SPN/DCAU crossover fic: That I Could Just Be Brave
That I Could Just Be Brave
Jo Harvelle, Batgirl, and surprise guest stars, PG, 1,900 words
a/n: SPN/Batman: The Animated series crossover. SPN set during S4. For B:TAS, for those who are familiar with it, set early during the "Gotham Knights" seasons. Title from Florence + The Machine. Written for halfamoon 2010. Thank you to the awesome mtgat for the beta.
One victim used a chair to smash the window of their office on the twenty-second floor and jumped. One victim's body surfaced in the river. One announcer freaked out during a football game in the Knights' Dome, and shot himself during the fourth quarter. Another swerved their car on the Aparo Expressway, causing a three-car accident. The last one survived, barely, and Jo managed to get only a disjointed account about giant spiders from her.
She knew about all the legends, the tabloid stories, and that most hunters tended to avoid the area, but she'd only heard vague references and gossip. The string of incidents was exactly the kind of thing that set off her radar, and even the doubters conceded she was a good researcher and had a nose for this stuff.
Jo booked herself a room, started poking around, and found that the first victim was scared of heights, the second one had nearly drowned when he was a child and was afraid of bodies of water, the announcer suffered from occasional bouts of stage fright, and the survivor of the car accident was, shock surprise, afraid of spiders.
They also were all regulars at the same neighborhood bar.
Demon at work, maybe, a lot of them liked to operate in places where people got together to have a good time, let down their inhibitions. Maybe one that preyed upon people's fears. Jo sat cross-legged on the sagging mattress of her room listening to Aerosmith on her iPod while she filled shot gun cartridges with rock salt. The laptop was a gift from her mother, and Jo had taken it as a sign that she'd accepted Jo doing the whole hunting thing, finally. The window was open, a breeze moving the curtain, the illuminated letters of the motel's sign staining the fabric red. Jo's fingers stilled, gripping a shot cup, and she used her free hand to tug out one earbud. Something had moved outside her window, a large dark fluttering shadow, like a wing.
Her fingers stained with a touch of black powder, even after she'd washed up, Jo carried her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, fifteen blocks to the bar, at night through a bad neighborhood. The knife in her back pocket and the things Jo had seen meant she barely gave it a thought, despite Gotham's rep. She tugged down the fire escape access ladder on the building across the street and climbed to the roof. Stars speckled the sky, lights marking the lines of the bridges. She zipped her jacket up a little higher and put on her leather gloves (worn soft already, bought in a thrift store), then sat near the edge of the roof with her shotgun cradled in her lap, watching people go in and out of the bar. What she was waiting for, she had no idea, but she'd know it when she saw it. Hunting was a whole lot of instinct, Dad used to tell her.
The hours dragged by. Jo checked her cell phone. No messages. She stood up and jogged in place for a few minutes to warm up, then sat again. She yawned, weight of the shotgun across her thighs, her back against the duffel holding canisters of salt and four bottles of holy water and her notebook. She'd brought the page with the Rituale Romanum written on it, even though she'd already had it memorized since she was seventeen. There were two more bottles of holy water tucked into her pockets.
The sound of a shoe scuffing against the roof's gritty surface made her rise to her feet and spin, shotgun to her shoulder instantly.
"Aren't you afraid of the dark, little girl?"
Jo turned, training her shotgun over the slant of the roof access door shed, the chimney pipes, the TV satellite dish, the string of clothesline, all dark outlines with the rooftops beyond it, looking almost like a movie set backdrop.
"Who's there?" she said, hoping that sounded challenging. Her voice didn't shake.
"All by yourself, up here in the dark?"
Now the voice came from her right.
"Guess so," Jo said. "Maybe you should come here and make sure I'm okay."
The devil's trap was drawn faint in chalk on the roof, something she'd done as a precaution, not because she'd expected the demon to come to her. In the dark she had a shot at the demon not noticing until it stepped into it.
"What are you afraid of?" the voice asked. "What's in the dark waiting for you?"
When he stepped out towards her, Jo was surprised at how skinny he was, long and lanky. There was something wrong with his shape, his clothes were baggy, and his face was a soft, brown shape of shadows and folds with no features. He moved closer and Jo realized he was wearing a mask that covered his face completely beneath his pointed hat.
He walked right across the trap without stopping. Not a demon. Got it.
Her finger was pressing hard against the cold metal of the trigger when the figure lifted a fist and flicked it open towards her. She smelled something on the wind, medicinal and tasting of nightshade and other things she couldn't identify. Sweat broke out on her forehead and the next gust of wind made her shiver.
Her grip on the gun was slipping, her palms sweaty, and the figure blurred, swirled, spinning with the skyline. "What did you give me?" Jo shouted at him.
But she couldn't see him. All she could see was her mother standing on the rooftop facing her. "Jo, baby, I told you, you can't do this." She stepped closer, and Jo felt the shotgun dip in her hands, grown oddly heavy. Her mother reached out and brushed the hair back from Jo's face. "You don't have what it takes."
"That's not true."
"Yeah, it is." Jo turned and Sam was there, eyes gone black as he smiled condescendingly. "You couldn't do much against me, could you." Then the black went away and Sam was himself again, unassuming despite being so ridiculously tall, his shoulders hunched, expression full of concern. "We're saying this for your own good."
"Go to hell."
"You're an amateur." Dean appeared next to Sam, and the way he was looking at her hurt. He'd never looked at her like that. "Don't you get it?"
"Stop." The shotgun clattered to the rooftop. "Stop it."
Dean stepped closer to her, cradled her face with his hands. "We're just worried you'll get hurt. You can't do this."
She shoved him away and reached for the shotgun. The rooftop and skyline was a blurred swirl of darkness and silhouette and stars. "Screw you," Jo gritted out.
"Hey, kiddo."
Jo turned, then closed her eyes, feeling like she might puke. When she opened them, her father was still standing there, looking the way he did the last time she'd seen him alive, broad shoulders and big hands and wide smile, looking like a hero in his leather jacket, looking more like a hero than anyone in any movie or TV series she'd ever seen.
"I know you tried, Jo. Give it up. Give it all up, now." He gave her a sad smile. "I'd hoped for greater things from you, but it's okay. You can stop now. I'm disappointed but I still love you."
He blurred, and it took Jo a moment to realize there were tears on her cheeks.
"Time to let it go," her father said.
She took a step back, knocking into Sam, and wrenched away from him.
"Let it go," her father said.
Jo fell to her knees, put her hands over her ears, and screamed.
"Let it go..."
"Let it go, it's not real, listen, it's not real, easy." Jo felt someone holding her, and then a sharp jab of pain into her skin, through layers of jacket and flannel.
Then the someone gently eased her down so she lay on the roof with her head pillowed on her duffel. The someone stood up.
Jo let out a groan, her head throbbing, worse than a hangover. "What the hell," she said.
She rubbed her eyes, pushed herself up on her elbows, and got a good look for the first time at the person who, Jo now understood, had injected her with something that made the crazy hallucinations go away. It was a woman, dressed in some kind of gray kevlar body suit, a cape draped over her shoulders and a bright yellow symbol in the shape of a bat at her chest. She wore a cowl that covered the top of her head, but couldn't conceal thick red hair.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Jo giggled, feeling a little drunk with relief.
"What's so funny?" The woman held up a gauntleted hand. "Look, I just saved your life." She reached down for Jo and helped pull her to her feet. Her grip was strong.
"I. No, I appreciate it, it's just, I didn't think the stories were..." She almost said real and thought how funny that was, given all the shit she'd gone up against, things that would get her committed if she told anyone outside a trusted few people. "Who was that freak?"
"He calls himself the Scarecrow," the woman said, putting a hand on her hip and tilting her head to one side, looking Jo over. "He uses a fear toxin to make people hallucinate. He does it because it's fun. And because he's insane."
"So...not a demon?" Jo said, her voice a little shaky.
"No, but he might as well be." The woman nodded towards her shotgun. "So what's your deal? You setting up as a vigilante? Because I gotta tell you, not going about it in the best way. For one thing, you might want to invest in a ski mask to keep your identity a secret and for another, strangers going around toting a gun in this city is a good way to draw attention from someone you don't want a visit from." She scuffed the toe of her boot against the chalk markings. "What's this supposed to be?"
"A trap for demons."
"Oh. Huh."
It was then Jo noticed the figure slumped by the door, unconscious with a line wrapped around his body and a bat-shaped black object, sort of like a throwing star, fixed at the knot.
"You got him," Jo said.
The woman's mouth beneath the cowl curved into a smile. "Well, how about that. I did. So long as you can avoid the toxin, it's not that difficult to beat the crap out of him." She picked up Jo's duffel and handed it to her. "You'll feel a little hungover for a day. That's the antidote talking, for the record, not the toxin."
"Thanks. I mean it. Thank you."
"You should go. Gotham's finest will be here any second to pick him up." She rolled her neck, rubbing at her shoulder. "That's the third time he's escape from the asylum this month." She started to turn, then stopped. "So...what are you? I mean, what do you do?"
"I hunt things. Monsters. I mean, not like him. I mean real monsters. Werewolves, vampires, demons." This had to be the most surreal conversation Jo had ever had in her entire life.
When she turned to say goodbye to her rescuer, the woman was already gone. Flashing red lights from below signaled the approach of law enforcement. Jo ducked inside and hid in an alcove until they'd gone past her, and then she walked out of the building.
She was still shivering, strap of the duffel clenched tight in her fingers. She wanted a hot shower and about twelve hours of sleep, and hopefully the nightmares wouldn't follow her.
~end
Jo Harvelle, Batgirl, and surprise guest stars, PG, 1,900 words
a/n: SPN/Batman: The Animated series crossover. SPN set during S4. For B:TAS, for those who are familiar with it, set early during the "Gotham Knights" seasons. Title from Florence + The Machine. Written for halfamoon 2010. Thank you to the awesome mtgat for the beta.
One victim used a chair to smash the window of their office on the twenty-second floor and jumped. One victim's body surfaced in the river. One announcer freaked out during a football game in the Knights' Dome, and shot himself during the fourth quarter. Another swerved their car on the Aparo Expressway, causing a three-car accident. The last one survived, barely, and Jo managed to get only a disjointed account about giant spiders from her.
She knew about all the legends, the tabloid stories, and that most hunters tended to avoid the area, but she'd only heard vague references and gossip. The string of incidents was exactly the kind of thing that set off her radar, and even the doubters conceded she was a good researcher and had a nose for this stuff.
Jo booked herself a room, started poking around, and found that the first victim was scared of heights, the second one had nearly drowned when he was a child and was afraid of bodies of water, the announcer suffered from occasional bouts of stage fright, and the survivor of the car accident was, shock surprise, afraid of spiders.
They also were all regulars at the same neighborhood bar.
Demon at work, maybe, a lot of them liked to operate in places where people got together to have a good time, let down their inhibitions. Maybe one that preyed upon people's fears. Jo sat cross-legged on the sagging mattress of her room listening to Aerosmith on her iPod while she filled shot gun cartridges with rock salt. The laptop was a gift from her mother, and Jo had taken it as a sign that she'd accepted Jo doing the whole hunting thing, finally. The window was open, a breeze moving the curtain, the illuminated letters of the motel's sign staining the fabric red. Jo's fingers stilled, gripping a shot cup, and she used her free hand to tug out one earbud. Something had moved outside her window, a large dark fluttering shadow, like a wing.
Her fingers stained with a touch of black powder, even after she'd washed up, Jo carried her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, fifteen blocks to the bar, at night through a bad neighborhood. The knife in her back pocket and the things Jo had seen meant she barely gave it a thought, despite Gotham's rep. She tugged down the fire escape access ladder on the building across the street and climbed to the roof. Stars speckled the sky, lights marking the lines of the bridges. She zipped her jacket up a little higher and put on her leather gloves (worn soft already, bought in a thrift store), then sat near the edge of the roof with her shotgun cradled in her lap, watching people go in and out of the bar. What she was waiting for, she had no idea, but she'd know it when she saw it. Hunting was a whole lot of instinct, Dad used to tell her.
The hours dragged by. Jo checked her cell phone. No messages. She stood up and jogged in place for a few minutes to warm up, then sat again. She yawned, weight of the shotgun across her thighs, her back against the duffel holding canisters of salt and four bottles of holy water and her notebook. She'd brought the page with the Rituale Romanum written on it, even though she'd already had it memorized since she was seventeen. There were two more bottles of holy water tucked into her pockets.
The sound of a shoe scuffing against the roof's gritty surface made her rise to her feet and spin, shotgun to her shoulder instantly.
"Aren't you afraid of the dark, little girl?"
Jo turned, training her shotgun over the slant of the roof access door shed, the chimney pipes, the TV satellite dish, the string of clothesline, all dark outlines with the rooftops beyond it, looking almost like a movie set backdrop.
"Who's there?" she said, hoping that sounded challenging. Her voice didn't shake.
"All by yourself, up here in the dark?"
Now the voice came from her right.
"Guess so," Jo said. "Maybe you should come here and make sure I'm okay."
The devil's trap was drawn faint in chalk on the roof, something she'd done as a precaution, not because she'd expected the demon to come to her. In the dark she had a shot at the demon not noticing until it stepped into it.
"What are you afraid of?" the voice asked. "What's in the dark waiting for you?"
When he stepped out towards her, Jo was surprised at how skinny he was, long and lanky. There was something wrong with his shape, his clothes were baggy, and his face was a soft, brown shape of shadows and folds with no features. He moved closer and Jo realized he was wearing a mask that covered his face completely beneath his pointed hat.
He walked right across the trap without stopping. Not a demon. Got it.
Her finger was pressing hard against the cold metal of the trigger when the figure lifted a fist and flicked it open towards her. She smelled something on the wind, medicinal and tasting of nightshade and other things she couldn't identify. Sweat broke out on her forehead and the next gust of wind made her shiver.
Her grip on the gun was slipping, her palms sweaty, and the figure blurred, swirled, spinning with the skyline. "What did you give me?" Jo shouted at him.
But she couldn't see him. All she could see was her mother standing on the rooftop facing her. "Jo, baby, I told you, you can't do this." She stepped closer, and Jo felt the shotgun dip in her hands, grown oddly heavy. Her mother reached out and brushed the hair back from Jo's face. "You don't have what it takes."
"That's not true."
"Yeah, it is." Jo turned and Sam was there, eyes gone black as he smiled condescendingly. "You couldn't do much against me, could you." Then the black went away and Sam was himself again, unassuming despite being so ridiculously tall, his shoulders hunched, expression full of concern. "We're saying this for your own good."
"Go to hell."
"You're an amateur." Dean appeared next to Sam, and the way he was looking at her hurt. He'd never looked at her like that. "Don't you get it?"
"Stop." The shotgun clattered to the rooftop. "Stop it."
Dean stepped closer to her, cradled her face with his hands. "We're just worried you'll get hurt. You can't do this."
She shoved him away and reached for the shotgun. The rooftop and skyline was a blurred swirl of darkness and silhouette and stars. "Screw you," Jo gritted out.
"Hey, kiddo."
Jo turned, then closed her eyes, feeling like she might puke. When she opened them, her father was still standing there, looking the way he did the last time she'd seen him alive, broad shoulders and big hands and wide smile, looking like a hero in his leather jacket, looking more like a hero than anyone in any movie or TV series she'd ever seen.
"I know you tried, Jo. Give it up. Give it all up, now." He gave her a sad smile. "I'd hoped for greater things from you, but it's okay. You can stop now. I'm disappointed but I still love you."
He blurred, and it took Jo a moment to realize there were tears on her cheeks.
"Time to let it go," her father said.
She took a step back, knocking into Sam, and wrenched away from him.
"Let it go," her father said.
Jo fell to her knees, put her hands over her ears, and screamed.
"Let it go..."
"Let it go, it's not real, listen, it's not real, easy." Jo felt someone holding her, and then a sharp jab of pain into her skin, through layers of jacket and flannel.
Then the someone gently eased her down so she lay on the roof with her head pillowed on her duffel. The someone stood up.
Jo let out a groan, her head throbbing, worse than a hangover. "What the hell," she said.
She rubbed her eyes, pushed herself up on her elbows, and got a good look for the first time at the person who, Jo now understood, had injected her with something that made the crazy hallucinations go away. It was a woman, dressed in some kind of gray kevlar body suit, a cape draped over her shoulders and a bright yellow symbol in the shape of a bat at her chest. She wore a cowl that covered the top of her head, but couldn't conceal thick red hair.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Jo giggled, feeling a little drunk with relief.
"What's so funny?" The woman held up a gauntleted hand. "Look, I just saved your life." She reached down for Jo and helped pull her to her feet. Her grip was strong.
"I. No, I appreciate it, it's just, I didn't think the stories were..." She almost said real and thought how funny that was, given all the shit she'd gone up against, things that would get her committed if she told anyone outside a trusted few people. "Who was that freak?"
"He calls himself the Scarecrow," the woman said, putting a hand on her hip and tilting her head to one side, looking Jo over. "He uses a fear toxin to make people hallucinate. He does it because it's fun. And because he's insane."
"So...not a demon?" Jo said, her voice a little shaky.
"No, but he might as well be." The woman nodded towards her shotgun. "So what's your deal? You setting up as a vigilante? Because I gotta tell you, not going about it in the best way. For one thing, you might want to invest in a ski mask to keep your identity a secret and for another, strangers going around toting a gun in this city is a good way to draw attention from someone you don't want a visit from." She scuffed the toe of her boot against the chalk markings. "What's this supposed to be?"
"A trap for demons."
"Oh. Huh."
It was then Jo noticed the figure slumped by the door, unconscious with a line wrapped around his body and a bat-shaped black object, sort of like a throwing star, fixed at the knot.
"You got him," Jo said.
The woman's mouth beneath the cowl curved into a smile. "Well, how about that. I did. So long as you can avoid the toxin, it's not that difficult to beat the crap out of him." She picked up Jo's duffel and handed it to her. "You'll feel a little hungover for a day. That's the antidote talking, for the record, not the toxin."
"Thanks. I mean it. Thank you."
"You should go. Gotham's finest will be here any second to pick him up." She rolled her neck, rubbing at her shoulder. "That's the third time he's escape from the asylum this month." She started to turn, then stopped. "So...what are you? I mean, what do you do?"
"I hunt things. Monsters. I mean, not like him. I mean real monsters. Werewolves, vampires, demons." This had to be the most surreal conversation Jo had ever had in her entire life.
When she turned to say goodbye to her rescuer, the woman was already gone. Flashing red lights from below signaled the approach of law enforcement. Jo ducked inside and hid in an alcove until they'd gone past her, and then she walked out of the building.
She was still shivering, strap of the duffel clenched tight in her fingers. She wanted a hot shower and about twelve hours of sleep, and hopefully the nightmares wouldn't follow her.
~end