SPN FIC - My Sister's Name Is Jo
Folks seem a lot more tolerant of Jo than they used to be (which I suspect is the Ruby-Bela effect, but whatever), and I've kept thinking about Dean Smith's description of his family, which had to come from ... something. The result is this. Hope you enjoy.
If she lay there long enough, she knew, she could still die. Would probably die.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Jo
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for language
SPOILERS: None
TIMELINE: Now-ish
LENGTH: 2319 words
MY SISTER'S NAME IS JO
By Carol Davis
For a long time she dreamed of hearing that voice, low and rasping, murmuring her name. Dreamed of his lips being so close to her ear that his breath was its own whisper against her skin. Dreamed of his hands moving gently over her body, searching, probing, his touch so warm and needed that she could feel it even after his fingers had moved on.
She dreamed of him, night after night.
But not like this.
Never like this.
She heard him when he was still some distance away - or at least it seemed like he was. She’d stopped thinking she could trust any of her senses, had even tried to shut them down so that she didn’t have to lie there taking in all the reminders of what had happened. She had no idea how long she’d been lying there. Hours, certainly, although not many; it was still dark, still nowhere near sunrise. When the screaming had finally stopped she tried to sleep, to let herself be less aware, because if she couldn’t do anything to help herself - or anyone else - then there was no point in letting herself understand that the bar no longer had a roof. That the people who’d been in the bar with her were most likely all dead. That she should be dead. But, somehow, wasn’t.
If she lay there long enough, she knew, she could still die. Would probably die.
She was close to accepting that when they came.
When he came.
She heard the car, knew the growl of it from all those times John Winchester had come to the Roadhouse, from the times Dean and Sam had come, from the hours she’d occupied the backseat on the way back from Philadelphia. The sound of it grew louder, then faded, as if the car had gone on by. Then it stopped entirely.
They’re gone, she thought.
Part of her wanted them to be gone, wanted them to be no part of what had happened here, what would not stop happening here. But what she wanted had never pulled much weight with the universe. What she wanted hadn’t made her dad come back. Hadn’t made her mom trust her, believe in her. Hadn’t made her taller, stronger, more able to do what she’d chosen to do as a tribute to her father. Hadn’t made Dean Winchester care about her.
Go away, she thought. Just go. I don’t need you.
They didn’t approach silently; there was no way they could, not in the mess that remained after the roof had fallen, after all the bottles and glasses and the big mirror and the colored neon advertising tubes and the overhead lights had exploded. They didn’t make as much noise as someone else might have - a cop, say, or a firefighter - but they were big, heavy. Wearing boots. A couple of minutes went by with them crunching their way through the debris, lifting and pushing aside pieces of the roof.
Then they found the first one.
She heard a grunt, deep, visceral. Then a whispered, “Shit.”
And, “Is he -“
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Yeah, Sam. He’s pretty dead.”
“I just want to be sure.”
“This ‘sure’ enough for you? Here.”
“Jesus. Don’t do things like that. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know, Sam. What is the matter with me? You wanna enlighten me? You’ve gotten pretty good at that lately. Lemme pull up a chair and we’ll have a beer and you can -“
Go, she thought. Please go.
She’d stopped being able to feel any of her body a long time ago. Hours? It had to be hours. She wasn’t cold, wasn’t hot, wasn’t in any real pain. She could breathe only in small sips of air because her lungs no longer wanted to inflate to any great degree - but maybe that was a good thing, because the air in here reeked of burned plastic and spilled booze and…
Burned flesh.
Blood.
For a little while, right after it happened, she’d felt wet. That could have come from any number of things - water from the sprinklers, which had run for a few seconds before the roof came down. The tray of drinks she’d been carrying. Blood, her own or Cal’s. It wouldn’t have surprised her if she’d peed her pants. And if she’d been wet then, she was probably wet now. She just couldn’t feel it any more. Couldn’t feel anything. No pain. No cold.
No grief.
“The sons of bitches. Would you look at this?”
She saw a flash of light, brief as a shooting star.
“There’s nobody alive in here.”
“Yeah. We don’t know that. Keep looking.”
“They wouldn’t -“
“You don’t want to look? Go the fuck outside.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want to look. But they wouldn’t have left anybody alive. Not if they destroyed the place like this.”
“Keep looking.”
“Dean -“
More crunching. Louder. Be careful, she thought. You’ll step on somebody. They’re all underneath.
No one had screamed when it started. They all sat, or stood, mouths lolling open, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what was happening. A couple of them were hunters but most of them weren’t, and there simply wasn’t a category in their experience that something like this would fit into. They had no way to explain why, or how, the roof would lift right up off the building, rise up fifteen or twenty feet, hover there for a good half a minute, and then come slamming back down as if driven by some giant hand. It had lifted up, she’d thought while it was happening, as if someone wanted a good, unobstructed view of what was underneath.
Her daddy had trained her, and her mom had trained her a little bit more. So had the hunters who’d come to the Roadhouse, most of whom she’d never known by name. She’d listened as she brought them drinks and sandwiches and soup, as she wiped off tables and countertops, as she fiddled with the jukebox.
It was like osmosis, sometimes. What you could learn.
When the roof had broken loose of its hover and had started crashing back to earth, she’d flung aside the tray she was holding. Had flung an arm around Callie and dove with her underneath the sturdy table in one of the booths.
Callie was underneath her now.
Callie had stopped breathing a long time ago.
“You got anything? Anything? Tell me there’s somebody still alive in this fucking place. Tell me those bastards didn’t -“
“Of course they did.”
“There’s gotta be somebody.”
“Dean. There’s not.”
Crunching. A long Uhhhhhnnnnnhhhhh of effort. Something being flung aside.
“Son of a BITCH.”
“Let’s just go.”
“I told you. I’m not going until we’re sure. I am not walking out of here until I am one hundred percent goddamn sure. Because I am not making that phone call unless I’m sure. I am not calling Ellen unless I am absolutely, one hundred percent SURE. You got me? You got that? Huh? You got that?”
A long silence.
A long, long silence.
Then, “All right.”
“Go outside and sit on your ass if you want to.”
“I said all right.”
“You’re overwhelming me with your enthusiasm.”
More silence. Then, “I don’t want to find her.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to find her. I don’t want to call Ellen. I don’t want to need to call Ellen. Do you? Do you want to tell her?”
Silence.
“Well?”
“No.” A soft, soft rasp. “I don’t want to find her. Not here.”
And silence.
She could die here and not regret anything, she thought. She could let go here, in this place, and not feel that she’d failed anyone, or anything - even herself. The alternative? That was the thing she could regret. That was the thing she could fear. If I can’t move, then let me die.
Please.
Let me go be with my dad, and Ash, and Cal. I’m no good here. Let me go.
The crunching came closer. The light flickered past her, skittering briefly very near her feet before it moved on.
Go.
Please go.
The last time she had heard his voice, the last time she heard him say her name, was more than two years ago. He would call her, he said as he turned his back to her, but of course he never did. He called others, called her mother, asked routinely, “Jo all right?” and the messages were passed on to her. But he never came close.
A long time ago, she stopped dreaming of him.
Stopped hearing his voice in her sleep.
The light came back. Slid over her face and caught her eyes and made her blink.
“Fuck,” he said fiercely, and yes, she’d wanted that, a long time ago she’d wanted that, wanted it so badly it made her lie awake at night listening to silence, grasping at her pillow with frantic hands until she had to admit to herself that she was alone, that if anyone occupied the other half of her bed it would never be him. He said nothing after that one word; instead, he examined her with the light, then set it aside, propped it in a place where it wouldn’t move, and leaned in to run his hands gently over her body. He found Callie and dismissed her with a single glance.
“What?” From Sam.
“Here. She’s here.”
“Is she -“
“Help me.”
“Jo? Jo, are you okay?”
“Does she look okay? I said help me.”
It’s wrong, she thought: the way they spoke to each other, the terrible tension between them. But then, anything else would have been wrong too. The End of Days was coming; that was all the other hunters had talked about for weeks. Included in all of that was the name. Winchester. Nothing new; they’d spat out Winchester like a curse ever since Steve Wandell was murdered, more than two years ago. A Winchester had killed him, they said.
That, too, was nothing new.
Winchester, they’d said when she was small. They’d hated the man who sat alone at a table in the Roadhouse, always that one same table, the one in the corner where he could keep his back to the wall. Her father had tolerated him, her mother had tolerated him a good deal more.
He had always said her name kindly. Jo. Hello there, Jo.
Hello there, sunshine.
Jo.
“Jo.”
She opened her eyes.
“Jo,” he said. “I need to get you outta here.”
“No,” she murmured.
“Can you move?”
“No.”
“Can you move your fingers? Move your fingers for me.”
He was so close. It didn’t take much of an effort to lift her hand. She meant to press it against his mouth, to silence him, because there was nothing he could say that she wanted to hear. She’d silenced that voice in her head a long time ago, and letting it speak again wouldn’t lead to anything good. Couldn’t lead to anything good.
Little sister, Sam had said two years ago. It was the demon talking, but demons…
Sister.
When she opened her eyes again, he was lifting her free of the debris, away from the ruin of the table and the booth, away from Callie, who had given her something soft to lie on, to touch, something that was not screaming. He was lifting her away from this life, from everything that had happened to her over the past two years, and she knew without asking that he was going to take her back to her mother.
There was pain then, a deep, flame-hot pain in her legs and her shoulder, terrible enough to make her cry out, to make her bury her face in his shoulder and clutch at him with fingers that were dark with blood that might have been her own or might have been someone else’s.
“It’s all right,” he said, close to her ear. “It’s okay now. It’s gonna be all right.”
Little sister.
She was small in his arms, not as small as she’d been when her dad held her close, held her safe and warm and close, but nearly so.
That’s the way he thinks of you.
I’ll call you.
He had never called.
But he had asked.
And he had come. Here, now. To this place. To find her, and hold her close.
Little sister.
His boots crunched debris as he carried her through what remained of the bar into the cool damp air of outside. The car was there, its headlights bright as the sun in the absence of any other light. He held her for a minute as if she weighed nothing, then carefully, gently, settled her in the backseat, cushioned by pillows and blankets that smelled vaguely of gun oil and old sweat. Every bit of that hurt, every small movement tormented her legs and her shoulder and her hip and everywhere, just everywhere, and there didn’t seem to be much point in trying to be stoic, in trying to be anything other than little sister.
“Hospital’s not far,” he said, his face deep in shadow. “It’s gonna be okay. They’ll get you fixed up.”
Something creaked.
Car door, she thought.
“You gonna drive?”
Dean’s face stayed close to her for a long time. Nothing was written there, on that face she had dreamed of so many times. Nothing at all that she could make out in the darkness.
Then he said, “Yeah.”
She reached for him before he could move. Fluttered fingers that didn’t want to do what she intended them to do. His eyes closed for a second, then he took her hand in his own. Engulfed it, because he was…
Big brother.
Her lips formed his name.
He leaned in. Kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said.
And she had to believe him.
* * * * *
If she lay there long enough, she knew, she could still die. Would probably die.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Jo
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for language
SPOILERS: None
TIMELINE: Now-ish
LENGTH: 2319 words
MY SISTER'S NAME IS JO
By Carol Davis
For a long time she dreamed of hearing that voice, low and rasping, murmuring her name. Dreamed of his lips being so close to her ear that his breath was its own whisper against her skin. Dreamed of his hands moving gently over her body, searching, probing, his touch so warm and needed that she could feel it even after his fingers had moved on.
She dreamed of him, night after night.
But not like this.
Never like this.
She heard him when he was still some distance away - or at least it seemed like he was. She’d stopped thinking she could trust any of her senses, had even tried to shut them down so that she didn’t have to lie there taking in all the reminders of what had happened. She had no idea how long she’d been lying there. Hours, certainly, although not many; it was still dark, still nowhere near sunrise. When the screaming had finally stopped she tried to sleep, to let herself be less aware, because if she couldn’t do anything to help herself - or anyone else - then there was no point in letting herself understand that the bar no longer had a roof. That the people who’d been in the bar with her were most likely all dead. That she should be dead. But, somehow, wasn’t.
If she lay there long enough, she knew, she could still die. Would probably die.
She was close to accepting that when they came.
When he came.
She heard the car, knew the growl of it from all those times John Winchester had come to the Roadhouse, from the times Dean and Sam had come, from the hours she’d occupied the backseat on the way back from Philadelphia. The sound of it grew louder, then faded, as if the car had gone on by. Then it stopped entirely.
They’re gone, she thought.
Part of her wanted them to be gone, wanted them to be no part of what had happened here, what would not stop happening here. But what she wanted had never pulled much weight with the universe. What she wanted hadn’t made her dad come back. Hadn’t made her mom trust her, believe in her. Hadn’t made her taller, stronger, more able to do what she’d chosen to do as a tribute to her father. Hadn’t made Dean Winchester care about her.
Go away, she thought. Just go. I don’t need you.
They didn’t approach silently; there was no way they could, not in the mess that remained after the roof had fallen, after all the bottles and glasses and the big mirror and the colored neon advertising tubes and the overhead lights had exploded. They didn’t make as much noise as someone else might have - a cop, say, or a firefighter - but they were big, heavy. Wearing boots. A couple of minutes went by with them crunching their way through the debris, lifting and pushing aside pieces of the roof.
Then they found the first one.
She heard a grunt, deep, visceral. Then a whispered, “Shit.”
And, “Is he -“
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Yeah, Sam. He’s pretty dead.”
“I just want to be sure.”
“This ‘sure’ enough for you? Here.”
“Jesus. Don’t do things like that. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know, Sam. What is the matter with me? You wanna enlighten me? You’ve gotten pretty good at that lately. Lemme pull up a chair and we’ll have a beer and you can -“
Go, she thought. Please go.
She’d stopped being able to feel any of her body a long time ago. Hours? It had to be hours. She wasn’t cold, wasn’t hot, wasn’t in any real pain. She could breathe only in small sips of air because her lungs no longer wanted to inflate to any great degree - but maybe that was a good thing, because the air in here reeked of burned plastic and spilled booze and…
Burned flesh.
Blood.
For a little while, right after it happened, she’d felt wet. That could have come from any number of things - water from the sprinklers, which had run for a few seconds before the roof came down. The tray of drinks she’d been carrying. Blood, her own or Cal’s. It wouldn’t have surprised her if she’d peed her pants. And if she’d been wet then, she was probably wet now. She just couldn’t feel it any more. Couldn’t feel anything. No pain. No cold.
No grief.
“The sons of bitches. Would you look at this?”
She saw a flash of light, brief as a shooting star.
“There’s nobody alive in here.”
“Yeah. We don’t know that. Keep looking.”
“They wouldn’t -“
“You don’t want to look? Go the fuck outside.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want to look. But they wouldn’t have left anybody alive. Not if they destroyed the place like this.”
“Keep looking.”
“Dean -“
More crunching. Louder. Be careful, she thought. You’ll step on somebody. They’re all underneath.
No one had screamed when it started. They all sat, or stood, mouths lolling open, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what was happening. A couple of them were hunters but most of them weren’t, and there simply wasn’t a category in their experience that something like this would fit into. They had no way to explain why, or how, the roof would lift right up off the building, rise up fifteen or twenty feet, hover there for a good half a minute, and then come slamming back down as if driven by some giant hand. It had lifted up, she’d thought while it was happening, as if someone wanted a good, unobstructed view of what was underneath.
Her daddy had trained her, and her mom had trained her a little bit more. So had the hunters who’d come to the Roadhouse, most of whom she’d never known by name. She’d listened as she brought them drinks and sandwiches and soup, as she wiped off tables and countertops, as she fiddled with the jukebox.
It was like osmosis, sometimes. What you could learn.
When the roof had broken loose of its hover and had started crashing back to earth, she’d flung aside the tray she was holding. Had flung an arm around Callie and dove with her underneath the sturdy table in one of the booths.
Callie was underneath her now.
Callie had stopped breathing a long time ago.
“You got anything? Anything? Tell me there’s somebody still alive in this fucking place. Tell me those bastards didn’t -“
“Of course they did.”
“There’s gotta be somebody.”
“Dean. There’s not.”
Crunching. A long Uhhhhhnnnnnhhhhh of effort. Something being flung aside.
“Son of a BITCH.”
“Let’s just go.”
“I told you. I’m not going until we’re sure. I am not walking out of here until I am one hundred percent goddamn sure. Because I am not making that phone call unless I’m sure. I am not calling Ellen unless I am absolutely, one hundred percent SURE. You got me? You got that? Huh? You got that?”
A long silence.
A long, long silence.
Then, “All right.”
“Go outside and sit on your ass if you want to.”
“I said all right.”
“You’re overwhelming me with your enthusiasm.”
More silence. Then, “I don’t want to find her.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to find her. I don’t want to call Ellen. I don’t want to need to call Ellen. Do you? Do you want to tell her?”
Silence.
“Well?”
“No.” A soft, soft rasp. “I don’t want to find her. Not here.”
And silence.
She could die here and not regret anything, she thought. She could let go here, in this place, and not feel that she’d failed anyone, or anything - even herself. The alternative? That was the thing she could regret. That was the thing she could fear. If I can’t move, then let me die.
Please.
Let me go be with my dad, and Ash, and Cal. I’m no good here. Let me go.
The crunching came closer. The light flickered past her, skittering briefly very near her feet before it moved on.
Go.
Please go.
The last time she had heard his voice, the last time she heard him say her name, was more than two years ago. He would call her, he said as he turned his back to her, but of course he never did. He called others, called her mother, asked routinely, “Jo all right?” and the messages were passed on to her. But he never came close.
A long time ago, she stopped dreaming of him.
Stopped hearing his voice in her sleep.
The light came back. Slid over her face and caught her eyes and made her blink.
“Fuck,” he said fiercely, and yes, she’d wanted that, a long time ago she’d wanted that, wanted it so badly it made her lie awake at night listening to silence, grasping at her pillow with frantic hands until she had to admit to herself that she was alone, that if anyone occupied the other half of her bed it would never be him. He said nothing after that one word; instead, he examined her with the light, then set it aside, propped it in a place where it wouldn’t move, and leaned in to run his hands gently over her body. He found Callie and dismissed her with a single glance.
“What?” From Sam.
“Here. She’s here.”
“Is she -“
“Help me.”
“Jo? Jo, are you okay?”
“Does she look okay? I said help me.”
It’s wrong, she thought: the way they spoke to each other, the terrible tension between them. But then, anything else would have been wrong too. The End of Days was coming; that was all the other hunters had talked about for weeks. Included in all of that was the name. Winchester. Nothing new; they’d spat out Winchester like a curse ever since Steve Wandell was murdered, more than two years ago. A Winchester had killed him, they said.
That, too, was nothing new.
Winchester, they’d said when she was small. They’d hated the man who sat alone at a table in the Roadhouse, always that one same table, the one in the corner where he could keep his back to the wall. Her father had tolerated him, her mother had tolerated him a good deal more.
He had always said her name kindly. Jo. Hello there, Jo.
Hello there, sunshine.
Jo.
“Jo.”
She opened her eyes.
“Jo,” he said. “I need to get you outta here.”
“No,” she murmured.
“Can you move?”
“No.”
“Can you move your fingers? Move your fingers for me.”
He was so close. It didn’t take much of an effort to lift her hand. She meant to press it against his mouth, to silence him, because there was nothing he could say that she wanted to hear. She’d silenced that voice in her head a long time ago, and letting it speak again wouldn’t lead to anything good. Couldn’t lead to anything good.
Little sister, Sam had said two years ago. It was the demon talking, but demons…
Sister.
When she opened her eyes again, he was lifting her free of the debris, away from the ruin of the table and the booth, away from Callie, who had given her something soft to lie on, to touch, something that was not screaming. He was lifting her away from this life, from everything that had happened to her over the past two years, and she knew without asking that he was going to take her back to her mother.
There was pain then, a deep, flame-hot pain in her legs and her shoulder, terrible enough to make her cry out, to make her bury her face in his shoulder and clutch at him with fingers that were dark with blood that might have been her own or might have been someone else’s.
“It’s all right,” he said, close to her ear. “It’s okay now. It’s gonna be all right.”
Little sister.
She was small in his arms, not as small as she’d been when her dad held her close, held her safe and warm and close, but nearly so.
That’s the way he thinks of you.
I’ll call you.
He had never called.
But he had asked.
And he had come. Here, now. To this place. To find her, and hold her close.
Little sister.
His boots crunched debris as he carried her through what remained of the bar into the cool damp air of outside. The car was there, its headlights bright as the sun in the absence of any other light. He held her for a minute as if she weighed nothing, then carefully, gently, settled her in the backseat, cushioned by pillows and blankets that smelled vaguely of gun oil and old sweat. Every bit of that hurt, every small movement tormented her legs and her shoulder and her hip and everywhere, just everywhere, and there didn’t seem to be much point in trying to be stoic, in trying to be anything other than little sister.
“Hospital’s not far,” he said, his face deep in shadow. “It’s gonna be okay. They’ll get you fixed up.”
Something creaked.
Car door, she thought.
“You gonna drive?”
Dean’s face stayed close to her for a long time. Nothing was written there, on that face she had dreamed of so many times. Nothing at all that she could make out in the darkness.
Then he said, “Yeah.”
She reached for him before he could move. Fluttered fingers that didn’t want to do what she intended them to do. His eyes closed for a second, then he took her hand in his own. Engulfed it, because he was…
Big brother.
Her lips formed his name.
He leaned in. Kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said.
And she had to believe him.
* * * * *