you are alert as a tigress at a common table with her fate

[yourwonderings]

Life for the past year has been a series of motel rooms, cheap bars with hollow carvings in their jukeboxes telling stories she doesn't care for, and empty beer bottles lined up on the counters she uses later for practice. There's the occasional postcard to her mother and traveling down the open road from one middle-of-the-fuck-nowhere town to the

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[yourwonderings]

After a quick moment of deliberation, "I'm Jo."

And Jo's gonna go for noncommittal on the rest. She wedges her arm into the rifle's sling, eyes seemingly on Leona's face while she keeps track of the woman's hands. "And yeah, I can take care of myself just fine."

Let them come, she thinks, the same as with everything else. Let them come.

"Now why doesn't that surprise me?" Jo answers with a near snort. People who are completely unaware of the dangers of the world--she can understand that. Her job is to protect them. Those who choose to be delusional about it don't have her sympathy. "No matter where you are, there'll be plenty of assholes who don't like lookin' the ugly things right in the eye."

Better to look away and pretend they don't exist, isn't it?

"Why not? I'm not a stranger to fucked-up," Jo says at the offer of coffee. She thinks there's still a catch, but there's always a catch. She does believe she can take care of herself, and the first thing she was taught to do and do well is research--thanks Ash. This woman seems to have a good grasp on this world, and Jo's not gonna look a gift's horse in the mouth whatever the intentions.

"You mentioned leading me to the people that handle this sort of thing?"

[sinsofskin]

"You'll find no shortage of assholes in Chicago," Leona agrees.

She glances down the street, calculates the distances to various coffee shops, and motions to one not too far away and not too shabby. "There's a refugee camp smack downtown," she says, starting toward it. "The Conrad Hotel. Run by a Wanderer herself, Martha Jones, looked after by a man named Vincent. Cool cat. Purple Heart'd in the big war, the one that forced angels and demons to finally make a treaty so they wouldn't kill each other and everyone else around. The Conrad's all fine and good if you want a place to sleep and food to eat, but it is what it is."

She shrugs.

"Now, I don't want to come across too pushy - not before you've gotten your sea-legs, doll," and at that she casts a smile back at Jo, "but if you wanted work - looking out for wanderers, for one - I could introduce you to some coworkers who are always hiring." Like Aaron Islington. Or even the net of Black Decemberists still working in the city. Not exactly honest work, but nothing a Wanderer would get in this city would be honest by all definitions of the word. They don't exist. "Wouldn't dream of asking you before you got your bearings, but just know you can write me if you ever get the itch. Coffee's just over there." She indicates the building.