Bulletproof
Chapter One
It had taken Bobby about three days, half an hour, two minutes twenty seven seconds to get through to her. After berating her on the stupidity of being unreachable, she had finally managed to get him back to the purpose of his call.
It had taken every bit of her determination to pretended that the tightening of her grip on the phone at the mention of Winchesters and apocalypse was out of frustration and anger rather than heart pounding worry.
Either way her emotions on the matter had no bearing. And 'if' she had been worried, and that's not to say that she was, because that would be admitting that she cared one way or the other; she had no reason to. They had somehow managed to do the impossible. Took the fight to the devil himself and won a victory that only a couple of Winchesters could have pulled off.
She ignored the brief flash of guilt she felt at having not been there with them. After all this was her fight too. Bobby, in his alarming perceptiveness, must have picked up on it, because he was quick to point out that the boys had handled it just fine on their own. But Jo was willing to bet her life on the fact that her mother and Bobby had been close by, aiding in any and all ways that they could.
She was quick to console herself with her own memories of that night. Which included putting a decent sized dent in the over abundance of demons that seemed to pop of every where in the weeks before the big show down. It had been an onslaught of which she had never seen before, and she had yet to figure out how exactly she had managed to survive, much less come out on top.
It had been a group of demons of all shapes and sizes with only one opponent, all five foot four of her. The worst spot she had ever been in, and she had spent the entire time thinking that she was going to die, but by God she was going to take as many of those son-of-a-bitches with her as she possibly could. Instead she had fell to her knees in what had been a warehouse on the outside of town, but now no more than a pile of rubble.
Blood and demon guts had coated what was left of the walls, which wasn't much. Their bodies had laid in various stages of dismemberment all around her. It wasn't until she felt the warmth of sunbeams filtering through the gaping hole where the ceiling had caved in that she had realized it was morning, and with the sunlight came the realization that her battle had raged all the way through the night, and past dawn.
Slowly the shock at surviving had faded into the backdrop as pain began to sprout from every part of her body. She still couldn't remember how she had managed to make it back to her hotel room. Only brief recollection of a too hot shower and going about the grueling process of patching, bandaging, suturing, and wrapping herself up. The one year stint she had done in nursing school had came in all too handy since she had started hunting, but never had she been so grateful.
After sleeping for thirty six hours straight and waking to twenty plus calls spanning back the course of three days from her mother and Bobby, she knew that she would need to hold up somewhere and heal up before hitting the battle field again. Though she was hesitant at the thought of how her mother would react to seeing her so badly beaten, she felt a trip was due after she heard news of the apocalypse. It would take her a few days to make the trip, which would give her just enough time to heal well enough to pass her mothers exception without too much of a fuss...with the help of some morphine to make the situation more passable.
And so began her process of expertly wrapping broken rips, suturing cuts and slashes of various lengths and depths to make them seem less threatening. Using every bit of makeup at her disposal to mask the enormous demon-hand-sized bruises that coated seventy percent of her body. By day two of her trip she had her routine mastered, and could even move around without visibly wincing. Still she stopped at the last motel before Bobby's to re-wrap, reapply, and re-medicate before facing two of the most perceptive people she believed to exist.
She had also staged her arrival to give the Winchester boys time to clear out. Knowing that after a fight of these proportions Dean would be dying to get on the road and burn some steam. Sure enough the Impala was no where in site when she pulled into the junk yard.
The look of pure joy and sweet relief on her mothers face had her vowing to make it home more often. Truth was, walking towards the porch, her mother and Bobby rushing out to greet her, it had settled in her gut like too much chocolate pie. She couldn't decide if it was good or bad, that feeling of warm acceptance and heartfelt hugs, it was like coming home. Watching her mom and Bobby be all domestic and doting on her did nothing to make the feelings reseed.
She wondered if it was new or if she had simply never noticed how comfortable and settled the two seemed around each other. Either way, once her surprise faded she decided it best to simply embrace it. It was surprising how easy it was to just let it go and not ask questions. They didn't exactly treat each other any different, in fact it was sorta eerie how the three of them settled, however briefly, into domestic bliss.
If she closed her eyes and thought just right when she laid down at night, she could almost pretend that she was just another girl returning from college to visit her parents. But Joanna Harvelle was anything but normal, and no matter what pain medication-induced fantasies drifted into her head, she couldn't regret how her life had turned out. As a hunter she was living out her dream, keeping her fathers memory alive. Even if it was her mothers worst nightmare, it was the only legacy her father had left her, and Jo was determined to follow it to the end.
I've had this FOREVER...saw it today and decided to divide it up and post.