5.7.2013 NI is officially 2 YEARS OLD! Thanks guys for making those years amazing!
FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCTS
Welcome! Have you ever wondered what your favorite supernatural TV fandoms would look like if they were all literally interconnected? If Damon from Vampire Diaries heard about Sunnydale becoming a crater? What if 'fighting for vampire rights' in True Blood mattered in the world of Supernatural? Want to find out how your favorite characters will react in a world like this? Join in and don't forget to follow your instincts!
Canons: True Blood, Being Human (BBC), Vampire Diaries, Buffy & Angel, & Supernatural.
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 was a good night. The world wasn’t coming to an end, vampires weren’t out in the open slaughtering people in back alleys and demons were at the back of Dean Winchester’s mind. Now, all of those things might be going on in someone else’s world and in his on any other given day, but not now. Not for a few hours. He had a few drinks in him and a hot woman from a bar had accompanied him back to the hotel. No man, no matter how solid of a hunter was going to be thinking about the job when a hot woman was under their sheets. Hell no. The world could just disappear, throw itself behind him and let him have a little well-deserved fun. And that was exactly what happened. Lately, Dean had been completely preoccupied with monsters and the fate of the world. He spent his time reading the books, making the calls and out there shooting and slicing whatever he could to make a difference. The truth was, if he didn’t have a little fun once in a while, he was going to wear down. Dean could only go so far without all of the answers before he felt the weight and struggled with it. He needed to be able to let go, to live a little, because if he couldn’t enjoy the world what was the point? Okay, so he didn’t think that selfishly, but he was going to give himself a few hours to enjoy himself and no one was going to complain about that. Dean cared about the world. He fought for it and hunted until his body gave out. And tonight, he’d been housed at a bar until a couple of hours ago. For once, he wasn’t the one slipping away in the middle of the night, but leading the girl out of the hotel. It’d be the last time he saw her, he was sure. But, he wasn’t regretting that either. As hot as she was—and boy was she—he had no interest in getting to know her. She was just another chick that he happened to get lucky with.
And he was feeling pretty lucky. All he knew about the woman that he currently had pressed against him was that her name was Jenny, she really liked her tequila and they were very, very real. And given that the hotel he was at wasn’t exactly high up by any sense of the word, no one blinked an eye to a skimpily clad woman making out with him on the way to the door. It was one of those goodbyes that seemed to linger. The heat not quite drawn away, but enough that it was time to go, but he was going to steal bits of the contact. Because, damn, if there was a hotter brunette in that motel tonight, he couldn’t see her. After a prolonged goodbye, Dean watched the woman leave, checking her out as she fled through the front doors out of the lobby. Running a hand over his mouth, he couldn’t help but smirk. Because, damn, tonight was Dean’s night. He wasn’t too distracted though, not once she was gone and not enough not to notice that there was a familiar face in the lobby with him. He hadn’t noticed her before, so if she’d been there before, he didn’t realize. Well, it was kind of hard to see past the chick that he’d seen out, but she caught his eye seconds after she was gone. A friendly grin appeared on his face (who wouldn’t be in a good mood after that?). “Hey.” Really, the idea that Jo might have seen him with the woman that left didn’t occur to him and it wouldn’t have been that bothersome to him if she had. Jo especially knew his reputation and he wasn’t exactly ashamed of it. But regardless of what he’d been doing, she was never someone that he didn’t want to see. Whether there was nothing to talk about or a lot of hunting related information to go over. There had been a lot of that lately. And he loved the job, he did. He would never consider anything else. But people needed a break, even if it was for barely a few hours.
Jo was tired, and not just the kind of tired that came from a missed night’s sleep, but the bone achingly kind of tired that came from fighting day after day. She was supposed to be dead, and she still didn’t understand why she had been brought back; was it just to fight this? If that was the case, didn’t she have the right to be left in peace? There were other hunters out there, great hunters who she trusted to keep the world safe or to damn well die trying, why did she have to be dragged out of Heaven, back to a world that was dark and harsh and broken, to do the job that they were there to do? She didn’t mind being alive again, she was glad to see her friends, and of course she was going to do everything that she could to fight, but she was meant to be dead. She had been okay with that fact; it had been peaceful, and she knew that she had died helping to save the world, helping to buy her friends some time. It was just so wearying, to keep fighting, and still have no idea why she was alive again; a little angelic intervention might have been good at some point, Castiel, but she guessed he was too busy fighting in Heaven or whatever to come down for five minutes to let her know what – if not who – had brought her back to life. She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, honestly. She was still waiting for someone to decide to yank on her strings and make her do things that she didn’t want to do. It seemed like it had been a hell of a long time, now, and if someone was around there bringing people back to life, she kind of thought that they might want to check in with the results at some point. But this was good; she could do what she was best at, and hunt. She could research, she could almost get killed in giant demon law firms. That was what life was about, right? If she hadn’t been so tired, she probably wouldn’t have been so bitter, but as it was...Jo thought they deserved a break, really. They’d been fighting so hard for so long.
At least the thing that had been making the vampires rabid seemed to have been solved, now – and not a moment too soon, really, because Jo hadn’t wanted any more trips to Wolfram and Hart; twice was two times too many, really, given the things that that place did, and she hoped that she would never have to come across any of its employees, either. The fact that she knew more hunters, now, that there were more people she could rely on in a fight didn’t change the fact that Jo wished she had never set foot in the place; it had almost killed her and Dean, and other people too, by the sound of things, and the CEO was a smug bastard that she really wanted to shoot, and that wasn’t a feeling that she got about a lot of humans, when it came down to it. She had just had enough of the vampire problem, really, she’d had enough of Sam winking at her and being creepy as hell at every turn, she’d had enough of no answers as to why she was alive, with nothing being able to be found in any book she read. Jo was tired, and given that she was supposed to be dead, she thought that she was entitled to be. This night was no different to that, really; of course Jo was glad to be here, and she’d fight to her last, but she really had thought that the dead not staying dead only really applied to Winchesters, with what she had seen. She’d burned off some of the tension that she was feeling in a fight, however, purposely picking demons for a change, because she needed to fight something that wasn’t a freaking vampire, and it had definitely helped. She was a little cut up, a little bruised, but pleased with how it had gone nonetheless, not to mention the fact that she’d gotten some information out of them before she’d killed them, rumours of a group of demons a couple of towns over. The idea seemed perfect, really, which was why she’d come to see Dean (hoping that Sam wasn’t there), but she’d knocked at the door and gotten no reply, and then she’d heard sounds of, well, the kind that she didn’t want to interrupt, and waiting in the lobby seemed like the best idea.
And waiting, and waiting...by the time that Dean finally arrived with the girl, Jo felt as though she had been waiting for a long time, and now she had to watch them be all over each other? Ugh. She was just some stranger that he’d picked up in a bar and would never call again – he probably hadn’t even given her his number – and just look at them. The weariness twisted in her gut to something else, something Jo didn’t want to put a name on, so she just averted her gaze and rolled her eyes, waiting for his attention to be away from the woman’s ass before she stood up. Oh, so he had noticed her. That was nice, at least. “Hey,” she replied, surprised at how short it had come out, thanks to that nameless feeling she was ignoring. “Nice to know some of us are having fun.” Hunting was fun, she adored it, and the injuries were so minor that they might as well not have been there at all, but it was still the job.
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 was too aware of what it was like to be overworked, to be pushed under far enough that he didn’t see any way of crawling back out again. He understood what it was like to want to close his eyes and not be woken up for close to forever; where he was tired down to whatever the hell made him who he was. These were feelings he wanted to avoid and that hunting could either give or take away from him at the same time. It could either be his release or what burdened him the most. Dean had lost a lot; in just a few years, he’d lost a lot of what he cared about and then some. And even now, when there were people in his life that he cared about, there were still issues that he couldn’t find his way around. Sam, for one, had a problem that was on his mind ninety percent of the time. Even when the rest of the world was crumbling down around him, he tended to worry more about Sam than he did anything else. Of course he worried about the rest of the world; he worried about Lucifer, the apocalypse and the vampires that were holding their own. But, Sam was still his kid brother. He was still the one person that he was supposed to protect and when something was the matter with him, Dean’s thoughts were generally possessed by it. And it wasn’t protecting him so much this time around as it was attempting to figure out what the hell was wrong. The worst fear was that it wasn’t really Sam in there; that something had taken his brother’s shape and was just biding its time before the attack. All that he really knew was that it wasn’t Sam. It had his memories and it sounded like him, but it wasn’t the brother that he knew. And if anyone knew him well, it would have been Dean.
Tonight, he wouldn’t have had more answers to that problem if he tried. It didn’t hurt to let himself fall out of it for a few hours in a night. If anything, it would keep his head clear later. Dean wasn’t craving normal or anything close to it (he had his taste and never again, thank you), but there was a certain amount of normality to him and to his life that even hunters couldn’t escape. If he was going to save the world, he might as well enjoy it, right? Now, it didn’t always work to think like that. There were days when those kinds of thoughts would be the hardest to grasp. But, when he was feeling good, it was easy to think about the better parts of his life and the job. Dean did whatever he could to keep himself balancing above rock bottom. It wasn’t always an easy balance and there were times where he was haphazardly leaning towards falling over. He distracted himself with hunting, with killing as many sons of bitches as he could and at the same time, he’d use alcohol and sex as an even better distraction from everything else that was happening. He needed that release. God knows everyone probably did. Nothing was always this easy. Dean’s life was far from a piece of cake. And there was so much going on, so much that could hit him at once that he didn’t know which way was up half of the time. He could get away with that not being the case tonight. It was easy to get lost in sex and ogling a hot woman as she left.
Of course, Dean hadn’t noticed Jo before she left, nor did he have any idea that she’d been by the room earlier. He wasn’t exactly paying attention to the sounds at the door and never remembered anyone knocking. He was a little surprised at the short reply, but brushed it off a little. She didn’t look so good. Tired, he assumed, probably fresh from a hunt, unlike him who could barely keep the grin off his face and was more than refreshed right now. “We’ve gotta have fun sometimes, Jo.” He reminded her. It looked like she could use that kind of reminder right now. And sometimes even Dean didn’t remember that fun could be had. There were times where he went practically months without really laughing, or doing anything that was genuinely fun. There were dark enough times in his life where he was just plastering on a face; where inside he was either terrified or lost and too tired to feel much at all. It was the price of being a hunter. He was sure that all of them knew something about that weariness. Dean had known it personally more than a few times. “What’s going on? You look like you’ve been through the wringer and back.”
The world never stopped; as soon as one problem was solved, another arose – and while, in fact, the second one had probably been occurring at exactly the same time as the first, it was the fact that it was far less urgent that had made it seem as though it happened straight after. There was never just one monster to kill, after all, never just one thing going on at a time; this was a huge country, and they couldn’t be everywhere at once, which meant that it was, perhaps, inevitable that somewhere else, something huge would be going down, and they just wouldn’t know about it. New York was the centre of everything though, it seemed, and as much as Jo might have liked the idea of getting out of the city for a while, chasing the trail of these demons and getting back to hunting something that wasn’t a freaking vampire for a few hours, she knew that she was going to end up back here. It was as good a base as any, and there was enough to do here without spending all that time travelling. She didn’t mind having a base, a permanent location, she wasn’t as used to being on the move as the Winchesters were, but Jo knew that just because there were more vamps about now, it didn’t mean that all the other crap they fought had just disappeared. With a whole load of hunters seeming to have congregated in this town, Jo had to wonder what was happening elsewhere, now that they weren’t travelling town to town, dealing the problems by picking up signs in the papers or having their number passed on as a friend of a friend who could deal with the strange things in life. She guessed that things weren’t so strange, when vampires were now accepted as genuine members of society. What was next? Werewolves, skinwalkers? Jo wasn’t sure that she wanted to see the day when those things were known by the general public too. She thought it would lead to more problems than there already were.
And Jo knew that she couldn’t worry about the other towns. She was here, she was fighting, and it wasn’t like she was sitting on her ass all day doing nothing, because she wasn’t. They were all fighting as much as they could, and with the thing that had made all the vampires kind of rabid seeming to have stopped, they were finally settling back into the routine of vampire hunts and seeing what else was killing people in the city – and there were always going to be vampires to hunt. Jo didn’t really blame Dean for taking a night off; he worked extremely hard, and taking a break helped to recharge the batteries and leave people feeling refreshed, she knew that. Maybe she was just jealous because she’d been out hunting tonight, or she wouldn’t have felt comfortable picking up a stranger in a bar to sleep with, however meaningless the sex was. That had to be it, surely; Jo didn’t want to entertain the thought that she might be jealous of the girl, not of him, because that was ridiculous. Sure, she had a crush on Dean. She’d had a crush on Dean since the day that she had pressed a shotgun to his back and hit him in the face, and while she would never have told him that, Jo knew it to be true. But she’d turned down sleeping with him, because she had too much self-respect to be his end of the world fuck. But...she had wondered what it would be like. Of course she had. She felt a kind of defensiveness around other women—she was his friend, she was the one who had been there for him when he hadn’t had Sam, she was the one who could fight and drink alongside him and stitch up his wounds. Jo might not have had any claim over him, but she felt it anyway, and it was that which was churning around inside her, making her snap at him. It wasn’t his fault, he was allowed to get laid, but Jo felt it anyway.
“Sure,” she replied, and she got that, she did, just...did he have to be so into a woman when she was right here? Not that she expected that he saw her as a woman so much as another hunter, someone who, sure, he’d hit on if the world was ending – and who he’d kind of made out with when he’d thought he was seventeen – but not someone that he’d really consider sleeping with. The woman he’d been with tonight had been beautiful, she’d give her that. She smiled at him, albeit tightly, not quite as bright as usual, as a kind of apology for snapping, and shrugged. Great. Every girl wanted to hear that she looked terrible. “Nothing, just a hunt.” Jo sighed, pulling herself together, telling herself that she was being an idiot and it was all pointless since even if he asked, she wouldn’t sleep with him. “Got some leads on something outside out town, thought you might be interested.”
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. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
There was never any real break between major threats. While they could be completely unrelated, he also knew that they could stem from one another. One action led to another and it turned into a chain that became worse and worse. It was how he saw it when it was demons that had entered his life more than any other creature. Most of his life, there had been an idea of vengeance surrounding his family and for a long time, the idea that if they killed the demon that killed Mom, it would all be over. Dean hadn’t believed that since he was a kid, but it was always a thought as to what would happen when it was dead. Dean always figured something else would be out there and it turned out that the something else that came after had been a problem caused by Azazel before Dean was finally able to take the prize shot that finished off that son of a bitch for good. There were always going to be monsters to fight and the world was always going to have a threat against it because the supernatural would always be there. Dean never thought they were going to take out every threat. Hunters were never going to be that numerous or so good as to get rid of everything out there. There was too much evil in the world. But, what they could do was stop it from getting out of control; they could aid the majority of the people in living normal lives without fear. He didn’t understand how it worked now that vampires were out, but he still believed in the job. He wouldn’t have continued if he didn’t. Actually, he was sure that he would have ended up dead if he lost his belief in what he did. It would be too easy to be taken out if he didn’t have that will or hope that he was doing something good.
Vampires and New York City weren’t the only problems, of course. Dean had left NYC multiple times since he arrived there. He took trips across the country and returned again, usually to a new motel each time. It felt like he had set up some kind of base there, although, he didn’t like that he had. He still moved around the city often, if only to keep any of their enemies from picking up on where he was for too long. He didn’t trust his safety staying in one place. As long as he stayed in New York though, he couldn’t help but feel antsy now and then. He liked the road. He had been so used to travelling and he was lacking the kind of freedom that he enjoyed. So, it was no surprise that he had to take off on a regular basis. Even if it was a hunt somewhere else along the east coast before he came back again, Dean had to remember that there were still other towns that needed their help. And at the same time, he had to keep himself going. He wasn’t at all used to being stationary. Now, he’d stayed in one place for months before coming to New York, but that had been miserable for him. Every day that he kept his car under a tarp in the garage was like tightening his restraints a little tighter. It felt like the hunter in him was tugging to go again. And it wasn’t just that he was a hunter or part of the job, it was him. Dean was a hunter and his life had been one that he enjoyed. Yeah, he’d been in a really bad place after Sam died, but he probably would have been better sticking around Bobby’s for a long time, until he pushed him onto the road again, because he knew he would eventually. But Bobby’s place was more like home than what he got from a family that technically wasn’t his.
Tonight had been good though; it was the type of break that he needed. He really hadn’t been thinking much about Jo being there as a problem when he was with the woman and he didn’t have a lot of shame about his sex life. Of course, with Jo, things were a little different. He cared about her; he had for a long time. She was like family, and of course he was attracted to her. He had let her know that before, but only on occasions such as the end of the world. And it wasn’t because she was last resort or anything like that. It was because he legitimately gave a damn about her. He cared enough that he wasn’t going to use her like he did other women. And he did that out of respect for her, not to mention, he was sure that her mom would come back from the dead just to kick his ass if he ever did that. Jo meant something to him, which was precisely why nothing could ever happen between them. It’s why he was only able to kiss her when she was dying (or when he was seventeen, but that was different entirely). “Outside? I’m always interested.” He said and of course he was. “C’mon, we can go back to the room and talk.” Since it was probably best to get out of the lobby.
Sometimes, Jo wondered what it would have taken to be able to rid the world of evil for once and for all; who did they have to kill to make this a safe place to be? It clearly wasn’t the devil, because they’d done that, and apparently he had just found a way back to wander the earth and cook up some new apocalyptic plan for ruling over it, or whatever it was that Lucifer did in his free time – Jo wasn’t sure that she really wanted to think about it too deeply. It would have been nice, if the next big fight they had was one that would secure the safety of the world, and make sure that no more people got hurt, ever; Jo would fight to the death in a fight like that, if it meant that she would win, without a doubt. She wanted to keep people safe; it was why she did what she did, after all, and she didn’t think that there was a single hunter who wouldn’t be relieved if the monsters were gone for good. They might have been out of a job, but hey, that’d just lead to more of them hanging around bars all day, Jo really didn’t think that it was an issue. There would still be hunters’ bars, to talk about the old days and the like, because it wasn’t something that you could discuss with just anybody, but ultimately, the world would be safe, they could lay down their weapons and not be afraid of what was lurking around the next corner. Jo was sure that every hunter would want the world to be safe...but it was never going to happen. Killing one threat didn’t magically kill all of them, all across the globe, unfortunately, as convenient a design as that would have been from the hunters’ perspectives, and she knew that there was always going to be a fight. Sometimes it would be something small, just a spirit, sometimes it would be something huge, like the freaking apocalypse, but they were all going to fight to the death.
Hell, Jo had already done that once, and she didn’t regret it. She didn’t wish that things had gone differently, because she would always have been happy to fight against Lucifer. Well, perhaps ‘happy’ was too strong a term, because it would have been far better if he was trapped in the cage for once and for all, but regardless, if he was here, Jo wanted to fight him. She’d done it once, and yes, it sucked that she had died, but they had all known that it was a possibility. They’d all been expecting it, really, because you didn’t just fight the devil, but Jo was glad that Dean had survived, and Bobby and Cas. She was sad about Sam, glad that he was back now, however much he didn’t seem like himself anymore. Something was wrong with him, though he wasn’t possessed, because she’d checked that, and Jo wished she knew what it was, because he creeped her out. Jo was just trying to avoid him as much as she possibly could, really, because there were bigger things on her mind than the fact that Sam, of the two brothers, had hit on her – and not just hit on her, but gotten into her personal space, suggested that she sleep with him in a way that was not Sam in the slightest. It wouldn’t have been Dean, either, because he actually seemed to respect her enough not to make the moves on her when the world wasn’t ending, which was something, she guessed, and so it was something that Jo wasn’t used to, especially not from someone she trusted with her life. Now she wasn’t sure that she trusted him enough to even be in the same room as him. It was just...weird, and she wanted to get Sam back, she really did. While she didn’t approve of anybody making deals to bring people back to life, the fact was that Sam was here. Why wasn’t he himself? She’d been brought back, and she was exactly the same as she’d ever been (and she just hoped that she wasn’t some kind of sleeper agent). There were too many questions with no answers – but that was always the way.
They had to focus on the little things in the meantime, instead. The smaller hunts, the fact that the vampire problem finally seemed to be under control again, the demons that had led her to what sounded like a group of them. Jo was okay with that; of course she wanted answers, and not getting them was stressful, to say the least, but, at the end of the day, they just had to keep doing their jobs, and not let their vision get so narrowed onto one thing that they missed everything else going on. She nodded, glad that he was, even if her mood was still well into the sour and bitter. Maybe she just needed to get laid. If only it were that easy – and it should have been, given how many people hit on her when she was working, but all they cared about was that she was the only person working with a pair of boobs. That shouldn’t have mattered for sex, but it took way more than that to pick Jo up. “It’s still in state, but it should be good to get out of the city for a bit,” she replied, and maybe she was just weary of being here for so long. It wasn’t that she was unused to staying in one place, because that was what she did, but more the fact that there were so many potential hunts in this place. She could spend the rest of her life here and she still wouldn’t have made any difference to that. She started following Dean back to the room, and then paused momentarily. “Sam’s not...is Sam gonna come back?” It wasn’t that she disliked him – Sam was family, and always would be – but Jo was really not comfortable around him at the moment.
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. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
If there was a way to eradicate all evil from the world, Dean would have taken that opportunity no matter what the cost to himself. Even if it meant that he wouldn’t have a job anymore, he would have done whatever he had to in order to make sure that humanity was protected. But, he also knew there was no such thing as a way to do that. There would always be evil, no matter what they did. There would always be another evil son of a bitch ready to take its place in killing off innocent people. Sometimes it’d be little, other times it’d be huge. Of course, he thought killing off threats like Lucifer would be better for the world in the long run. After all, he was the one that wanted humanity to be killed off once and for all. His life and existence outside of Hell was dangerous on its own to the entire planet. It was a situation that needed to be taken care of. It didn’t mean that he had the answers; he didn’t. The Devil had been thrown back into his cage once and that hadn’t stuck. He didn’t know if it would if they ever had the chance again and frankly, Dean didn’t know if they would. There had to be some final way of getting rid of him. And while they knew what could kill an archangel, it wasn’t an easy task that could be accomplished. The best bet was to throw him back in the cage, but Dean wouldn’t go that route if it meant that Sam was at risk again. Honestly, he’d rather Sam stay out of that fight and as far away from Lucifer as possible. He didn’t want to take the risk of anything happening. He wasn’t prepared to lose his brother again. Period.
It wasn’t as if he felt like he fully had him back to begin with. It was his brother, yes. And as far as all of the tests were concerned, it really was him. Though, he had to wonder sometimes, because he didn’t act the way he had before. Dean knew his brother better than anyone, enough to know that something was extremely wrong. Everyone knew it though. It wasn’t just him, so he couldn’t be paranoid. And while he could blame it on Hell, he didn’t know that it would change him that way. He didn’t know what to expect of him after that experience, but this wasn’t it. Naturally, it took precedent over a lot of his other concerns. It didn’t change that hunting mattered though or that there were a lot of threats hanging around that needed to be taken care of. Dean was still a hunter. Even if he was worried about his younger brother and tonight, taking a break from the world with a hot woman that had left him in better spirits than he had been earlier. There was nothing wrong with a little bit of fun; and fun that wasn’t going to have strings or a second meeting in his future. Without a little fun sometimes, life wouldn’t necessarily be dull, but it would be hard. When monsters were in his everyday life, dull was a hard word to use. But, it would be too difficult. It would weigh down on him and he would probably harden himself or become slowly weaker and weaker until he really couldn’t take it further. Dean had hit rock bottom before and while he didn’t like to think that he would near it again, he figured being able to have some kind of fun kept him exempt from really falling when the world was coming to pieces.
Sleeping with women was kind of the ultimate good time, wasn’t it? Sex wasn’t something that Dean thought a lot about beyond getting it when he wanted and not putting too many emotions behind it. Sex was just sex. When it came to Jo, he’d hit on her when the world was ending or when he was sure that they wouldn’t be around the next day, but his respect for her wasn’t going to allow him to do more than that. He wasn’t going to treat her the way that he treated other women. She respected herself and he respected her in that light. “God, yes,” Dean replied, agreeing easily. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand this city.” It wasn’t bad if he was visiting; if he was dropping through for some kind of event or to see something for the sake of recreation. That was when New York City could be awesome. But to stay there for long periods of time? It was noisy with a hell of a lot of traffic and it was a city that Dean had no interest in staying in forever. Cities were fun. But, it didn’t change that Dean was more of an on the road kind of guy and NYC wasn’t equipped for that. One city never would be. He stopped before they reached the room and looked back at her. He understood why Sam was a worry, even though he wished that it wasn’t the case. He wanted his brother back to the way he was, because he was sure he wouldn’t be an issue if he was. “Probably not. He’s probably found somewhere to be tonight,” And Dean didn’t want to think about what he was up to. It was weird.
All Jo wanted, really, was the chance for the world to be safe. She wanted to make sure that there weren’t things out there that were picking off human beings one by one – and, rather obviously, that also meant that she wanted to make sure that there weren’t things planning to end the lives of every human all at once. They’d averted one apocalypse, and she rather hoped that they wouldn’t have to avert a second, because the cost had been far too high. Her mom was dead because of it, because of Lucifer’s plans to make a world where there were no humans. Hell, she’d been dead because of it too, but being alive again meant that it was harder to think like that, even if she’d been dead for two years before something had dragged her out of Heaven and back to Earth. But the apocalypse had been averted, had it not, and Jo knew that her death had helped with that. It didn’t mean that she was willing to just go ahead and sacrifice herself without even thinking about it, because she wasn’t that dumb, but if that was what it took, then Jo would fight to the bitter end. The world deserved to be safe, and hunters always knew that they didn’t have the greatest life expectancy. Pretty much everyone died sooner or later; her mom had been one of the oldest hunters Jo knew, and it wasn’t as though she was actually old, was it? But she’d outlasted a lot of people, and maybe it had helped that she’d spent most of Jo’s lifetime in the Roadhouse rather than hunting properly, but even so, most people in the hunting world died younger. Bobby was now the oldest hunter she knew who was still alive – and again, that was helped by the fact that he didn’t actually go out and hunt all that often. He was a fountain of knowledge, though, he helped with everything, and Jo didn’t know what they’d do without him and his books. He might have been gruff, but she still thought that he was wonderful.
The fact that she still had a family even with her parents gone was something that Jo was exceptionally grateful for. She could have survived in this world alone, she wasn’t doubting that, she could have stayed alive and made new connections, maybe looked up some of the old regulars from the Roadhouse, if they were still alive, and see if they’d want a partner thirty years younger than they were for a little while, as she got back on her feet, but while Jo had mostly sorted herself out on her own, she was still glad that she had Dean, and Bobby, to help her out. Meeting up with Dean again had been wonderful, after all, and Jo loved being his partner, she loved teaming up with him, because it was always good to fight with someone else, and she trusted completely the fact that he’d have her back. Sam, however...was different. He was family, sure, and she’d been so glad when they’d found out that he was alive, except that he’d had no memory, and now he had memory, but he wasn’t like himself at all. It was really strange, and Jo missed how he’d used to be; they might never have been close, but they’d still gotten along, she’d still trusted him in a fight. She didn’t, anymore. He seemed determined to make her uncomfortable, and there was no way that she’d trust him to have her back now. She didn’t know what was going on, there, aside from the fact that he definitely wasn’t a demon, and God, she wished that he could be himself so that they could be a family again, properly. The boys and Bobby were all that Jo had left, and she knew that none of the three of them had anybody else, either, so they needed to stick together, didn’t they? Fighting vampires alone was fun, and entirely possible, but it was always better to hunt with somebody else. Right now, Jo would choose going in alone over going in with Sam, no questions asked.
She’d stick to hunting alongside Dean, she thought; she trusted him with her life, and he was a lot of fun to hang around with. When he wasn’t sleeping with random women and in the obnoxiously good mood that came from getting laid, anyway, and Jo knew that she was just grumpy because she liked Dean, but she really had no right to be, given that she respected herself far too much to become another notch on his bedpost, and he was never going to stop sleeping around, so it was just never going to happen. She just had to hope that whenever one of them ended up dying, they’d be a chance for another goodbye kiss. That sort of thing was guilt free, because it meant goodbye—even if she was here again. She nodded, trying to push her jealousy and bad mood away, but it wasn’t exactly easy, right now. “Yeah, I’m sick of this place. It was fun at first, but that’s worn off now,” she agreed; she’d never been to NYC before, so of course it had been exciting, even with the vampire problem, but now Jo was definitely leaping at the idea of getting out of the city for a day or so. As long as Sam didn’t come along; she didn’t trust him not to leave her stranded somewhere, actually. He was kind of a dick. She nodded, looking up at Dean with a shrug, waiting for him to unlock the door again. “Good. He’s...” She trailed off, an apologetic look on her face, because Sam was his brother, but God, he made her uncomfortable. Shooting him would have been a viable option if she hadn’t thought that Dean would hate her forever for it.
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 wanted to see the world safe. But, he knew that even if they kept it safe that there would always be something left to threaten it. That didn’t mean that what they did was worthless. Dean knew that it shouldn’t mean that, although there were times where he got dangerously close to thinking it. It was a matter of dealing with one problem after another and losing so many people that his heart started to lose its motivation. He started to find himself looking at the world as hopeless and unable to be saved. But, it wasn’t like that. It could be protected but it had to be constant. There was always going to be something ready to practically destroy it and hunters had to be ready to fight that off. He didn’t want to deal with apocalypses. No one did. He didn’t think he was worth anything that big. At the end of the day, he was still just some hunter with no supernatural gift or anything like that. He was as human as the rest of them and he wanted to fight the little things. He wanted hunting to be simple and black and white. He didn’t want every hunt to be a debate or a question. He wanted to go out, kill evil things, save people and that be it. Dean didn’t think that they had failed in their fight against Lucifer. While it was all Sam’s action that put him in the cage, he thought that it was a success and he would never think little of the people that died for that cause. But, Lucifer was back again and it felt like they were moving towards a second apocalypse. So, in that regard, he did feel like he had failed a little. They should have found a way to kill the Devil. Or at least, a way to keep him in there for good and without his brother being trapped with him.
With as much as he’d been through over the last few years, Dean was lucky to have who he had in his life. He was grateful too. He already saw what he would do when he was almost alone and he didn’t like himself much when he didn’t have anyone to fall back on. He’d gone for almost a year without having his brother and there hadn’t been a more miserable span of months. The months that followed his death, where he sat back on his ass and tried to be normal had probably been one of the worst sets of months of his life. And it had nothing to do with the people he lived with. Because all in all, they were great. They deserved an award for putting up with him. But, it wasn’t his life. He was no good for that. He should have done a lot of things different in his life and Dean had made a lot of mistakes. But, that was probably one of the worst. He could have brought danger on an innocent family. Not to mention, he pretended that he could be someone he wasn’t. He led them astray, as if he could ever be a part of it. Dean was meant to be a hunter. He was meant to have a life of back roads, diner food and monster killing. Having Jo back was great. And Dean didn’t know what would happen if anything ever happened to Bobby. He didn’t think he’d get far without him. The man was like a dad to him. He was always there when he needed him and had answers that Dean would have never found on his own. And to be practically a father to him said nothing poor about his real dad. Dean had two great men, two great hunters in his life that had taught him a hell of a lot and that he looked up to. Family always brought him back to Sam though; the last of his blood and the kid brother that he’d practically raised.
It was difficult knowing how he was now. Jo wasn’t the only one that saw the differences. Dean saw them plain as day. He knew he wasn’t a demon, but it scared him what else he could be. And it was so surreal to sit in the same room and miss a brother that was right there. He was glad that he had regained his memory, but it didn’t make him the same Sam. And he would do anything to figure out what it was and fix it. But, the answers weren’t there yet. Still, he understood Jo’s hesitance to be around him. He was in a good mood tonight though and he wasn’t even letting thoughts of Sam get him down. “I don’t get why anyone would want to live here forever,” Dean admitted. He couldn’t stay stationary in any one town forever, but to live in New York City was the last place he wanted. It was fun at first and it was fun if he was on a break, but it wasn’t fun to be all of the time. It was frustrating more than it was fun. As he unlocked the door and held it opened he nodded. “A dick? Awkward? Off? Creepy and a little bit scary?” He asked, knowing it too well and not offended as much as he just wished it wasn’t so. “Believe me, I’ve noticed.”
Jo knew that there was a limit to how much she could do to save the world, really; she was only human, after all, no special powers or magic or anything else that could kill a lot of monsters in one go beyond her hands and her weapons, and the things she could learn such as exorcisms. They could avert the apocalypse, but there would be a huge cost, because there always was with that kind of thing, and Jo really hoped that this time around, there wouldn't be an apocalypse, that Lucifer was planning something else instead, something that they could stop without having to die. She missed her mom terribly, but Jo didn't want to be killed again, and yeah, she'd been dragged out of Heaven and this world was so harsh in comparison, but she was here and she was going to fight to the bitter end. Nothing would stop that. She was a Harvelle; even when things sucked a bit they didn't give up, and this was absolutely one of those times. And it was nice to be fighting alongside Dean, it was nice to be in touch with Bobby again, and sure, Jo might only have killed a few vampires at a time, but she still believed that that made a difference. It had to; each one dead was one more that wasn't out killing innocent people, and that was what she tried to stop, more than anything else. She tried to make sure that innocent people weren't going to die, and she would do everything that she could to keep doing that. It'd take more than a few bruises for her to be stopped. And maybe her fighting her ass off wouldn't stop everything bad from happening. Maybe there were people out there who'd still die, because as much as she would have liked the world to be different, they couldn't save everyone, no matter how hard they tried. But Jo made a difference, and she was going to keep fighting. Just try to stop her.
Many people had tried to stop her being a hunter. Her mom had spent years banning her from doing it, Dean had tried to talk her out of it, initially, it had been the one thing that she wanted to do but that she wasn't allowed to, and if anything, that had just made Jo want it more. She had always fought, she had always wanted to be like her dad, and his death had just kicked that onto another level, because she imagined that if he were alive, she'd have been hunting alongside him instead. He wouldn't have been able to stop her, just as her mom hadn't, and wouldn't it have been better to be with someone who could make sure that she was safe? But things hadn't worked out that way. After a couple of false starts, she'd leapt in with both feet, that one hunt with the Winchesters spurring Jo on to do even more, to go off on her own, travelling round and sending Mom postcards as she did, to let her know that she was still alive and well, even if it had been a long while before they'd been talking properly again – she deserved that much, at least, because Jo wouldn't ever have wanted her to think that she was dead. She was a hunter as much as anybody else was, Jo had proven that time and again, and she wasn't going to stop now. Vampires were in this city, and they shouldn't have been. She might not have been able to kill all of them, but making the population a little less meant something. Dealing with the other creatures that were around meant something, Jo believed that about what she did, and there was no way in hell that she was going to do anything other than fight. This was her life, and yeah, she shouldn't even have been here, but she loved it regardless.
It might not have seemed that way, when she was hiding her jealousy with being a little too short, but Jo would get over it. Nothing could ever happen, so the fact that she had a crush on Dean was going to remain a secret, one that she would take with her to her grave. Apparently Sam knew of it, had taunted her with it, but Jo didn't care; she wasn't going to admit to it. She wasn't going to divulge any kind of reason for being annoyed, and it was easier now that she wasn't having to watch him be all over some woman he'd never speak to again. “It's too big for me,” she agreed with a nod; she had grown up in a town that was smaller than this – not even a town, really, because the Roadhouse had been right on the outskirts, and they'd only gone in to shop or go to the post office or something like that. Jo was happy staying in one place, but she didn't think that she would want it to be this particular place, given the choice. She went inside the room, pausing at the rumpled sheets on the bed closest to the door – she could practically smell the sex – before crossing the room and perching on the end of the bed that was currently still made. She nodded. “Yeah, he—creeps me out. I came to see you a while back, before we figured out how to stop the vamps being crazy, and he was here instead, and he just...was scary, not Sam.” She sounded apologetic, more than anything, like it was her fault that his brother had intimidated, hit on, and scared her, but she wished that he wasn't this way. She liked Sam, when he was himself, she really did; this wasn't Sam.
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. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
As great as it would be to claim that he could save the world, there was only so much that he could do to make it happen. There had been instances where they were fighting against a threat to the world that they knew, but Dean didn’t think that he could honestly save the world on his own. He wasn’t deluded into thinking that he was above that of another person or even another hunter. He was shoved into impossible situations, but he was still human. When it came to the Devil, Dean didn’t know how it was going to go through. He didn’t think for a second that it wasn’t an apocalypse that they were dealing with. It had to be, didn’t it? What else would he have planned for the world? Dean didn’t imagine he had a sudden change of mind in his previous plans, but at the same time, he didn’t pretend to understand how the Devil worked. He didn’t want to know. What Dean wanted was to eliminate that threat once and for all. Too bad it wasn’t that easy to kill off Lucifer. If it was, he would have done it by now. Instead, it was better to stay off of that evil son of a bitch’s radar. Especially for Sam’s sake. There had to be a way to finally take him out, but until Dean knew what that was, he wasn’t going to make any stupid attacks. What it didn’t change was the threat he thought that the world was under. There were more than enough threats cycling around and that one just happened to have a personal touch to it. They had lost good people trying to go against Lucifer and sure, Jo was back now, but it didn’t change that people had been lost. Not to mention, he lost his brother putting him back into the cage. Dean would stop at nothing to see him finally dead and gone.
And no matter what threat surfaced, Dean would still be fighting. He was a hunter. Period. It had been what he was meant to be for a long time. There hadn’t been any other options, really. As much as he loved the job, however, it didn’t mean that he supported everyone’s decision to become a hunter. If anything, he thought that someone should keep their life if they could and not take that route. Sure, they could always use more hunters, but he didn’t think it was the life for everyone. He had even been there to fight against Jo being a hunter. While part of it was because he was afraid of Ellen, he also didn’t think that she should, at first. If she had chance to be normal and safe, then why not? Or as close to normal as one of them could be. He didn’t want to see people in danger and that was precisely what hunting did. Dean had no shot at another life and he accepted that. But if someone else had one, he’d rather see them go for it. But, he understood why Jo did it now. And if anyone could understand connecting with or making a father proud, it was Dean. Because even though his own dad was gone now, he still wanted him to be proud of him. And he feared that he wouldn’t be, after everything that they had been through over the last few years. While he wasn’t as dependent on that as he had been when he was younger, he still looked up to the man as a hero. He saw him as the best hunter there had ever been.
“It is.” Dean agreed. “And traffic here’s a bitch.” It was probably easier to walk some places although Dean preferred driving over walking any day. It was way too big for him to like it enough to stay. He liked living out of motel rooms in a new town as often as he could, but if he had to be stuck anywhere, he didn’t think New York City would be the place he wanted to be. And he liked cities, he did. They were a hell of a lot of fun once in a while. But, not to stay this way and not when there was so much going on and so many people at risk. Once back in the room, Dean walked over to the miniature fridge in one of the far corners and grabbed a beer from it. “You want one?” He asked, though he grabbed an extra anyway, even before he heard the answer and turned back to her. He knew something was different about Sam and of course it bothered him. Because, he knew it wasn’t him. He didn’t know who it was, because it had his thoughts and memories, but it wasn’t Sammy. “He didn’t do anything, did he?” He asked, and he hated that he had to ask out of concern that Sam didn’t try to intimidate her too much. He was lacking trust for his brother, when normally, Jo being here alone with Sam wouldn’t have bothered him in the slightest.
Nobody could stop the apocalypse alone – or even save the world alone. Jo didn't have any issue going on hunts by herself, that much was true, and there was something good about knowing that you had killed a nest of vamps by yourself (at least for her, who still felt as though there was something she needed to prove every time she went out, like even after all this time, people weren't going to think she was capable of being a hunter on her own), but when it came to bigger things, working with others absolutely helped. You were stronger as a team, that was just a fact. Of course, you had to trust the people that you worked with to have your back, and Jo still wasn't entirely sure that there was anybody beyond Dean or Bobby that she really trusted with that, but when it came to something that huge, the more people that there were fighting on your side, the better. They had fought the apocalypse with just the six of them, but even so...with Bobby at home, and then she and her mom had died...Jo thought that it might have gone easier if there had been more people with Sam and Dean in the end. There were other hunters in this town, of course, and they were getting to know them, and while they definitely seemed to help, seemed to be nice people, Jo didn't know them well enough to do what she did without someone like Dean there too. She couldn't even say that she wanted Sam around, because she sure as hell didn't trust him right now; he was the same person in body, but it really seemed like he wouldn't care what happened to her, and she kind of wanted somebody at her back who'd defend her to the end, understandably. She didn't know what Sam might do, anymore, because he wasn't himself. He kind of scared her, actually.
The last thing she wanted was to be afraid of one of her friends; it wasn't like Jo had a lot of them to start with, and Sam was a part of her family, he was someone she would have died for in an instant – he was someone she had died for. And yeah, sometimes bad things happened, and it took a while to get over them; Sam had come back from Hell, and not just Hell but the freaking Cage, it would have been understandable if he hadn't been okay after that, and the amnesia had been something that she could deal with. It was weird, to think that he didn't remember who he was, or his life, or his family, but they had hoped that his memory would return, and they'd been helping him through it prior to that. But this...this was different. He'd gotten his memory back, great, but Sam also seemed to have gotten a whole load of jerk crazy along with it. Jo could look after herself, that wasn't in question. She wasn't actually afraid of him deciding to go further than a whole load of suggestions that they should have sex, and if he did, she'd kick him in the balls without even thinking about it, or she'd shoot him – non-fatally – because hitting on her was one thing, but getting in her space, potentially making her do something she didn't want to do, that was quite another. She didn't want to be around him, though, that was for sure, and yeah, she could only have hung out when Dean was there too, but Jo wasn't going to be the kind of girl who needed someone else for protection – not to mention the fact that she was kind of afraid Sam might decide to spill the details of her crush on Dean, and she could really have done without that. She'd just avoid him instead, it was easier for everybody, and hopefully it would mean that when they figured out what was wrong with him and fixed him, she wouldn't completely hate him, because Sam was her friend.
Jo could live with it; nothing was entirely perfect in this world, after all, and apparently that was no exception. They were stuck in a town full of vampires, no matter how many they killed there were always more about, Lucifer was walking free, demons were still around, and Sam was crazy. Yeah, just a normal day's work, really; Jo couldn't wait to get out of the city and hunt down these bastards, just for a little while before they came back and focussed on the vamps once more. It was easy to forget that there were other monsters around too, when there were so many of the things in one place. New York was where they needed to be, to be able to deal with that, but that didn't mean that an outing wouldn't be fun. “Yeah, it takes forever to get anywhere,” she agreed; Jo had a car, but she'd taken to walking instead; gas was expensive, for a start, and you could spend forever trying to get somewhere when you were stuck in queues of traffic. She wasn't sure it was worth it. “Yeah, thanks,” she said, holding out her hand for it; hopefully it would help her forget that she was jealous, even if that was a little difficult, given the state of the next bed. She shrugged, and shook her head; that wasn't the sort of question that he should have had to ask about his brother, not when Jo would have once trusted Sam with her life – and that had been hard for a while, since it had been his body Meg had used when she'd tortured her. “Wouldn't stop saying that he and I should have sex. Got into my personal space a lot...he can be intimidating when he wants to be, he's tall.” She shrugged again, opening her beer and taking a drink. “Nothing major. Just not Sam.”
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 could take a case by himself. It wasn’t often that he did now that Sam was back to his old self—well, with memories intact. He wasn’t himself and that was where the problems started. But, he could go out and take a nest on his own or take out a number of creatures without anyone at his back. He had always been capable of it. When Sam had been in college, Dean occasionally took a hunt by himself, rather than with his dad. He was completely self-sufficient and there really was a difference between wanting to hunt in a group and needing it. Dean didn’t have to have somebody at his back every second, but he appreciated it. Even if it was just a nest of vampires, he would rather have somebody taking out the sons of bitches with him. As long as Dean trusted them, it was better to have someone there to back him. But, he didn’t trust everyone and he couldn’t. There were times where he was better off on his own because he couldn’t calculate what another person was going to do or whether or not they would actually have his back. When he was with his brother, it was a guarantee. He never had to worry extensively over what he was doing, because at the end of the day, they would always have each other’s back. Lately, he didn’t know for sure, because he wasn’t sure about Sam at all. It was hard to have that kind of distrust towards the one person that in the past he wouldn’t have. There had been times where his trust faltered with him, but it was always restored and right now, Dean didn’t know what to think. He was different, but still his brother and he was determined to figure out what had happened to change him. It could have been Hell, because Hell wasn’t some walk in the park.
But, it felt like something more than that. He didn’t feel like he was dealing with somebody who had an extra wave of trauma from a time in Hell. And maybe he just didn’t know how someone was supposed to react. He was in the cage, for crying out loud. Even Dean couldn’t imagine what went on in there and he had been in Hell for decades. He knew what went on down there well enough. But, it was different than what Sam went through. Still, there had to be a way to get him back. If only he knew precisely what was wrong with him. He didn’t though, except that he had become a bigger ass and was probably sleeping around with more women than Dean did. On a hunt, he was also a lot more black and white than he used to be. Dean could usually count on Sam to be the one to play with the grey area, to keep him from going too off to one side. But now, Dean felt like the voice of a conscience. It wasn’t to say that he hadn’t had one to begin with, but Sam always seemed way more in tune with not needing to kill every supernatural son of a bitch and while Dean sometimes agreed with him, he didn’t see that anymore. It made him an excellent hunter, sure, but at the same time, it made him an incredibly scary one. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t Sam. It looked like him, had his memories, but it was lacking the essential characteristics that made him his younger brother. It seemed like every time he thought that he finally had him back, it wasn’t really, one hundred percent Sam.
Of course, it bothered him that even Jo had to be scared of him. Sam wouldn’t have hurt her before. They had been friends—family even. And Sam didn’t hurt people; that just wasn’t what he did. He was slower to the trigger than Dean was and suddenly, Dean was having to think things through a little better, without his brother to stop him when he took it too far. “It’s faster to walk,” Dean admitted, but anyone that spent any time with him would have known that he didn’t walk anywhere, really. Even if it was a shorter walk, he generally took his car; gas prices and all. He liked to drive and New York City was taking the fun out of it a little bit. No one wanted to be stuck in traffic forever just to get several blocks. Dean sat back down on the edge of his bed and twisted the cap off of his beer. ‘That’s all he thinks about lately. It’s two gears for him; sex and hunting.” He replied, the disconcerting tone back in his voice during the conversation on Sam. “I don’t think he’d really do anything…” Dean offered when she said he could be intimidating, although there was that hint of uncertainty because he didn’t know what was wrong with him and hence he didn’t know what he could be aware of. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. What I do know is I’m gonna figure it out. He’s not gone for good.” Dean didn’t want to consider that his brother was just changed into something else for good. There was something wrong and if that was the case, then something could be fixed. That was just how it worked.
Jo's first few attempts at hunting, proper hunting had been complete failures, she was ready to admit that. Her mother had caught her, the first time she'd snuck out, not even getting off the property before they were found, and the second time had been better, but she'd been under a lot of supervision and not actually allowed to do all that much. But that didn't mean that she was a bad hunter now, far from it; Jo was plenty older than sixteen now, and even with the fact that she'd been dead for a couple of years, she still had a hell of a lot more experience. Maybe she'd never be as experienced as Dean, who'd been doing this all his life, but it was a start, wasn't it? She'd hunted alongside him and Sam, she'd gone off and hunted on her own for months before she'd met up with them (and Meg in Sam's body that time) again, and then she'd hunted on her own for years after that. She and her mom had reunited, a while after the Roadhouse had burned down, and had been doing stuff together since then, but whether she was hunting solo or with someone else, nobody could say that Jo Harvelle was inexperienced, anymore. She might once have been the best trained, most educated hunter in the country who'd never actually been on a proper hunt, but that time was long past. Jo was never going to go about saying that she was the best hunter on earth, because she didn't believe that for a second, but she knew that she was good. She knew that she could go into a nest of vampires on her own and come out alive. Bruised, perhaps, a little cut up, but alive, and it was that which counted as a victory, always; minor wounds could be treated, even the more major ones were dealable with, up to a point. Her hellhound scratches hadn't been, but come on; she'd been ripped to shreds, literally, in the middle of an abandoned street, in the middle of the apocalypse. The odds were definitely against her, on that one.
And yeah, dying sucked. She remembered how painful it was. There might not have been any scars on her body from it – at all, actually – but she had those memories, because she'd been alive at the time, and whatever had brought her back hadn't been kind enough to make her forget the way in which she'd died. She remembered every excruciating second of it, and it gave her nightmares, honestly. She wasn't going to say anything, because there was no way in hell that Jo was some kind of crybaby, and they all had nightmares – she'd have been surprised to meet a hunter who didn't, seeing what they saw all of the time – so she dealt. That was what she did, at the end of the day; Jo was a strong person, and yeah, things had sucked a little for her, but life went on. Literally, it seemed; she'd died, and yet here she was again, alive, and while she had known that people had come back to life, known that Dean had done that more than once, it wasn't quite the same as actually being one of those people who didn't stay dead. And Jo had been happy to, really; she had finally been at peace, she had finally reached the perfect place with her mom, and it had been a good way to go. That wasn't ever saying that she had been happy to die, but equally, none of them had really thought that they were getting out of the apocalypse alive. One way or another, they all had, except her mom; she was alive again, Sam was alive again, albeit crazy as hell, and she hadn't ever expected the permanent losses to be so few. She just...wished that it hadn't been her mom. Jo missed her, immensely, and hey, if anybody could have knocked some sense into Sam while he was being like this, it would have been Ellen. But such was life. She wasn't here, and Jo wasn't going to go around attempting to bring her back. She deserved to be at peace. Someone needed to be.
It was hard, sometimes, life, Jo wasn't going to deny that. She wasn't going to say that she hated being back, because she didn't, but she had been happy, that was just a fact. But hey, here she was, and there were worse things she could do than spend a lot of her time killing monsters. It was something that she liked to, after all, it was useful, and Jo wasn't just going to sit around moping. What did she have to mope about? She was alive, and that was more than a lot of people could say. She didn't want to stay in New York forever, but it was a decent enough stop gap, and that was all that she needed, right now, and while she was here, she'd do everything she could to make the place a little safer to live in. “Yeah, I don't know why I've got a car. I either walk or go with you.” It had seemed a good idea, but all of the times she'd been out of the city in the past few months, she'd gone with Dean, and he always drove – understandably, since his car was better. Maybe she should consider selling hers, or something; it wasn't much, some crapped out old thing, really, but was there any point in her keeping it, especially when gas prices were so phenomenally high? She nodded, twisting the bottle in her hands. “I've noticed.” It was kind of hard to miss really, actually, and it sucked, mostly, because of course she wanted Sam to actually be Sam again. He was her friend, he was family, and she hated that she was actually afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. Nobody was supposed to think that about anybody, let alone someone they used to trust. “I don't wanna think he would, but...he's not Sam. He got into my space and, y'know, slammed the wall right by my head.” She shrugged, and she wasn't telling Dean this for sympathy, or because she wanted to be protected, but to highlight how not himself Sam really was, at the moment. He was very much not himself. She nodded, taking a drink. “I'll help,” she promised, because she wanted Sam back too. The guy he was right now...he was scary. “I just don't really want to be alone with him.”
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. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The first job that Dean ever took hadn’t been his best work, but he didn’t know that anyone could say that the first was the best. Of course, he’d been hunting for a while before he was able to go on his first solo case. He already knew the ropes and it had almost been like a test. It wasn’t as if his dad hadn’t been close by, enough that he could call on him for help if something became seriously messed up. But, that hadn’t happened. It had been a couple of spirits and he had taken them out with ease. Though, after that, he really hadn’t been allowed on any other solo hunts—not for a while, anyway. He’d only been seventeen on the first and while he took care of it and there weren’t any problems, it seemed that his dad hadn’t thought he was ready to be doing that for a while. It had bothered him at the time, because he was young and wanted to be able to hunt the way his dad did. But, he got it, figuring that he wanted to keep him safe and letting him off on his own early wasn’t conducive to that. He was in his twenties when he started to really hit jobs by himself and even then, after Sam went off to college, he usually hunted alongside of his dad. Occasionally they would split up, but Dean usually liked hunting in a pair than on his own. Early on, it had worked out all right and after Dad disappeared, Sam was at his side consistently. The hunts that he took by himself after that were far and few between. And he really didn’t like to think about the times he had separated from his brother, because it often involved some kind of fight or distrust that pulled them apart. And then, he was hunting by himself the majority of the time, because his brother was gone.
And that had been the hardest part, really. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable; it was that he missed his brother. Hunting had always been the family business. As a kid, it was the three of them and then it was two, then three, and then two again. He didn’t expect to be alone and had always hoped that he wouldn’t be. Dean would have done anything to keep his family alive. And even though his hope had started to become limited, he had his brother back and had had him back for months now. If only it had really felt like Sam. First, he couldn’t remember him and then he was something different. He couldn’t place what it was, but he knew it wasn’t his brother. But he would do whatever he could to help him. Dean didn’t want to lose him again. He would find a way to fix him. Just like he thought he could find a way to fix the mess of a world that they were stuck in the middle of. He couldn’t explain how grateful he was that Sammy was alive again or that he had his memories back. He just wasn’t grateful that it may or may not be his brother. It had his memories and some of his mannerisms, but then, it just wasn’t Sam. And if there was anyone that knew him the best, it was Dean. Just like he was sure Sam would pick up on any difference that Dean presented, he could pick up on Sam’s. And he wasn’t the only one. Everyone seemed to notice that something was the matter with him. He was different now and Dean couldn’t figure out why. He needed to, however. He wasn’t going to let him stay that way. Besides, with Sam like that, he was a little scary to say the least.
“Because not having a car sucks?” He offered and of course he would never think of parting with his car. That car meant a hell of a lot to him. It was home and practically a part of the family. Hell, it was family. And he wasn’t planning on sticking to NYC forever. Still, he probably could have given up driving it everywhere, but he didn’t. He didn’t care how bad the traffic was, he was going to continue to drive. As she described how Sam had been, he internally flinched. He looked down at the ground for a moment, because he knew how Sam was behaving and he hated it. He also hated that Jo had to be afraid of him, because he knew that Sam was the last person she should have to fear. Sam wasn’t the type that was going to go out of his way to hurt anyone, especially not someone who was practically family. It wasn’t his brother in the least bit. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with him. I don’t know what the hell his problem is,” And yet, he offered an apology because he did feel responsible. That was his little brother acting up and if anyone could help him, it would have to be Dean, wouldn’t it? He was his supposed to protect and help him. And right now, Dean needed to find a way to get his brother back—not this Robo-Sam. “It’s probably best if you’re not. I don’t trust him. I hate that I don’t, but I don’t.” But it was because he was different, under any other circumstance, of course he trusted Sam.
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