Title: She’s my Heroine
Author:
chocca2
Pairing/Characters: Jo, Anna
Rating: Gen, PG13
Recipient/Prompt:
scorpiod1
Spoilers: none.
Disclaimers: Just playing in Kripke’s sandbox.
Summary: Jo meets Anna while hunting and they team up for a while and kick some ass.
Notes: Written for
spn_women fic exchange. Kindly beta’d by the awesome
twasadark .
~~~
The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.
~
Ellery Queen
~~~
Jo picked at the Budweiser label. She was slouched over the bar table, boot heel hooked on the narrow step of the stool.
“So…” Dean began, “you and Anna crossed paths, huh?”
“Yep,” she replied, taking a sip of tepid beer. Dean nodded silently beside her. He downed his shot and went straight for his own Bud, took a good gulp before he continued.
“On a hunt?” A statement and question rolled into one. It was clear Dean already knew the basics and was poking around for finer details.
Jo smirked. A flash of memories made her lips curl into a smile. Her cheeks warmed; she hid her blush by letting her hair unhook and cascade over her face.
~~~
Two months earlier
“I found the nest.”
“Good, I’ll call the Winchesters.”
“This is my hunt, Mom. It’s bad enough I have to check in with you every few hours. Besides I already have help on this one.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, chic named Anna. She’s a hunter and a good one at that. Two of us can manage just fine.”
“Anna got a last name?”
“Dammit, Mom. Please, can’t you just trust me on this? Is that too much to ask?”
“Forgive me for giving a damn about you, Joanna-Beth.”
“Sheesh, okay. Anna Milton. Do what you gotta do but I gotta go, Mom.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will. Bye, Mom.”
Jo flipped her cell shut and swiveled on her bar stool to face Anna. “And that’s us on talking terms.”
“She’s your mother; she’s worried about you,” Anna replied.
“Yeah, I know she means well, but she worries a little too much sometimes.” Jo let her frustration drain away while she finished her beer with her new partner in crime. She’d done the bulk of the work for this hunt, the research, scoping the town, finding the nest but she was glad to have another set of hands for the finale. Vamps were a pain in the ass to gank. Besides, bumping into Anna at the nest site meant they were running at the same pace, neither wanting to stop. Made sense to join forces.
“So, Anna…” Jo smiled, resting her chin on her hand. “Tell me a bit about yourself. So far all I know about you is you hunt solo, ride a kickass bike and know your shit when it comes to vampires. How long you been hunting?”
“Not long. Hunting was not planned. I just… I could not turn my back on the innocent dying. As for the bike? It was the only vehicle at my disposal at the time. Strange mechanism, but it’s fast and enjoyable.”
“I’m sure it is,” Jo chirped, clearly amused by the description.
Anna smiled and continued, “This is a new beginning for me; I am what you could call an ex-solider of the Lord.”
Jo frowned sympathetically. “Lost faith, huh?”
Anna mirrored her frown then shook her head. “Not exactly. I have lost many things. I still have faith. It’s just different now.”
Jo nodded. What she’d heard filled some of the gaps but also seemed to create new ones. Anna still had a mystery to her that she couldn’t put her finger on, yet, she felt she could trust her. She resigned herself to the fact that there was only so much you could get to know about a person in one night; besides, they had work to do.
“You’re an interesting gal, Anna. We’re gonna have to continue after we get rid of these vamps. We have a few hours before daybreak.”
“Two hours, fourteen minutes,” Anna stated, not a hint of doubt in her reply.
“Um. Okay. That’s some precise timing you got going on there.”
Anna opened her mouth, stumbled over her words. “Dawn is beautiful… I like to watch to the sun come up.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Jo’s mind harked back to fevered nights with nightmares that would be soothed by the trickle of light and captivating sun-ups. She sheathed her machete, then attached it to her thigh holster.
“That’s a big knife.” The redhead stated.
“So what’s your weapon of choice, Ms. Anna Milton?”
Anna shifted, clenched and unclenched her hands as she raised them up on display. “My hands.”
Jo stood, hands on her hips. The mystery that was Anna was getting deeper and deeper.
“You’re something else, Anna.”
~~~
The hunt should have been fairly simple. Find the nest. Check. Wait till dawn. Check. Burn the thing to the ground. That was the plan. That was not how it ended.
Jo knew, deep down, when something was marked with the ‘simple’ tag it was usually anything but.
They’d taken Anna’s bike because the beat-up pick up Jo had ‘borrowed’ didn’t speak badass enough, plus she wanted a ride on it.
The vampires were occupying an abandoned warehouse just outside the town. Perfect setting for vamps--it was secluded enough for no one to notice a bundled up body carried out of a car or strange nocturnal activities.
There were fourteen vampires in total, which is why when Jo and Anna had peeked into the window to do a head count they knew immediately something was wrong.
“Well well, what do we have here?” The man was tall with broad shoulders, his hair long, blond and swept back into a ponytail.
Jo tensed, her right hand rippled over the handle of the blade. She counted six vamps, three to her left and three to the right of Anna. One blade wouldn’t cut it.
“Appetizers,” Another said as he licked his lips.
The sun peeped over the horizon. “Isn’t past your bed time?” Jo announced as she inched closer to Anna’s side.
“We’re rebels. Never follow the rules.”
“And that is why you will die very soon. I’ll see to it that it is painfully. You will pay for what you have done.” Anna spoke smooth and calm but her threat was sharp and vengeful.
“Aren’t you a feisty pair? I like ‘em young and innocent but it’s nice to have a challenge now and then.” The blond one spoke. He shrugged his shoulders to the group before facing them. “We get bored easily.”
Jo wasn’t sure what it was that made her know they were on the same page but she and Anna let the bloodsuckers grip them and drag them into the farmhouse. She put up no real struggle and she could tell Anna was doing the same.
Inside was dark and dank with a pungent reek of blood.
Her machete was taken from her along with her gun and ankle blade.
Anna hadn’t said a word since they were shoved into the center of the room, all fourteen vampires surrounding them. Jo’s heart was heaving against her chest. Anna turned towards her and gave her a blank look that merged to a smile. It didn’t last long and neither did the vampires.
Anna moved so fast it was hard to catch what she was doing; a snap of the spine, blood, lots of blood and the vamp was down. One by one she tore their heads off. How that was humanly possible was beyond Jo and the least of her worries. It was clear that Anna’s weapon of choice worked perfectly, especially when there was no knife available.
“Jo, catch,” Anna yelled as she threw the machete towards her.
Jo immediately unsheathed it and started swinging. It took a good firm grip of the handle with a mighty blow on the neck to decapitate a vamp. A clean cut didn’t bleed as much as it should have which was a good thing because she had on her favorite jeans.
When they were done, pools of blood and scattered body parts surrounded them. They faced each other, breathless and spent.
“That was--“ Jo began.
“Teamwork,” Anna cut in. She smiled, wiped her hands on her soaked jeans.
~~~
Present
The vamps were one of many hunts Anna joined her on; they seemed to have good chemistry and ‘teamwork’. The mystery surrounding Anna remained that way. Anna was good at avoiding the subject of her origins. She never answered questions completely, only gave enough to satisfy the curious itch.
Then out of the blue, Anna said she had to go, didn’t say where or why, just up and left in the middle of the night.
A couple of weeks ago Jo had a dream. Anna was there by her side as they watched the sunrise.
~
“Thank you,”Anna said.
“What for?”
“Helping me spread my wings,” Anna replied.
“You’re a great hunter, Anna,” Jo told her.
“So are you, Joanna. A good friend, too.” Anna didn’t hide her wings; she let them show as she disappeared into the horizon.
~
The dream stayed lucid with Jo for a long time. One day she put two and two together, with a little research, she found out Anna was an angel: fallen, exiled, whatever. She didn’t really care about that though. The month they spent together, she was her friend that’s all she wanted to remember.
Jo turned to Dean, “Anna helped me on a hunt. We joined forces and kicked ass. End of story.” A smile grew in her expression.
“It was fun.”