives. He didn’t think they deserved to be strapped with that kind of burden. He might not have been out for an apple pie life, but he didn’t think that should stop the rest of the population from living theirs. He was a hunter and he loved his life for the most part and he wanted to protect people that loved their very different, monster free life too.

But, that was a little difficult to do now that vampires were basically all over the place. No one was free of hearing about them. Dean hadn’t been in the fight the whole time. He spent a few months watching it the way most people did, in front of a television, perplexed and outraged that something so profound could happen. All of his life, most people brushed off the supernatural as nothing, even when it was right in front of their faces. He heard ridiculous excuses day in and day out. Even now, when it didn’t involve vampires at all, he heard cops and medical examiners give him the most outlandish excuses for a death. Even with vampires coming out, for some creatures it still seemed easy to pretend that they didn’t exist. He thought it was strange how sceptics could exist despite being open to the idea of vampires. When someone was able to blatantly ignore the paranormal when it was right in front of their face had always been baffling, however. So now, was no different. And he honestly wished that they would stay ignorant about everything and that vampires would slip into the background. But, that wasn’t going to happen. Dean was well aware that mindless wishing wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “Have you driven in the traffic? It’s Hell. Hell with cars.” He said, teasing, of course. It wasn’t half as bad and Hell wasn’t something that he took so lightly, not since he’d been there and done that. But, the traffic did suck and it was a good reason to become frustrated with the city. It might not be as bad as the vampires, but he didn’t want to darken the conversation completely. He was always more than willing to throw a tease in here and there. “Because they could? God, I don’t even know; not really. One minute LA is going to Hell, the next, vampires are coming out and scientists are claiming they’ve got some blood substitute and the news was on fire with it. Next thing you know, we’re here. Vamps are fighting for rights, it’s illegal to kill ‘em and it’s like the whole damn world lost its head.” He took the beer with his free hand and took a long drink. “Yeah, well next time, you won’t be so lucky.” He teased.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 929
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3

Jo’s version of normality, and what other people had had growing up, were two very different things. She’d been helping out in the Roadhouse for as long as she could remember, carefully carrying away one dirty plate at a time while she’d still been in pigtails, too small to even reach the bar itself, and her life had been full of hunter’s tales, her honorary uncles telling her all about what they did. Of course, she was well aware of the fact that they wouldn’t have told her everything, now, with hindsight, and kept quiet on the parts that involved death or people getting hurt, or being so scared you wanted to pee your pants, but Jo had loved the stories nonetheless, and they had been all that she’d wanted to hear, when hunters came in. Some of them had great stories, like Uncle John, and she’d loved sitting on his knee and hearing what he had to say, until after her daddy’s death, when he’d not come to the Roadhouse any more. Not that Jo would have cared then, anyway; she’d been too sad to care about anything. But she had known that she wasn’t normal, not compared to the other kids; most of them didn’t know what was out there, which was something that Jo couldn’t understand, because she’d always known, just like she’d known that the sky was blue (but not always) and that her parents would always be there for her (except when they died). The other children didn’t have knives, or live in a saloon in the middle of nowhere, and get into fights for no real reason other than the fact that the boy had deserved to be hit. Even when she’d been older, at college, Jo had still been the freak with the knife collection, and that life just hadn’t worked out for her. The life of a hunter hadn’t worked out for her either, not straight away, because her mother kept insisting on treating her like a child, but there was no normality in Jo’s life, not from other people’s perspectives, at least. She happened to like that this life was normal, for her. She happened to like what she did, and what she knew—but even for her, coming back from the dead was different. Being here again was not normal – even with the liberal use of the word that Jo had in the first place.

And yet, here she was, and she didn’t think that that was going to change any time soon; she seemed to be pretty firmly here, for the time being, and since she’d apparently gotten a second chance at life, she was going to do what she could to keep the vampire population under control, and now that Dean had found her, albeit accidentally, probably tag along with him for a bit – whether he wanted her to or not – and help out with him and Sam until she found her own gig. But she had so many questions, and sure, he could answer some of them, about the vampires and the state of the world and what the game plan was, but the rest...Jo didn’t know if there was anyone who could answer them. Castiel, perhaps, and if she could get a straight answer from him, he was probably her best shot, but she wasn’t holding out much hope, really. She didn’t know what had brought her back, or how, or how come she was still one hundred percent human. Why her, and not her mother too? What about other dead people – Ash, or her Dad, or John Winchester? Was she some kind of timebomb, sitting here just waiting to go off, and she didn’t even know it, like a trigger that would switch her over to the evil side and hurt people? There were so many things that Jo didn’t know, and she didn’t even know if she was safe to be around. She had this job, and she was around people all the time, and yeah, she knew that Dean, now, could more than handle himself, but Jo didn’t really know if she was good, anymore. She wasn’t a demon, but that didn’t mean anything, and she really, really needed answers. She wasn’t making her worry known, though, not right now, because she might have hit him, but Jo really was happy to see Dean. She’d been holding out on it for stupid reasons, and it was nice to see a friend.

“That’s just ‘cause you like to go at a hundred miles an hour,” she teased, but she didn’t like driving in the New York traffic, either. Given that she’d stolen a car to get here, and then dumped it, it was probably a good thing, because it meant that getting another ride wasn’t so urgent. She shook her head at his explanation of the vampires – from a viewpoint she was far more willing to trust than the damn TV reporters’ – dropping her beer cap on the table as she drank. “LA went to Hell? Literally?” It seemed that there was a lot she had been missing out on, while she’d been dead; Jo had just caught up with the most current news stories, and headed straight for where the action was. She scoffed. “They’re monsters. How can they even have rights? They’re just gonna lull everyone into a full sense of security, then attack.” Her frown cleared, though, as she laughed at his next comment, shaking her head, and pointing at him with her bottle for emphasis. “Next time? You mean you’re gonna get hit by a girl with a shotgun three times, ‘stead of just twice?”

WHAT DAY IS IT? AND IN WHAT MONTH? THIS CLOCK NEVER SEEMED SO ALIVE.
i can't keep up and i can't back down, i've been losing so much time.
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO SAY JUST AREN'T COMING OUT RIGHT. I'M TRIPPING ON WORDS.
you've got my head spinning. i don't know where to go from here.
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Hunters didn’t know the same normal that everyone else did. Dean grew up different from other kids and he remembered what it had been like to have normality early on. He knew what it was like to live in a normal house, with two parents and a little brother. It hadn’t been without its troubles, Dean remembered that too. His mom and dad had argued before and he remembered his dad leaving for a couple of days before Mom died, but he came back and it was okay again. He had no doubts about how his parents felt about each other; everything had its little imperfections. But, he still had memories of his family when hunting was so far from reality; when he used to like sports and couldn’t wait for his dad to get home to throw a ball back and forth. He was only four, but there were a lot of memories that he had clung to as a kid; because he couldn’t forget them. He didn’t want to forget what it used to be like. But, most of his childhood was spent differently. Instead of football or baseball, he learned how to shoot and to be honest, he had loved that. Especially seeing his dad’s proud smile when he managed to shoot with excellent aim for a little kid that’d never shot before. Dean learned how to fight and listened to the truth about monsters. Other kids didn’t know how to shoot a gun, how to fight, or how to take care of a kid four years younger, but Dean did those things and he did them regularly. They had grown up pretty isolated. He knew very few hunters, because his dad kept them away from that; and now that he knew more of them, he supposed it was to protect them. There were a few though, that helped their dad out and that he grew up knowing, and of course Bobby, who had become a father to them more over the last few years. He was as much of his family as anyone related by blood. And Jo and Ellen had been like family too. They were people he trusted and cared about. And Dean didn’t have a list a mile long, but the people that did matter and that he did care about, he wanted to keep around for as long as possible. They lost so much as it was, it didn’t seem fair that they kept it up.

Dean wasn’t sure what requirements were out there to be brought back from the dead. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Though he had been brought back more than once, as had Sam. Same with Castiel and Bobby; now Jo. He didn’t know why they were always revived and he wondered what it meant for others. Was it only Jo? Or had Ellen come back to? She wasn’t mentioning her and so naturally, Dean was lingering towards no. But, he couldn’t be sure and it was such a sensitive topic that he wasn’t sure how to breach it. He didn’t want to just come out and ask if her mom was alive too. If she wasn’t, he really didn’t want to bring it up. However she was brought back though, he was sure they’d find the answers to it. They always did. His first instinct was to call up Bobby. He was the one with a lot of the extra knowledge to help and the mass amount of books to dig through if they needed it. If anyone could help, that’s where his money was. Of course, calling Castiel might have been a good plan too. Given that angels often knew about the raising of the dead. There were a lot of ideas that had already gone through his head and he wondered how much she looked into it. Dean imagined she hadn’t called Bobby, because had she done that, he would have figured that Bobby would give them a call to let them know she was alive. He wouldn’t keep that from them. It was still a little bit surreal to see her there. And while she seemed to be perfectly human, they wouldn’t know why she was there unless they researched it or someone came out and gave them answers. Nothing was ever that simple though. Everything took digging. But, this was Jo he was talking about and there was no way she had to go look for answers on her own. They would back her. Already, he wanted to tell Sam, knowing that he’d be just as shocked. Though, how he reacted, Dean couldn’t know. It was hard to know anything involving his younger brother right now. And it wasn’t meant to be any sort of slight against Sam; not in the least. He was worried about him and his state of mind after coming out of Hell. He didn’t think he was doing well; not completely anyway.

“Hey, if my baby can do it, might as well,” he shrugged. Though, while he liked to speed, he didn’t think that was any reason for hating traffic. “But, seriously, even if I wanted to go the speed limit, it sucks.” He spent a lot of time walking, above driving around. Unless he was headed to a less crowded neighbourhood where driving was more tolerable. He liked to drive everywhere normally, but not when the traffic was bad and it was quicker to walk than it was to drive. “Yeah, a literal demon and monster fest in LA. It was all over the news.” And he heard from people that had been there what it’d been like. But, Dean himself hadn’t been. He only saw it the way the rest of the world did. “Don’t ask me, I wish I knew. I’m pretty damn sure vamps are already using it against people. There’s people out there practically worshiping them.” He paused momentarily, obviously thinking over what both of them had said before shaking his head. “What—? No, I meant, next time you try, you’ll fail.”

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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT YOU I CAN'T QUITE FIGURE OUT. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY
i can't keep my eyes off of you.
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tag; jooo!
music; you and me - lifehouse
word count; 1,015
credit; La-La-Lia from caution
notes; Yay. <3