SPN/BTVS: The Devil's Gate, NC-17, part 4 of 4
See bottom of post for links to other parts.
_____________________________
*
"We're going to do a thing," Willow said. "It's kind of scary, and Giles, you're gonna hate it. But I've had a ton of practice. I could do it in my sleep, even. Well, okay, it kind of requires me being in a meditative state bearing all the characteristics of sleep, but--"
"Will," Buffy interrupted. "Could you get to the actual explaining what it is part?"
Andrew sighed, long-suffering. "It's basically a bastardized combination of a channeling and enjoining spell that Rosenberg's been using to have psychic phone sex with her girlfriend."
Jo waited for the resulting uproar to die down. "Okay, want to explain that in words the normal person can understand?"
"Renee and I use it to communicate," Willow said. "It's sort of like a telepathic link, but deeper. I can feel what she's feeling, see what she's seeing -- nice, harmless things like that."
"Sex things," Andrew interjected.
"Yeah, I'm with the geek," Faith said. "That's pretty kinky, Will."
Jo didn't even have to catch Faith's wink at her -- the blush was already there.
Giles, frowning, ignored them all and said, "Renee isn't a witch. And you've been channeling yourself into her? What if she gained control over you and accessed your powers?"
"We don't even do it that much. It's just a way to be closer when the satellite connection isn't enough. Anyway, it's completely consensual. Nobody's controlling anybody!"
"So you want to use it on me," Jo said, "so I won't have to do the big spell alone."
"That's the idea. I'd sort of, guide you through it from inside your head. Like, um--"
"Like a puppet," Faith said. She'd lost her teasing tone.
"Or possession," Angel said.
Willow wilted a bit. "It's totally not like that. She wouldn't be doing anything she didn't want to do."
"Still sounds like bodysnatching." Faith shot Buffy a dark look. In her small window on the laptop screen, Buffy furrowed her brow.
"Any alternatives, Will?"
"I could telepor--"
"No," Giles said sharply, and on his heels were Xander and Andrew, a little more panicked. Buffy just continued to look troubled.
"O-kay, then, I guess there's always my frequent flyer miles. Or we could just let Jo do the spell by herself."
"I like the first option," Jo volunteered.
"Buffy?" Giles said.
She took her time answering. "The thing is, we need Will here for the rising tomorrow. But I don't want to wait another day on this mission, especially after the new casualties. Are you sure it's safe?"
"As a kitten," Willow said.
"Okay. Then tonight's the night. Los Angeles, you'll head out at sundown."
Jo tried to pay attention to the rest of the planning session, but her head was buzzing and she couldn't concentrate on anything except tonight, tonight. Eventually, Andrew complained that he needed enough time to doublecheck his verb conjugations, and the conference call broke up.
Buffy stopped just before logging off. "Faith. Some of the girls here, and some in the other divisions as well -- they've had dreams. Did yours report any?"
Faith just looked at her with an expression Jo couldn't read. "What do you think?"
"What about you?"
Faith had -- not meanly, exactly, but firmly -- sent Jo back to her room before either of them could fall asleep. "Five by five, B."
"Just like always," Buffy said.
"Just like. See you at the debriefing."
"You'd better. All three of you better." Buffy's window blinked out.
"Do you not want me to do it?" Jo asked quietly.
Faith got to her feet, chair legs scraping the floor with more force than any normal woman her size would be able to give it, her dark eyes communicating nothing. "Doesn't matter. We all gotta do the job, blondie." She didn't quite slam the office door on her way out, but Ash would have called it close enough for government work.
Angel, who'd been leaning against a bookshelf for the entire conference call, straightened and shot Jo a curious look. "Guess I'll...go make sure the weapons are still clean." He headed out the way Faith had gone.
Jo sighed and moved to hit the disconnect button which would turn off the satellite link.
But she didn't click. Her fingers hovered over the laptop's touchpad, and on the screen, the mouse arrow hovered over the disconnect. And still she didn't click.
The silence and solitude in the office seemed to shout at her, to call out for shattering.
She dialed another number.
"Girl, where you been?" Ash's image, created through his homemade webcam, was fuzzier than the ones that bounced over from Scotland and Italy and Kenya, but it was still Ash, his ugly face so familiar to her that she had to take a breath before she forgot to. He ran a hand through the top of his mullet. "Your mom's been asking me for updates and every time I'm like I don't know where'n hell she is, she gives me this look like she just can't wait to marinate my balls in tobasco sauce -- still attached." He shook his head, muttering, "Been weeks of that."
"I'm okay, Ash." Jo smiled. "I'm still in L.A., I'm with good people. See, they're all tech'd out, just like you."
"What, those ones from the magic store?"
"Yeah. And I want to tell you all about it, I mean, there's this whole other world going on that I don't think any hunter even knows about." He looked doubtful, and she had to suppress a wild giggle. "But I don't have time to go into it just now. I just -- can I talk to my mom?
His expression cleared. "You got it."
She sat fiddling with her father's knife while he went to fetch her mother, the screen transmitting the inside of his tornado-hit bedroom. She tried to think back -- she'd sent her last postcard almost four weeks ago, and it'd been months before that since she'd even heard her mother's voice. Too long since they'd been eye to eye. This was going to be brutal.
Then her mother came into the frame and sat down, and Jo put the knife away and leaned closer.
She was dressed in her robe -- of course, the time difference meant it was still early in Nebraska, and she'd probably been up late tending the bar. Her hair was mussed, her eyes a little puffy, but her sleep-soft face went stone cold as soon as she saw Jo.
"Hi, Mom."
Her mother's voice was perfectly, dangerously calm. "Joanna Beth."
"Okay. Before we start fighting, I have to tell you something. I know how Dad died. I know all of it." The way her mother's eyes widened, not so much curious as alarmed, told Jo all she needed about exactly how much she'd known and kept hidden. So be it, then. "I'm not mad at you for keeping it from me, leastways not anymore, because I know it must have been horrible for you to even think about much less try to tell me. But when I found out, I just had to do something. I had to see the place for myself."
"Are you trying to tell me you went there--"
"Mom, let me finish. Okay? Turns out it's a worse place than probably Dad or John Winchester ever knew. And I've found some people who're going to help me fix it. They're strong, good hunters, so I'm not alone, Mom. We can clean it up and make it right again."
"No." Her mother was shaking her head. "No, no, no, and no."
"And I don't want you to come out here to try and stop me again," Jo said, and her voice broke, broke like a door kicked open, she hadn't even known it was going to happen until it did. "This is my choice to do this, and every time you take that away from me--"
"Honey, you don't even understand what you'd be dealing with--"
"I do understand. More than you do, Mom, more even than Dad did. I mean, you keep trying to hide these things from me, but you can't keep me from my own damn life."
"I've already lost one too many people to that life and I am not losing you, too!"
"You don't get to make that choice for me. I'm sorry this scares you and I'm sorry it's not something safe like getting a college degree, but you can be angry at me forever or you can accept this and let me do what I need to do to make his death right."
"Jo, you can hunt all you want, all right? You're not livin' under my roof anymore. Go all around the country just like your dad and send postcards home whenever you feel like it. But you're not thinking with a clear head and I don't want you doing something this dangerous just because you can't stand that I didn't tell you the truth!"
"I told you, that's not what this is about."
"Isn't it? Honey, all I'm saying is, this rebellious stage of yours is gettin' a little long in the tooth."
"I'm sorry," Jo repeated. "I can't go through this with you again. I just called so you'd know what I was up to. Please don't hang up angry."
Her mother started to say something, stopped, pressed her knuckles to her mouth. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling the way it did when she was holding back tears, the way Jo's voice did when she was doing the same. "I'm not angry at you."
"I'll call you, okay? When this is all over."
Ellen reached her hand out, the pads of her fingers touching the screen on her side. "And if something happens to you?"
"Then I love you."
"Dammit, Joanna--"
"Tell Ash not to bother tracing the call. It's been scrambled." She took one last look, and part of it was waiting for her mother to say something, to finally give her what she wanted, but her mother just looked back at her, doing her own waiting.
Jo closed the connection.
*
She didn't get to see Faith again until just before the squads set out. The hotel was crazy with activity when she finally emerged from the office, girls rushing around getting weapons and orders from their squad leaders, Faith never in one place for longer than a few minutes. It didn't let up until just before sundown, when the squads began leaving for Devil's Gate, and by then Jo and Angel were bringing up the rearguard with Shandee and Melanie in Squad 25 again, and she thought Faith had already gone.
"What, no goodbye?" Jo muttered, collecting her papers and weapons. "Not even an inspirational speech for the troops?"
"Not really my style," Faith answered, behind her. "Let's go, blondie. You and me're riding in the Plymouth."
Somehow, Jo had never pictured Angel for a classic car type; she'd always thought of him as a medieval fish out of water, someone who made more sense wielding a broadsword and a battleaxe than an ignition key. But in a way she found it comforting: the familiar smells of oil and leather and age that told her the car came with a history and a carefully selected pedigree, that she had found yet another hunter who took pride in that kind of thing. Angel put the top down while Faith hopped into the back and Jo slid into the front, letting the engine rumble and thrum before floating the car down the city streets. They accelerated onto the freeway and headed east, the sky orange and purple behind them.
Faith was silent -- they all were, but Faith's silence spoke, so Jo didn't interrupt.
Next to her, Angel was big and solid but gave off no heat other than what he took from his surroundings, and yet the familiarity of him as Angel seemed to lessen the things about him that weren't human. Instead of seeing only what separated them, this time she felt as though she could contain their differences, deal with them at a distance and, following logically from that, defeat them. She clutched that newfound confidence tightly.
Willow was supposed to make contact with her at eight o'clock. She watched the hands on her wristwatch move inexorably closer to it, until it got so dark that she couldn't quite make them out anymore. They were almost at their exit, too close for comfort.
Then she felt it: a presence in her mind that was completely outside of herself. It was gentle, like a spirit's hand brushing her back, but still undeniable. She felt her mind recoil.
It's okay, she heard Willow say, as clearly as if it were her sitting beside Jo instead of Angel. Just relax, just give yourself time to get used to it.
It felt like she had to think about breathing, like she couldn't do it automatically anymore. She turned panicked eyes on Angel. "Is it Willow?" he asked. When she nodded, he looked away from the road for a moment and peered straight into her, as if he could actually see Willow there. He took her hand in his cold one.
She felt a flutter of...emotion, memory, an image accompanied by sensation: Angel hugging her in the lobby of the Hyperion. Only, not her, not Jo, but -- Willow. There were others standing behind Angel, watching them, and she knew their faces and their names: Wesley Gunn Fred Lorne. And when she and Angel broke the embrace and she turned to leave, she saw Faith waiting for her beside the door. Just the sight of her, despite their history, made her feel that the world was an ordered place again, that things were coming together, falling into place, that maybe Buffy could actually win this--
"Whoa." Jo reeled, gripping the door handle.
"The hell?" Faith said from the backseat, knife-edged.
Sorry, Willow said. We just need to figure out the balance and the boundaries of this. Takes a little practice. Here, maybe this'll help.
She felt Willow send her another image/sensation, this time of Willow herself, sitting peacefully on her bed in what Jo suddenly understood was Scotland, the upstairs bedroom of the little country cottage she shared with Buffy and Dawn and whoever else happened to be planning battles with them. It was still dark out in the UK, but with that deep purple quality that meant the sun was coming.
She felt the mental equivalent of goosebumps. She looked down at her arms: nope, physically there, too. Christ, this was weird.
Yeah, but still pretty cool, huh?
She didn't answer in words, but tried to send Willow a sense of calm that she didn't quite feel, drawing the emotion from the image of Willow sleeping, echoing the sensation back to her.
Hey! Check you out! You're getting it already.
Well, that was something. She sat back and breathed in the dry desert air. "I'm okay," she said. "Just...it's a weird feeling, is all."
"Sure it is, it's fucking unnatural," Faith griped.
"I can handle it."
"So far."
"We're almost there," Angel interrupted. He was already decelerating to enter the exit lane.
They were all -- Willow as well -- quiet until they reached the meeting point a half mile from the Devil's Gate, where half of the taskforce had assembled. The other half was on the other side of the ravine, set to descend at Faith's signal. Jo got out of the car, a little breathless at the sight of them all waiting beneath the shadowy trees, dozens and dozens of girls armed for asskicking.
Pretty awesome, huh? Willow said, and sent her: Buffy at the front of her own army, striding forward into battle.
"Everyone accounted for?" Faith asked. She got a round of confirmations from each squad leader, their voices clear in the night. "Who checked in with the other side? Any traffic jams over there?"
Melanie stepped up. "All accounted for."
Faith nodded. "Okay, let's head."
As one, they started jogging toward the edge of the ravine.
"Hey girl," Shandee said, coming up alongside Jo, breathing easy. "Nervous?"
"Little bit."
"Don't even worry about it. You're gonna rock that magic mojo shit. Just get it done quick, okay? We want to be picking off stragglers, not whatever manages to get out before you lock the door."
"Yeah, I hear you."
The first slayers swept over the ridge without stopping. Jo looked around and saw that Faith was already among them, and Angel with his sword raised. Shandee flashed her one last grin and sped ahead to catch up, her long legs consuming the distance.
Just you and me, Jo thought, and felt Willow send her some calm.
She scrambled down to the bottom in a diagonal direction, toward the laughing river and the rock shaped like a devil's head. Across the ravine she could hear the warcries of the other side hurtling down, and from the bottom she could hear sounds of fighting already, snarls and shouts -- goddamn things must've been waiting down there the whole time. She tuned it out, focused on her task.
Kneeling in the wet mud of the riverbank, just on the edge of all the action, she took out her father's knife and cut the circle of incantation right into the earth. She drew in each rune the way Willow and Andrew had instructed her, Willow occasionally interjecting small corrections over their link. She remembered sketching the devil's traps around the hotel with Angel, setting cages down in every corridor. Now she was drawing a door she was about to close.
When she finished, she washed the blade in the river and wiped it dry on her jeans, then set up the three black tapers in the middle of the circle and lit them, one by one. Her hands were steady as anything.
Okay, Willow said. Looks good. Now, I know you remember the runic progression, but I'll be chanting with you the whole time. So if you get lost, if something distracts you, just listen to me. Okay? I won't stop.
"Okay," Jo said out loud. And fuck, there it was, her voice shaking like a rag doll. She swallowed and stepped into the circle, kneeling again in front of the burning candles, tilting her head back to look at the stars.
First the manifestation.
She chanted the words, Willow's voice echoing just beneath hers: "Mogesh hartha kana yol..."
The first flame blinked out, and at the same time a swirl of fire expanded out of the sky into a long, ragged dark patch blacker than the night. The flames outlined the borders of the darkness, clearly illuminating the rip between the dimensions: the Devil's Gate.
Jesus, she had created an opening to hell. Never mind that it had already been there -- she'd made it visible and now there it was, existing and completely undeniable. The sounds of fighting paused as everyone looked up at the fiery tear, but it was only the length of a breath. Hurry, Willow said, this magic's gonna call every big and little bad in a ten-mile radius, and we don't even know what else will come out of there.
"Dragons," Jo breathed, but only because the dragons had already arrived, swooping out of the trees, more from the opening itself. Screams pealed out all along the river, and it was just like before, just like that night, only worse: somewhere out there, Faith and Angel and Shandee and Petra and Hilary and Mel, everyone -- they were all fighting, and the things just kept swarming out of the darkness, unstoppable.
You can't think about that. Gotta focus. C'mon, Jo.
She steeled herself. Next, the mending. The runic progression, writing the opening out of existence.
The runes, uttered in her human voice, were guttural, awkward in her attempt to wield a non-human power. "Cycthus. Cyl, thirah, semrot. Sehl, thirhar, cylthe. Thoce, silhar, cehm." She chanted them over and over, the variations increasingly more complex, Willow's voice a guiding track.
Suddenly, a bolt of something dark and ancient slammed through her, yanking her head back, thrusting her body rigid. Everything...sharpened. The stars, the tree branches, the fire, the screams.
There it is, Willow murmured, my old friend. Oh, Jo, we shouldn't have let you do this.
Jo reached her hand out toward the stars. It was burning, flames licking each finger, but there was no pain, no heat. She moved her hand so that it covered the rip in the sky, the two fires overlapping.
"Jo!" someone shouted. "Jo, baby, don't."
She looked down the river. There was a man lying on a pile of tree branches, draped and broken, burning alive.
"What--" Jo whispered, stumbling forward. "Daddy?"
Jo, wait--
She reached him, close enough to see the blond stubble on his cheek, his eyes dark brown like hers, welling with tears. He looked exactly like the last night she saw him. "Daddy, how did you--"
"He killed me, Jo. That son of a bitch John killed me. Left me here to die, salted and burned my body like I was just some spirit."
"I don't understand."
"I've been holding on this whole time. No place to go from here but hell. Been waiting for you to help me out -- I knew you'd come."
"I'm gonna fix it, Daddy, I'm closing the Gate."
"No!" He thrashed violently, sending tree branches down to spark against others. "If you do it'll suck me right in. You gotta take me out of here, Jo."
Jo, stop this, it's a trick.
Her shotgun with the rock salt cartridges was propped against the wall in her room at the Hyperion. But it was just a flicker of an image rather than a thought, and she wasn't even sure it came from her. The sounds of the fighting floated toward her from further upriver, but it was background noise, nothing to do with her.
"Jo, help me," her father said. "It hurts so much."
Her hands were already burning, so she reached out to wrap her arms around him and pull him off the fire. He touched her face, warm hands cradling her just as if they were living, his beautiful smile. William Anthony Harvelle. "I knew you'd come and save me, Jo, I've been waiting so long."
She helped him into the river, washing the flames away.
"I missed you, Dad," Jo said, cradling him in her arms.
"Missed you too, babe."
Jo, Willow tried again. Jo, when you lose people, you lose them. They don't come back like this. You have to let them go.
She knew that, dammit, knew all about spirits and their ways, and she knew it a hell of a lot better than some girl thousands of miles away who for all her magic powers and shit had probably never met a real spirit in her life. She thought of a wall, concrete and thick, and slammed it down between them, silencing Willow in mid-thought.
"Take me away from here," her father said. And that was all he wanted -- he was dead, had been for over half her life, no denying that. But he wasn't just some stupid crazy spirit that missed its chance to leave. Her dad had a reason for staying, and all he wanted now was for her to help get him where he was supposed to go.
"Don't worry," Jo said, "I got you." She helped him onto his feet, draped his arm across her shoulders and propped him up. Together they waded back toward the riverbank.
"Goin' somewhere, blondie?"
Faith was standing by the burning pyre, bloody and battered, looking at her with a shrewd expression.
"This is my dad," Jo tried to explain. "I gotta help him."
Faith didn't even spare him a glance. "That ain't your dad."
"It's his spirit -- close enough."
"Jo." Quick as lightning, quick as magic, Faith reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Don't make me have to stop you."
"If he stays here when I close the Gate, it'll take him. I have to get him out of here."
"Where the hell do you think he came from?"
Jo tried and failed to shake her hand off. "I'll be back to finish the job once he's safe."
"The fuck? There are slayers dying right now and the only reason they're here to begin with is 'cause of you and you are not gonna have some personal freakout in the middle of it."
"Fuck you, get the fuck off me." She turned, clumsy beneath her father's weight, unwrapping her arm from around his waist to pull out his knife, wanting only to cut, just enough to make her lose her grip. But Faith knew Jo by now, and her reflexes were better. She shoved Jo away, took the knife and had it pointed directly at her by the time Jo regained her balance.
"I will fucking kill you myself if more people die because of you. Open your goddamn eyes and let him go."
"Jo," her father said, "don't leave me here."
She started shaking her head, communicating silently with Faith. Please understand. Please.
Faith's expression changed, but it wasn't sympathy. It was realization, followed by resolve. Jo only just had time to shout, "Don't--" before Faith grabbed her father, spun him around and held him in front of her, the knife pressed to his throat. "Do the fucking spell, Jo," Faith said.
Jo stared. The blade was touching his skin, and he was talking, pleading, "Jo, help me, get me out of here," his eyes locked with hers. And the blade was touching his skin, pure iron, and it kept touching, and nothing was happening to him, nothing at all.
"You're not a spirit," Jo said, wooden. "You're not him."
"Jo, I'm your father, you've got to save me, Jo --"
"You're not him!" she shouted. "You're not! You're nothing!"
The thing that looked like her father burst into flames, sending Faith stumbling backward.
"Oh, God," Jo breathed. Legs suddenly watery, she collapsed onto her knees. "I--"
"Like I fucking said, freak out later." Faith pulled her to her feet again and led her back to the circle of incantation. "How many times I gotta tell you the job doesn't wait?"
"I'm sorry," Jo said. "Jesus."
"Don't think he's listening. And I'll accept your damn apology later. We got work to do."
She didn't know how to get Willow back, but the runic progression was so embedded in her memory that she could have said it in her sleep. She started the chant from the beginning, losing herself in the structure, forgetting for a moment how she had almost given it all up. As the magic grabbed hold of her again, Faith gasped. She took in the flames engulfing Jo's hands and shook her head, closing her eyes briefly.
"Go and fight," Jo said. "I got this."
Faith nodded and turned back. Jo watched her disappear into the crush of women and demons.
Above her, the rip began to pulse. She held her hands over it, exploring how the energies matched, the way they hooked into each other, pushed and pulled with a certain tension. The Gate resisted her, but she was channeling a power as elemental as the natural forces that had created the opening: this magic allowed her to revise it, rewrite it, recreate the world in its place. She was connected to the very fabric of reality -- deeper, even. No wonder then that Willow had worried for her safety. The sheer scope of it dazzled her, the dark depth of it made her recoil. She wanted to let it go as soon as she touched it, or hold onto it forever.
But, as Faith had said, she had work to do.
Jo closed her hands into two fists, and just like that, the rip vanished. A roar went up in the night, as all the creatures connected with the Gate reeled from the backlash.
Third and final stage: locking the door. Jo paused, collecting Willow and Andrew's instructions from her memory. She saw, with the power running through her veins now, how she could do it faster than their way. She had magic in her now, stronger than any of the others; she need only flex her will and it would be finished. But she thought of all the things she'd learned and been before she ever set foot at Devil's Gate, thought of the knife against her father's throat, or whatever that thing had been, and she decided to follow the rules she'd been given instead of trying to make her own.
The third candle had just blown out when Angel came limping toward her, sword propped on his shoulder, flat side down. He helped her to her feet, held her up until she got strength in her legs again and could stand on her own. "Good work," he said. Behind him, up the river, she saw that the fight was mostly over. More slayers left standing than demons, anyway.
When the dizziness passed, she busied herself smearing the incantation circle out of the mud with her boot. "Faith?"
"Rounding everyone up."
She let the relief wash over her, filling the place she'd allotted for the worry she hadn't actually let herself feel. "Did we have heavy losses?"
"Yes," he said quietly.
"Is she okay?"
"I don't know. I think so." Angel paused. "Are you?"
She dragged her foot across the spiky rune for cyl, sweeping away its existence as if she'd just stomped on an insect. There was nothing left now but the blurry outline of the circle. "No," she said finally. "I'm not okay."
She gathered up the three candles, broke them in half, and threw them into the laughing river. Angel didn't say anything, didn't touch her, didn't try to make eye contact: all good choices, because she would've -- well, she didn't know what she would have done, if he'd done something different. Just knew she was glad he hadn't. Instead they walked together, silently, back toward the others.
*
The division spent days putting itself back together. The Hyperion was a house that had been gutted, too empty in the mornings, too quiet at night, even before the slayers left for their patrols. Jo had only been there for a blink of an eye compared to everyone else, but still, she saw all the empty spots, felt the loss of people she'd never gotten a chance to speak to, the ache they left behind. It was palpable, something the entire group felt and echoed back in on itself, amplified by each girl like voices in a chorus.
Jo thought about hiding, and even did so for a day, lying in her bed staring for hours at the devil's trap on her ceiling. Hiding was easier than dealing. Easier than talking to people about two thirds of Squad 10, or half of Squad 6. Or about Melanie. Or Hilary. Or Maria.
But then she woke up to find Faith stretching out next to her, as easily as if she slept in Jo's room every morning, yawning and throwing one arm over her eyes to block out the rising sun. She didn't even acknowledge it when Jo stiffened and took a breath to speak, just fell right to sleep, giving Jo nothing to defend against but peaceful, even breathing.
When she woke again, Faith was already up, sitting on the ledge of the open window, whittling a stake. The wood shavings scattered to the street below, probably startling normal Angelenos just going about their day. "Get dressed," Faith said. "We got another debriefing in twenty minutes. Buffy wants to talk to you."
Jo didn't ask if Faith had told her what happened with her father. She figured Willow would have, anyway.
She took a shower, washing off the fitful sleep, walked out naked into her room and pulled on some clean clothes without even bothering to towel off or comb her hair. "Come on," Faith said, and led her downstairs.
Buffy's face was grave, her voice hard. "You messed up," she said. "Or maybe we messed up, because we didn't fully realize how much of a weakness your father was. But either way, you put everyone in danger."
Angel crossed his arms. "We were in danger anyway."
"And that's why this was so serious. We can't have someone working for us who might be a liability in a crisis."
"It was a pretty personal liability," Willow said. "I mean, I don't think this is something that would happen again, right, Jo?"
"Right," Jo said, her voice hoarse.
Buffy was unmoved. "How can you guarantee that?"
"She doesn't have to," Faith said. "You're supposed to trust, B. She's not the only person in this conversation who's done wrong."
"Then I want a promise."
All eyes looked to Jo. Jo cleared her throat. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I won't do it again."
Buffy didn't answer for a long time, and Jo wondered if she'd been expected to give a speech or something, make some eloquent plea that was supposed to convince Buffy that her regret was sincere, that she wanted this job, this place in the division with these people she hadn't even known existed a month ago. But she wasn't even sure of all that herself, really. All she knew was there was more grief filling the hotel than anything else, and it hadn't been that way before she'd arrived.
"Okay," Buffy said finally. "Then don't do it again."
The rest of the call was for administrative things, re-arranging the squadrons, the ripple effect on the rest of the city's demonic activity, the progress of the wounded. Jo slipped out of the office, letting Faith and Angel handle it.
She met Shandee in the lobby, and let herself be enveloped by a fierce hug, all skinny arms and long thin torso and voice muffled in Jo's hair, rendering her no-doubt smartass comments unintelligible. "Glad you're okay," Jo whispered, interrupting her. She felt her eyes pricking, tried to swallow it, and then just let it all come out. Shandee just kept holding her as if she'd expected it, stroking out the tangles in Jo's hair.
"So what did God say?" Shandee asked, when Jo finally dried up. "You staying?"
"She said I can if I want."
Shandee raised an eyebrow. "You're saying that like maybe you don't."
"Wouldn't you think twice about it, if you were me? If I hadn't -- hell, if I hadn't come here in the first place, all those girls, Mel, Hilary--"
"Would have gotten her reckless ass killed by something sooner or later. And Mel was gettin' old and slow, and Maria should've stayed in the infirmary, and everybody else was just -- it was their time. Don't be playing the blame game, Jo. It's beneath you. Hell, if you were moping like this for me instead of them, I'd come back as one of your ghosty things just to beat your ass."
Jo shook her head.
"Come on, girl, what'd I say to you when we first met? You got the call. This is what you're supposed to do."
"I can still hunt by myself, you know. Did that for years, even, and nobody got hurt but me."
"Yeah, but you had it all wrong then. You got peoples, now. And better for it, too."
"And you're better for it?"
"Hell, yeah. All we were doing before was playing D. You think Faith would've had the balls to take on that Gate, like, ever? You think Angel would've ever gotten off his broody ass? Anyway, did anybody actually tell you you're bringing us down? And don't say Buffy -- grumpy bitch don't count."
"Fine, no, I'm moping solo, but still--"
"Nope. You gotta trust, blondie."
Which was what Faith had said to Buffy about her, not thirty minutes ago. She felt the motherfucking tears start up again. Tried to speak, hated the way her breath shivered as she drew in, and just shook her head again.
Shandee grinned, oblivious to Jo's complete inability to string two words together. "So look, if you end up moving into Faith's room, which by the way Jamie owes me like fifty bucks for that, can I have yours?"
*
She didn't move into Faith's room, not quite, but she did spend a fair amount of time there, learning her way around sex, learning her way around Faith. They didn't talk much about anything big, but the night after the memorial service, after several minutes of Jo lying on her side and trying to sniffle quietly into her pillow, Faith said, "Christ. Get over here." And she wrapped Jo up in a full body hug, arms and legs, Jo's face tucked into her neck, wetting the throbbing beat of Faith's pulse with her tears.
"I keep fucking doing this," Jo said.
"I haven't seen you do it."
"Well, it sucks and it gets old real fast."
"I'll be the judge of that." A flippant enough reply. It meant nothing and everything, even more than the fact that Faith didn't let go.
She didn't go back to her own room for almost a week, which was probably how Angel finally clued in enough to know where to find her. He seemed surprised to see her anyway, when she opened the door to his knock. "You and--? Really? But I thought you were a--"
She grinned. "Well, the past tense is right."
He gave her a small smile back. "I guess I'm happy for you?"
"Thanks."
"I just, uh, came to tell you I'm taking off for a few days. I'm driving up north to visit -- somebody."
"Yeah? Where?"
"Um, Palo Alto. Stanford, uh, specifically. I'm leaving tonight, so I can get there before morning. But, I'll be back in a few days, though," he said again.
"Sounds cool."
"Yeah. I hope so."
She walked him down to the street, where the Plymouth sat parked by the curb. "You already say goodbye to everyone else?"
"Yeah. They're doing patrol assignments now, so I figured I'd come find you."
"I'm glad you did. Drive safe, okay?" And it occurred to her suddenly that this was probably the first time in years he'd be away from the hotel for more than a night. She stepped forward and gave him a hug. Seemed to be working for her lately, anyway. And although she'd never really thought about hugging Angel before, it wasn't awkward at all: he hugged her back, long enough for her to feel his body warm up, taking in her own heat.
"You be safe, too." He let go of her, got in the car, and drove off. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk and watched as his taillights faded out down the long straight length of Wilshire Boulevard. Then she turned and pushed the courtyard gate open.
"Jo."
She whipped around. And there stood Dean Winchester, and a little ways down the street behind him, leaning against their own black classic car, was his brother Sam.
Dean gave her one of his stupid grins. "How you been?"
She found her voice. "Jesus, did my mom send you?"
He didn't even try to front. "She said she hadn't heard from you, and we were already in town for a case, so. Ash tracked down your address from -- well, I didn't understand what exactly he said, but--"
"I talked to her not even two weeks ago."
"She said she had reason to be worried." Dean flicked his gaze down the street, where Angel had gone. "So -- does she? I mean, I never could trust a man who drove a Plymouth."
Jo felt a bubble of hysterical laughter building up in her throat. "We're just friends." But the girl inside -- well, her I might have to fight you for. She looked past him at Sam, who quickly cut his eyes back over to some innocuous thing on the other side of the street. "Your brother too scared to talk to me or something?"
"Maybe a little."
She rolled her eyes and called out to Sam, "Hey, get down here. I won't bite."
Dean glanced back at Sam, then at her, uncertain. Sam unstuck himself from the side of the Impala and loped down toward them. His face was crumpled with worry. "Jo, I'm so--"
She smiled, showing teeth. "No hard feelings. So. You guys checked up on me. I'm alive, I'm safe, you can tell my mom I'll send her another postcard when I get around to it."
Dean stepped a bit closer, lips pouting some, his face simultanously concerned and gorgeous, like God had sculpted him just for women to admire. She felt her pulse stutter, thinking about whether or not to race. "She said you were talking about going to Devil's Gate."
"Yeah, I was. And I did."
He and Sam looked surprised. "By yourself?" Sam asked.
"Nope, I had some help."
When she didn't offer any other explanation, Dean grimaced. "Look. We never got a chance to talk to you about all of that. But as for what our dad did, I guess I just wanted to say--"
"Save it. I don't need it. Wasn't your fault, anyway."
"I just -- want to make it right. And I know Sammy does, too."
"Yeah," Sam agreed.
Maybe. Maybe they did actually think about it during those long stretches when they didn't see her, maybe it was something that ate at them the way it had eaten at her for years. But mostly she thought that any wrongs their father had done, unless they were confronted with the consequences directly, they didn't really think about them at all. She couldn't blame them for that -- it was the way most people dealt with life, even when it came to the wrongs they'd committed themselves. You had to move on. How else could you survive?
"It's okay," she said. "I don't need you to make it right for me. I did that myself."
She heard voices coming from the courtyard, and then the gate opened behind her, slayers spilling onto the sidewalk, heading out for their patrols. Some of them waved and called out to her, "Hey, Jo!" "See you in the morning, Jo!" before they formed up in squads and separated, running off into the night.
She glanced back at Dean and Sam -- Sam who had a surprised look on his face, and Dean who looked surprised with a helping of lustful on the side. She almost laughed. Had she really thought he was that different?
"It was good to see you guys again," she said, before they could start asking questions. "Give me a call if you're ever back in L.A. Me and my crew, we could show you some good hunting." And she left them standing there, and turned and walked back into the hotel.
Faith was just picking out a sword from the weapons cabinet when Jo came into the lobby. "Did you see Angel off?" she said, without even turning around.
"How'd you know it was me?"
"Slayer sense," Faith said, enigmatic.
Jo came up to her, stepping in under her sword arm, and kissed her thoroughly. "Next patrol, I want to come along. Okay? You did promise."
"Sure did. Tomorrow night, then." Faith leaned in for another kiss, as well as a lewd grope, wicked twinkle in her eye, then pulled away and headed for the door. "I'll be back in the morning."
"I'll be here," Jo said.
_____________________________
end
February 10, 2007
May 21, 2007
Notes: Devil's Gate Reservoir is a real place, to which I have never been, so any inaccuracies in its depiction are all mine. As described in this story, however, there are indeed some interesting and sad local legends surrounding it, easily Googled.
I cribbed the big closing spell from another ATS story of mine, "Theodicy," which I in turn cribbed from certain beliefs in Jewish mysticism. It's all there in Willow's explanation.
Finally, if you made it all the way through this Supernatural/Buffy story which really had very little to do with Dean, Sam, or Buffy, then let me just say: dude, thank you. I hope it was as fun to read as it was fun to write.
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
_____________________________
*
"We're going to do a thing," Willow said. "It's kind of scary, and Giles, you're gonna hate it. But I've had a ton of practice. I could do it in my sleep, even. Well, okay, it kind of requires me being in a meditative state bearing all the characteristics of sleep, but--"
"Will," Buffy interrupted. "Could you get to the actual explaining what it is part?"
Andrew sighed, long-suffering. "It's basically a bastardized combination of a channeling and enjoining spell that Rosenberg's been using to have psychic phone sex with her girlfriend."
Jo waited for the resulting uproar to die down. "Okay, want to explain that in words the normal person can understand?"
"Renee and I use it to communicate," Willow said. "It's sort of like a telepathic link, but deeper. I can feel what she's feeling, see what she's seeing -- nice, harmless things like that."
"Sex things," Andrew interjected.
"Yeah, I'm with the geek," Faith said. "That's pretty kinky, Will."
Jo didn't even have to catch Faith's wink at her -- the blush was already there.
Giles, frowning, ignored them all and said, "Renee isn't a witch. And you've been channeling yourself into her? What if she gained control over you and accessed your powers?"
"We don't even do it that much. It's just a way to be closer when the satellite connection isn't enough. Anyway, it's completely consensual. Nobody's controlling anybody!"
"So you want to use it on me," Jo said, "so I won't have to do the big spell alone."
"That's the idea. I'd sort of, guide you through it from inside your head. Like, um--"
"Like a puppet," Faith said. She'd lost her teasing tone.
"Or possession," Angel said.
Willow wilted a bit. "It's totally not like that. She wouldn't be doing anything she didn't want to do."
"Still sounds like bodysnatching." Faith shot Buffy a dark look. In her small window on the laptop screen, Buffy furrowed her brow.
"Any alternatives, Will?"
"I could telepor--"
"No," Giles said sharply, and on his heels were Xander and Andrew, a little more panicked. Buffy just continued to look troubled.
"O-kay, then, I guess there's always my frequent flyer miles. Or we could just let Jo do the spell by herself."
"I like the first option," Jo volunteered.
"Buffy?" Giles said.
She took her time answering. "The thing is, we need Will here for the rising tomorrow. But I don't want to wait another day on this mission, especially after the new casualties. Are you sure it's safe?"
"As a kitten," Willow said.
"Okay. Then tonight's the night. Los Angeles, you'll head out at sundown."
Jo tried to pay attention to the rest of the planning session, but her head was buzzing and she couldn't concentrate on anything except tonight, tonight. Eventually, Andrew complained that he needed enough time to doublecheck his verb conjugations, and the conference call broke up.
Buffy stopped just before logging off. "Faith. Some of the girls here, and some in the other divisions as well -- they've had dreams. Did yours report any?"
Faith just looked at her with an expression Jo couldn't read. "What do you think?"
"What about you?"
Faith had -- not meanly, exactly, but firmly -- sent Jo back to her room before either of them could fall asleep. "Five by five, B."
"Just like always," Buffy said.
"Just like. See you at the debriefing."
"You'd better. All three of you better." Buffy's window blinked out.
"Do you not want me to do it?" Jo asked quietly.
Faith got to her feet, chair legs scraping the floor with more force than any normal woman her size would be able to give it, her dark eyes communicating nothing. "Doesn't matter. We all gotta do the job, blondie." She didn't quite slam the office door on her way out, but Ash would have called it close enough for government work.
Angel, who'd been leaning against a bookshelf for the entire conference call, straightened and shot Jo a curious look. "Guess I'll...go make sure the weapons are still clean." He headed out the way Faith had gone.
Jo sighed and moved to hit the disconnect button which would turn off the satellite link.
But she didn't click. Her fingers hovered over the laptop's touchpad, and on the screen, the mouse arrow hovered over the disconnect. And still she didn't click.
The silence and solitude in the office seemed to shout at her, to call out for shattering.
She dialed another number.
"Girl, where you been?" Ash's image, created through his homemade webcam, was fuzzier than the ones that bounced over from Scotland and Italy and Kenya, but it was still Ash, his ugly face so familiar to her that she had to take a breath before she forgot to. He ran a hand through the top of his mullet. "Your mom's been asking me for updates and every time I'm like I don't know where'n hell she is, she gives me this look like she just can't wait to marinate my balls in tobasco sauce -- still attached." He shook his head, muttering, "Been weeks of that."
"I'm okay, Ash." Jo smiled. "I'm still in L.A., I'm with good people. See, they're all tech'd out, just like you."
"What, those ones from the magic store?"
"Yeah. And I want to tell you all about it, I mean, there's this whole other world going on that I don't think any hunter even knows about." He looked doubtful, and she had to suppress a wild giggle. "But I don't have time to go into it just now. I just -- can I talk to my mom?
His expression cleared. "You got it."
She sat fiddling with her father's knife while he went to fetch her mother, the screen transmitting the inside of his tornado-hit bedroom. She tried to think back -- she'd sent her last postcard almost four weeks ago, and it'd been months before that since she'd even heard her mother's voice. Too long since they'd been eye to eye. This was going to be brutal.
Then her mother came into the frame and sat down, and Jo put the knife away and leaned closer.
She was dressed in her robe -- of course, the time difference meant it was still early in Nebraska, and she'd probably been up late tending the bar. Her hair was mussed, her eyes a little puffy, but her sleep-soft face went stone cold as soon as she saw Jo.
"Hi, Mom."
Her mother's voice was perfectly, dangerously calm. "Joanna Beth."
"Okay. Before we start fighting, I have to tell you something. I know how Dad died. I know all of it." The way her mother's eyes widened, not so much curious as alarmed, told Jo all she needed about exactly how much she'd known and kept hidden. So be it, then. "I'm not mad at you for keeping it from me, leastways not anymore, because I know it must have been horrible for you to even think about much less try to tell me. But when I found out, I just had to do something. I had to see the place for myself."
"Are you trying to tell me you went there--"
"Mom, let me finish. Okay? Turns out it's a worse place than probably Dad or John Winchester ever knew. And I've found some people who're going to help me fix it. They're strong, good hunters, so I'm not alone, Mom. We can clean it up and make it right again."
"No." Her mother was shaking her head. "No, no, no, and no."
"And I don't want you to come out here to try and stop me again," Jo said, and her voice broke, broke like a door kicked open, she hadn't even known it was going to happen until it did. "This is my choice to do this, and every time you take that away from me--"
"Honey, you don't even understand what you'd be dealing with--"
"I do understand. More than you do, Mom, more even than Dad did. I mean, you keep trying to hide these things from me, but you can't keep me from my own damn life."
"I've already lost one too many people to that life and I am not losing you, too!"
"You don't get to make that choice for me. I'm sorry this scares you and I'm sorry it's not something safe like getting a college degree, but you can be angry at me forever or you can accept this and let me do what I need to do to make his death right."
"Jo, you can hunt all you want, all right? You're not livin' under my roof anymore. Go all around the country just like your dad and send postcards home whenever you feel like it. But you're not thinking with a clear head and I don't want you doing something this dangerous just because you can't stand that I didn't tell you the truth!"
"I told you, that's not what this is about."
"Isn't it? Honey, all I'm saying is, this rebellious stage of yours is gettin' a little long in the tooth."
"I'm sorry," Jo repeated. "I can't go through this with you again. I just called so you'd know what I was up to. Please don't hang up angry."
Her mother started to say something, stopped, pressed her knuckles to her mouth. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling the way it did when she was holding back tears, the way Jo's voice did when she was doing the same. "I'm not angry at you."
"I'll call you, okay? When this is all over."
Ellen reached her hand out, the pads of her fingers touching the screen on her side. "And if something happens to you?"
"Then I love you."
"Dammit, Joanna--"
"Tell Ash not to bother tracing the call. It's been scrambled." She took one last look, and part of it was waiting for her mother to say something, to finally give her what she wanted, but her mother just looked back at her, doing her own waiting.
Jo closed the connection.
*
She didn't get to see Faith again until just before the squads set out. The hotel was crazy with activity when she finally emerged from the office, girls rushing around getting weapons and orders from their squad leaders, Faith never in one place for longer than a few minutes. It didn't let up until just before sundown, when the squads began leaving for Devil's Gate, and by then Jo and Angel were bringing up the rearguard with Shandee and Melanie in Squad 25 again, and she thought Faith had already gone.
"What, no goodbye?" Jo muttered, collecting her papers and weapons. "Not even an inspirational speech for the troops?"
"Not really my style," Faith answered, behind her. "Let's go, blondie. You and me're riding in the Plymouth."
Somehow, Jo had never pictured Angel for a classic car type; she'd always thought of him as a medieval fish out of water, someone who made more sense wielding a broadsword and a battleaxe than an ignition key. But in a way she found it comforting: the familiar smells of oil and leather and age that told her the car came with a history and a carefully selected pedigree, that she had found yet another hunter who took pride in that kind of thing. Angel put the top down while Faith hopped into the back and Jo slid into the front, letting the engine rumble and thrum before floating the car down the city streets. They accelerated onto the freeway and headed east, the sky orange and purple behind them.
Faith was silent -- they all were, but Faith's silence spoke, so Jo didn't interrupt.
Next to her, Angel was big and solid but gave off no heat other than what he took from his surroundings, and yet the familiarity of him as Angel seemed to lessen the things about him that weren't human. Instead of seeing only what separated them, this time she felt as though she could contain their differences, deal with them at a distance and, following logically from that, defeat them. She clutched that newfound confidence tightly.
Willow was supposed to make contact with her at eight o'clock. She watched the hands on her wristwatch move inexorably closer to it, until it got so dark that she couldn't quite make them out anymore. They were almost at their exit, too close for comfort.
Then she felt it: a presence in her mind that was completely outside of herself. It was gentle, like a spirit's hand brushing her back, but still undeniable. She felt her mind recoil.
It's okay, she heard Willow say, as clearly as if it were her sitting beside Jo instead of Angel. Just relax, just give yourself time to get used to it.
It felt like she had to think about breathing, like she couldn't do it automatically anymore. She turned panicked eyes on Angel. "Is it Willow?" he asked. When she nodded, he looked away from the road for a moment and peered straight into her, as if he could actually see Willow there. He took her hand in his cold one.
She felt a flutter of...emotion, memory, an image accompanied by sensation: Angel hugging her in the lobby of the Hyperion. Only, not her, not Jo, but -- Willow. There were others standing behind Angel, watching them, and she knew their faces and their names: Wesley Gunn Fred Lorne. And when she and Angel broke the embrace and she turned to leave, she saw Faith waiting for her beside the door. Just the sight of her, despite their history, made her feel that the world was an ordered place again, that things were coming together, falling into place, that maybe Buffy could actually win this--
"Whoa." Jo reeled, gripping the door handle.
"The hell?" Faith said from the backseat, knife-edged.
Sorry, Willow said. We just need to figure out the balance and the boundaries of this. Takes a little practice. Here, maybe this'll help.
She felt Willow send her another image/sensation, this time of Willow herself, sitting peacefully on her bed in what Jo suddenly understood was Scotland, the upstairs bedroom of the little country cottage she shared with Buffy and Dawn and whoever else happened to be planning battles with them. It was still dark out in the UK, but with that deep purple quality that meant the sun was coming.
She felt the mental equivalent of goosebumps. She looked down at her arms: nope, physically there, too. Christ, this was weird.
Yeah, but still pretty cool, huh?
She didn't answer in words, but tried to send Willow a sense of calm that she didn't quite feel, drawing the emotion from the image of Willow sleeping, echoing the sensation back to her.
Hey! Check you out! You're getting it already.
Well, that was something. She sat back and breathed in the dry desert air. "I'm okay," she said. "Just...it's a weird feeling, is all."
"Sure it is, it's fucking unnatural," Faith griped.
"I can handle it."
"So far."
"We're almost there," Angel interrupted. He was already decelerating to enter the exit lane.
They were all -- Willow as well -- quiet until they reached the meeting point a half mile from the Devil's Gate, where half of the taskforce had assembled. The other half was on the other side of the ravine, set to descend at Faith's signal. Jo got out of the car, a little breathless at the sight of them all waiting beneath the shadowy trees, dozens and dozens of girls armed for asskicking.
Pretty awesome, huh? Willow said, and sent her: Buffy at the front of her own army, striding forward into battle.
"Everyone accounted for?" Faith asked. She got a round of confirmations from each squad leader, their voices clear in the night. "Who checked in with the other side? Any traffic jams over there?"
Melanie stepped up. "All accounted for."
Faith nodded. "Okay, let's head."
As one, they started jogging toward the edge of the ravine.
"Hey girl," Shandee said, coming up alongside Jo, breathing easy. "Nervous?"
"Little bit."
"Don't even worry about it. You're gonna rock that magic mojo shit. Just get it done quick, okay? We want to be picking off stragglers, not whatever manages to get out before you lock the door."
"Yeah, I hear you."
The first slayers swept over the ridge without stopping. Jo looked around and saw that Faith was already among them, and Angel with his sword raised. Shandee flashed her one last grin and sped ahead to catch up, her long legs consuming the distance.
Just you and me, Jo thought, and felt Willow send her some calm.
She scrambled down to the bottom in a diagonal direction, toward the laughing river and the rock shaped like a devil's head. Across the ravine she could hear the warcries of the other side hurtling down, and from the bottom she could hear sounds of fighting already, snarls and shouts -- goddamn things must've been waiting down there the whole time. She tuned it out, focused on her task.
Kneeling in the wet mud of the riverbank, just on the edge of all the action, she took out her father's knife and cut the circle of incantation right into the earth. She drew in each rune the way Willow and Andrew had instructed her, Willow occasionally interjecting small corrections over their link. She remembered sketching the devil's traps around the hotel with Angel, setting cages down in every corridor. Now she was drawing a door she was about to close.
When she finished, she washed the blade in the river and wiped it dry on her jeans, then set up the three black tapers in the middle of the circle and lit them, one by one. Her hands were steady as anything.
Okay, Willow said. Looks good. Now, I know you remember the runic progression, but I'll be chanting with you the whole time. So if you get lost, if something distracts you, just listen to me. Okay? I won't stop.
"Okay," Jo said out loud. And fuck, there it was, her voice shaking like a rag doll. She swallowed and stepped into the circle, kneeling again in front of the burning candles, tilting her head back to look at the stars.
First the manifestation.
She chanted the words, Willow's voice echoing just beneath hers: "Mogesh hartha kana yol..."
The first flame blinked out, and at the same time a swirl of fire expanded out of the sky into a long, ragged dark patch blacker than the night. The flames outlined the borders of the darkness, clearly illuminating the rip between the dimensions: the Devil's Gate.
Jesus, she had created an opening to hell. Never mind that it had already been there -- she'd made it visible and now there it was, existing and completely undeniable. The sounds of fighting paused as everyone looked up at the fiery tear, but it was only the length of a breath. Hurry, Willow said, this magic's gonna call every big and little bad in a ten-mile radius, and we don't even know what else will come out of there.
"Dragons," Jo breathed, but only because the dragons had already arrived, swooping out of the trees, more from the opening itself. Screams pealed out all along the river, and it was just like before, just like that night, only worse: somewhere out there, Faith and Angel and Shandee and Petra and Hilary and Mel, everyone -- they were all fighting, and the things just kept swarming out of the darkness, unstoppable.
You can't think about that. Gotta focus. C'mon, Jo.
She steeled herself. Next, the mending. The runic progression, writing the opening out of existence.
The runes, uttered in her human voice, were guttural, awkward in her attempt to wield a non-human power. "Cycthus. Cyl, thirah, semrot. Sehl, thirhar, cylthe. Thoce, silhar, cehm." She chanted them over and over, the variations increasingly more complex, Willow's voice a guiding track.
Suddenly, a bolt of something dark and ancient slammed through her, yanking her head back, thrusting her body rigid. Everything...sharpened. The stars, the tree branches, the fire, the screams.
There it is, Willow murmured, my old friend. Oh, Jo, we shouldn't have let you do this.
Jo reached her hand out toward the stars. It was burning, flames licking each finger, but there was no pain, no heat. She moved her hand so that it covered the rip in the sky, the two fires overlapping.
"Jo!" someone shouted. "Jo, baby, don't."
She looked down the river. There was a man lying on a pile of tree branches, draped and broken, burning alive.
"What--" Jo whispered, stumbling forward. "Daddy?"
Jo, wait--
She reached him, close enough to see the blond stubble on his cheek, his eyes dark brown like hers, welling with tears. He looked exactly like the last night she saw him. "Daddy, how did you--"
"He killed me, Jo. That son of a bitch John killed me. Left me here to die, salted and burned my body like I was just some spirit."
"I don't understand."
"I've been holding on this whole time. No place to go from here but hell. Been waiting for you to help me out -- I knew you'd come."
"I'm gonna fix it, Daddy, I'm closing the Gate."
"No!" He thrashed violently, sending tree branches down to spark against others. "If you do it'll suck me right in. You gotta take me out of here, Jo."
Jo, stop this, it's a trick.
Her shotgun with the rock salt cartridges was propped against the wall in her room at the Hyperion. But it was just a flicker of an image rather than a thought, and she wasn't even sure it came from her. The sounds of the fighting floated toward her from further upriver, but it was background noise, nothing to do with her.
"Jo, help me," her father said. "It hurts so much."
Her hands were already burning, so she reached out to wrap her arms around him and pull him off the fire. He touched her face, warm hands cradling her just as if they were living, his beautiful smile. William Anthony Harvelle. "I knew you'd come and save me, Jo, I've been waiting so long."
She helped him into the river, washing the flames away.
"I missed you, Dad," Jo said, cradling him in her arms.
"Missed you too, babe."
Jo, Willow tried again. Jo, when you lose people, you lose them. They don't come back like this. You have to let them go.
She knew that, dammit, knew all about spirits and their ways, and she knew it a hell of a lot better than some girl thousands of miles away who for all her magic powers and shit had probably never met a real spirit in her life. She thought of a wall, concrete and thick, and slammed it down between them, silencing Willow in mid-thought.
"Take me away from here," her father said. And that was all he wanted -- he was dead, had been for over half her life, no denying that. But he wasn't just some stupid crazy spirit that missed its chance to leave. Her dad had a reason for staying, and all he wanted now was for her to help get him where he was supposed to go.
"Don't worry," Jo said, "I got you." She helped him onto his feet, draped his arm across her shoulders and propped him up. Together they waded back toward the riverbank.
"Goin' somewhere, blondie?"
Faith was standing by the burning pyre, bloody and battered, looking at her with a shrewd expression.
"This is my dad," Jo tried to explain. "I gotta help him."
Faith didn't even spare him a glance. "That ain't your dad."
"It's his spirit -- close enough."
"Jo." Quick as lightning, quick as magic, Faith reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Don't make me have to stop you."
"If he stays here when I close the Gate, it'll take him. I have to get him out of here."
"Where the hell do you think he came from?"
Jo tried and failed to shake her hand off. "I'll be back to finish the job once he's safe."
"The fuck? There are slayers dying right now and the only reason they're here to begin with is 'cause of you and you are not gonna have some personal freakout in the middle of it."
"Fuck you, get the fuck off me." She turned, clumsy beneath her father's weight, unwrapping her arm from around his waist to pull out his knife, wanting only to cut, just enough to make her lose her grip. But Faith knew Jo by now, and her reflexes were better. She shoved Jo away, took the knife and had it pointed directly at her by the time Jo regained her balance.
"I will fucking kill you myself if more people die because of you. Open your goddamn eyes and let him go."
"Jo," her father said, "don't leave me here."
She started shaking her head, communicating silently with Faith. Please understand. Please.
Faith's expression changed, but it wasn't sympathy. It was realization, followed by resolve. Jo only just had time to shout, "Don't--" before Faith grabbed her father, spun him around and held him in front of her, the knife pressed to his throat. "Do the fucking spell, Jo," Faith said.
Jo stared. The blade was touching his skin, and he was talking, pleading, "Jo, help me, get me out of here," his eyes locked with hers. And the blade was touching his skin, pure iron, and it kept touching, and nothing was happening to him, nothing at all.
"You're not a spirit," Jo said, wooden. "You're not him."
"Jo, I'm your father, you've got to save me, Jo --"
"You're not him!" she shouted. "You're not! You're nothing!"
The thing that looked like her father burst into flames, sending Faith stumbling backward.
"Oh, God," Jo breathed. Legs suddenly watery, she collapsed onto her knees. "I--"
"Like I fucking said, freak out later." Faith pulled her to her feet again and led her back to the circle of incantation. "How many times I gotta tell you the job doesn't wait?"
"I'm sorry," Jo said. "Jesus."
"Don't think he's listening. And I'll accept your damn apology later. We got work to do."
She didn't know how to get Willow back, but the runic progression was so embedded in her memory that she could have said it in her sleep. She started the chant from the beginning, losing herself in the structure, forgetting for a moment how she had almost given it all up. As the magic grabbed hold of her again, Faith gasped. She took in the flames engulfing Jo's hands and shook her head, closing her eyes briefly.
"Go and fight," Jo said. "I got this."
Faith nodded and turned back. Jo watched her disappear into the crush of women and demons.
Above her, the rip began to pulse. She held her hands over it, exploring how the energies matched, the way they hooked into each other, pushed and pulled with a certain tension. The Gate resisted her, but she was channeling a power as elemental as the natural forces that had created the opening: this magic allowed her to revise it, rewrite it, recreate the world in its place. She was connected to the very fabric of reality -- deeper, even. No wonder then that Willow had worried for her safety. The sheer scope of it dazzled her, the dark depth of it made her recoil. She wanted to let it go as soon as she touched it, or hold onto it forever.
But, as Faith had said, she had work to do.
Jo closed her hands into two fists, and just like that, the rip vanished. A roar went up in the night, as all the creatures connected with the Gate reeled from the backlash.
Third and final stage: locking the door. Jo paused, collecting Willow and Andrew's instructions from her memory. She saw, with the power running through her veins now, how she could do it faster than their way. She had magic in her now, stronger than any of the others; she need only flex her will and it would be finished. But she thought of all the things she'd learned and been before she ever set foot at Devil's Gate, thought of the knife against her father's throat, or whatever that thing had been, and she decided to follow the rules she'd been given instead of trying to make her own.
The third candle had just blown out when Angel came limping toward her, sword propped on his shoulder, flat side down. He helped her to her feet, held her up until she got strength in her legs again and could stand on her own. "Good work," he said. Behind him, up the river, she saw that the fight was mostly over. More slayers left standing than demons, anyway.
When the dizziness passed, she busied herself smearing the incantation circle out of the mud with her boot. "Faith?"
"Rounding everyone up."
She let the relief wash over her, filling the place she'd allotted for the worry she hadn't actually let herself feel. "Did we have heavy losses?"
"Yes," he said quietly.
"Is she okay?"
"I don't know. I think so." Angel paused. "Are you?"
She dragged her foot across the spiky rune for cyl, sweeping away its existence as if she'd just stomped on an insect. There was nothing left now but the blurry outline of the circle. "No," she said finally. "I'm not okay."
She gathered up the three candles, broke them in half, and threw them into the laughing river. Angel didn't say anything, didn't touch her, didn't try to make eye contact: all good choices, because she would've -- well, she didn't know what she would have done, if he'd done something different. Just knew she was glad he hadn't. Instead they walked together, silently, back toward the others.
*
The division spent days putting itself back together. The Hyperion was a house that had been gutted, too empty in the mornings, too quiet at night, even before the slayers left for their patrols. Jo had only been there for a blink of an eye compared to everyone else, but still, she saw all the empty spots, felt the loss of people she'd never gotten a chance to speak to, the ache they left behind. It was palpable, something the entire group felt and echoed back in on itself, amplified by each girl like voices in a chorus.
Jo thought about hiding, and even did so for a day, lying in her bed staring for hours at the devil's trap on her ceiling. Hiding was easier than dealing. Easier than talking to people about two thirds of Squad 10, or half of Squad 6. Or about Melanie. Or Hilary. Or Maria.
But then she woke up to find Faith stretching out next to her, as easily as if she slept in Jo's room every morning, yawning and throwing one arm over her eyes to block out the rising sun. She didn't even acknowledge it when Jo stiffened and took a breath to speak, just fell right to sleep, giving Jo nothing to defend against but peaceful, even breathing.
When she woke again, Faith was already up, sitting on the ledge of the open window, whittling a stake. The wood shavings scattered to the street below, probably startling normal Angelenos just going about their day. "Get dressed," Faith said. "We got another debriefing in twenty minutes. Buffy wants to talk to you."
Jo didn't ask if Faith had told her what happened with her father. She figured Willow would have, anyway.
She took a shower, washing off the fitful sleep, walked out naked into her room and pulled on some clean clothes without even bothering to towel off or comb her hair. "Come on," Faith said, and led her downstairs.
Buffy's face was grave, her voice hard. "You messed up," she said. "Or maybe we messed up, because we didn't fully realize how much of a weakness your father was. But either way, you put everyone in danger."
Angel crossed his arms. "We were in danger anyway."
"And that's why this was so serious. We can't have someone working for us who might be a liability in a crisis."
"It was a pretty personal liability," Willow said. "I mean, I don't think this is something that would happen again, right, Jo?"
"Right," Jo said, her voice hoarse.
Buffy was unmoved. "How can you guarantee that?"
"She doesn't have to," Faith said. "You're supposed to trust, B. She's not the only person in this conversation who's done wrong."
"Then I want a promise."
All eyes looked to Jo. Jo cleared her throat. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I won't do it again."
Buffy didn't answer for a long time, and Jo wondered if she'd been expected to give a speech or something, make some eloquent plea that was supposed to convince Buffy that her regret was sincere, that she wanted this job, this place in the division with these people she hadn't even known existed a month ago. But she wasn't even sure of all that herself, really. All she knew was there was more grief filling the hotel than anything else, and it hadn't been that way before she'd arrived.
"Okay," Buffy said finally. "Then don't do it again."
The rest of the call was for administrative things, re-arranging the squadrons, the ripple effect on the rest of the city's demonic activity, the progress of the wounded. Jo slipped out of the office, letting Faith and Angel handle it.
She met Shandee in the lobby, and let herself be enveloped by a fierce hug, all skinny arms and long thin torso and voice muffled in Jo's hair, rendering her no-doubt smartass comments unintelligible. "Glad you're okay," Jo whispered, interrupting her. She felt her eyes pricking, tried to swallow it, and then just let it all come out. Shandee just kept holding her as if she'd expected it, stroking out the tangles in Jo's hair.
"So what did God say?" Shandee asked, when Jo finally dried up. "You staying?"
"She said I can if I want."
Shandee raised an eyebrow. "You're saying that like maybe you don't."
"Wouldn't you think twice about it, if you were me? If I hadn't -- hell, if I hadn't come here in the first place, all those girls, Mel, Hilary--"
"Would have gotten her reckless ass killed by something sooner or later. And Mel was gettin' old and slow, and Maria should've stayed in the infirmary, and everybody else was just -- it was their time. Don't be playing the blame game, Jo. It's beneath you. Hell, if you were moping like this for me instead of them, I'd come back as one of your ghosty things just to beat your ass."
Jo shook her head.
"Come on, girl, what'd I say to you when we first met? You got the call. This is what you're supposed to do."
"I can still hunt by myself, you know. Did that for years, even, and nobody got hurt but me."
"Yeah, but you had it all wrong then. You got peoples, now. And better for it, too."
"And you're better for it?"
"Hell, yeah. All we were doing before was playing D. You think Faith would've had the balls to take on that Gate, like, ever? You think Angel would've ever gotten off his broody ass? Anyway, did anybody actually tell you you're bringing us down? And don't say Buffy -- grumpy bitch don't count."
"Fine, no, I'm moping solo, but still--"
"Nope. You gotta trust, blondie."
Which was what Faith had said to Buffy about her, not thirty minutes ago. She felt the motherfucking tears start up again. Tried to speak, hated the way her breath shivered as she drew in, and just shook her head again.
Shandee grinned, oblivious to Jo's complete inability to string two words together. "So look, if you end up moving into Faith's room, which by the way Jamie owes me like fifty bucks for that, can I have yours?"
*
She didn't move into Faith's room, not quite, but she did spend a fair amount of time there, learning her way around sex, learning her way around Faith. They didn't talk much about anything big, but the night after the memorial service, after several minutes of Jo lying on her side and trying to sniffle quietly into her pillow, Faith said, "Christ. Get over here." And she wrapped Jo up in a full body hug, arms and legs, Jo's face tucked into her neck, wetting the throbbing beat of Faith's pulse with her tears.
"I keep fucking doing this," Jo said.
"I haven't seen you do it."
"Well, it sucks and it gets old real fast."
"I'll be the judge of that." A flippant enough reply. It meant nothing and everything, even more than the fact that Faith didn't let go.
She didn't go back to her own room for almost a week, which was probably how Angel finally clued in enough to know where to find her. He seemed surprised to see her anyway, when she opened the door to his knock. "You and--? Really? But I thought you were a--"
She grinned. "Well, the past tense is right."
He gave her a small smile back. "I guess I'm happy for you?"
"Thanks."
"I just, uh, came to tell you I'm taking off for a few days. I'm driving up north to visit -- somebody."
"Yeah? Where?"
"Um, Palo Alto. Stanford, uh, specifically. I'm leaving tonight, so I can get there before morning. But, I'll be back in a few days, though," he said again.
"Sounds cool."
"Yeah. I hope so."
She walked him down to the street, where the Plymouth sat parked by the curb. "You already say goodbye to everyone else?"
"Yeah. They're doing patrol assignments now, so I figured I'd come find you."
"I'm glad you did. Drive safe, okay?" And it occurred to her suddenly that this was probably the first time in years he'd be away from the hotel for more than a night. She stepped forward and gave him a hug. Seemed to be working for her lately, anyway. And although she'd never really thought about hugging Angel before, it wasn't awkward at all: he hugged her back, long enough for her to feel his body warm up, taking in her own heat.
"You be safe, too." He let go of her, got in the car, and drove off. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk and watched as his taillights faded out down the long straight length of Wilshire Boulevard. Then she turned and pushed the courtyard gate open.
"Jo."
She whipped around. And there stood Dean Winchester, and a little ways down the street behind him, leaning against their own black classic car, was his brother Sam.
Dean gave her one of his stupid grins. "How you been?"
She found her voice. "Jesus, did my mom send you?"
He didn't even try to front. "She said she hadn't heard from you, and we were already in town for a case, so. Ash tracked down your address from -- well, I didn't understand what exactly he said, but--"
"I talked to her not even two weeks ago."
"She said she had reason to be worried." Dean flicked his gaze down the street, where Angel had gone. "So -- does she? I mean, I never could trust a man who drove a Plymouth."
Jo felt a bubble of hysterical laughter building up in her throat. "We're just friends." But the girl inside -- well, her I might have to fight you for. She looked past him at Sam, who quickly cut his eyes back over to some innocuous thing on the other side of the street. "Your brother too scared to talk to me or something?"
"Maybe a little."
She rolled her eyes and called out to Sam, "Hey, get down here. I won't bite."
Dean glanced back at Sam, then at her, uncertain. Sam unstuck himself from the side of the Impala and loped down toward them. His face was crumpled with worry. "Jo, I'm so--"
She smiled, showing teeth. "No hard feelings. So. You guys checked up on me. I'm alive, I'm safe, you can tell my mom I'll send her another postcard when I get around to it."
Dean stepped a bit closer, lips pouting some, his face simultanously concerned and gorgeous, like God had sculpted him just for women to admire. She felt her pulse stutter, thinking about whether or not to race. "She said you were talking about going to Devil's Gate."
"Yeah, I was. And I did."
He and Sam looked surprised. "By yourself?" Sam asked.
"Nope, I had some help."
When she didn't offer any other explanation, Dean grimaced. "Look. We never got a chance to talk to you about all of that. But as for what our dad did, I guess I just wanted to say--"
"Save it. I don't need it. Wasn't your fault, anyway."
"I just -- want to make it right. And I know Sammy does, too."
"Yeah," Sam agreed.
Maybe. Maybe they did actually think about it during those long stretches when they didn't see her, maybe it was something that ate at them the way it had eaten at her for years. But mostly she thought that any wrongs their father had done, unless they were confronted with the consequences directly, they didn't really think about them at all. She couldn't blame them for that -- it was the way most people dealt with life, even when it came to the wrongs they'd committed themselves. You had to move on. How else could you survive?
"It's okay," she said. "I don't need you to make it right for me. I did that myself."
She heard voices coming from the courtyard, and then the gate opened behind her, slayers spilling onto the sidewalk, heading out for their patrols. Some of them waved and called out to her, "Hey, Jo!" "See you in the morning, Jo!" before they formed up in squads and separated, running off into the night.
She glanced back at Dean and Sam -- Sam who had a surprised look on his face, and Dean who looked surprised with a helping of lustful on the side. She almost laughed. Had she really thought he was that different?
"It was good to see you guys again," she said, before they could start asking questions. "Give me a call if you're ever back in L.A. Me and my crew, we could show you some good hunting." And she left them standing there, and turned and walked back into the hotel.
Faith was just picking out a sword from the weapons cabinet when Jo came into the lobby. "Did you see Angel off?" she said, without even turning around.
"How'd you know it was me?"
"Slayer sense," Faith said, enigmatic.
Jo came up to her, stepping in under her sword arm, and kissed her thoroughly. "Next patrol, I want to come along. Okay? You did promise."
"Sure did. Tomorrow night, then." Faith leaned in for another kiss, as well as a lewd grope, wicked twinkle in her eye, then pulled away and headed for the door. "I'll be back in the morning."
"I'll be here," Jo said.
_____________________________
end
February 10, 2007
May 21, 2007
Notes: Devil's Gate Reservoir is a real place, to which I have never been, so any inaccuracies in its depiction are all mine. As described in this story, however, there are indeed some interesting and sad local legends surrounding it, easily Googled.
I cribbed the big closing spell from another ATS story of mine, "Theodicy," which I in turn cribbed from certain beliefs in Jewish mysticism. It's all there in Willow's explanation.
Finally, if you made it all the way through this Supernatural/Buffy story which really had very little to do with Dean, Sam, or Buffy, then let me just say: dude, thank you. I hope it was as fun to read as it was fun to write.
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4