5 times Joanna Beth Harvelle met Gabriel, and one time she didn't.
Title: 5 times Joanna Beth Harvelle met Gabriel, and one time she didn't.
Author: falling_dominos
Rating: PG-13?
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Gabriel
Word Count: ~3k
Spoilers: Up to 'Abandon All Hope'
A/N: I have a fondness for Jo/Gabriel, my fondness resembles my love of tea so sweet it feels like your teeth might fall out of your head. Yep.
The first time, Jo doesn't even remember meeting Gabriel.
He wandered into the Roadhouse and got a little girl wrapped around his leg for his trouble. She was all smiles, blond curls and bright eyes. He bent down and picked her up in his arms, bouncing her a little to make her laugh. This little girl had a magical laugh. "And what's your name, little one?" He asked, eyes sparkling just like hers, filled with child-like wonder.
"I'm Joanna Beth!" She replied, as if that was the best thing in the world. He looked around for the little girl's mother though he didn't see anyone looking around frantically for a lost little girl, though some of the men in the bar watched him warily, guns on the bar top cocked. Ah, the daughter of a hunter it seemed. He felt a little pinch on his cheek and turned back to face his adorable little compatriot. She was looking at him earnestly, borderline pouting at him. It really was the cutest thing he had ever seen. Ever.
"Well, aren't you demanding, little Joanna! You know what? I have something just perfect for you...would you like it?" Gabriel asked, watching her little blond curls bounced as she nodded enthusiastically. He couldn't help but feel moved by her, so he put her down and pulled out a lollipop, the damn thing was almost as big as her head, but she took the stick in both hands and turned to go show her mom.
"Mommy! Mommy! Lookit what he gave me!" She held up the giant lollipop, smiling to her mother who had been wrapped up in conversation with her husband, Jo's father, Bill. Ellen looked down at her little girl and laughed, her eyes crinkling around the corners.
She kneeled down by her little girl, "Joanna, who gave you that big ol' candy?" Ellen asked, still laughing as her three year old struggled to hold up the lollipop. Jo turned to point at Gabriel, but he'd already left.
Jo cried for hours.
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The second time Jo met Gabriel, she was dressed up like an angel.
She was playing the angel in her church Christmas play. She was ten and looked so cute in that white robe with the headband halo and feathered wings strapped to her back. She still had blond curls, but was no longer the cute, pudgy cheeked toddler. She'd turned into a bean pole of a tomboy.
After the play, he showed up backstage, waiting for her to come out so she could go back to her mother, holding a brightly wrapped box. She emerged from changing back into her street clothes and Gabriel was there to meet her. She didn't remember him, but smiled anyway. "Heya mister, who ya waitin' for? I can go an' get 'em if ya want." She said, offering to go and get one of her fellow cast-mates for the older man.
He had brown hair, and smelled like toffee. The man smiled at her and shook his head. "I'm here for you, miss Joanna."
"The name's Jo, mister." Jo replied tartly, she'd been going through a little bit of a rebellious stage, and had decided that she wanted to be called Jo instead of Joanna, though her mother still called her Joanna Beth when she was angry. Which was often, since her father had passed two years ago.
"Oh, pardon me. Well I got you something since you did so well in the play, Jo. If you don't want it though, I'll just give it to one of the other kids." Gabriel made to turn around and walk off, but stopped at the hand on his arm. He handed over the present, a switchblade with a mother of pearl inlaid handle and a stuffed angel. When she looked back up to say thank you he was gone.
She kept both of those things for the rest of her life.
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The third time Joanna met Gabriel, she didn't know it was him.
Joanna's senior prom was looking dull. She didn't have a date, and no one liked the 'freaky girl who lives outside of town in that bar'. She'd gotten dressed up and everything! It was turning into such a sucky night. Jo sighed and stood over by the punch table, debating on heading back home.
She heard a fluttering noise, which made her look around in search of the strange noise, thinking it was some sort of hurt bird or something. She didn't find anything, but when she looked up there was a teen-aged boy at the punch table, dumping a flask into the punch while no one was looking. She laughed a little, and he looked at her, startled. "Shit, you scared me! Don't do that!" He exclaimed, capping his flask and slipping it back into his trouser pocket.
She shook her head, still trying not to laugh. "I'll try not to, but I'm pretty sure someone else spiked the punch earlier, god knows what it tastes like now." The boy shrugged, picking up the ladle and bravely filling himself up a cup. The grimace he made at the taste of the punch made her laugh even harder, hands wrapped around her waist bent nearly double. When she finally calmed down enough she straightened back up to find the boy still there.
"Hey, uh...you wanna dance?" He gestured out to the floor vaguely. He smiled and she swore she saw something familiar. She didn't have a date, and apparently this boy had abandoned his, so why not?
"Sure!" She said too quickly, and smiled at the boy, blushing like mad.
They spent the rest of the night dancing and talking a little, and making out under the bleachers. Clumsy teenage things with wandering hands and each of them hitting their heads on the struts of the bleachers. His name was Gabe. He dropped her off at home, smiling out the drivers side window he told her he had a while to drive to get home, and she'd made his night.
He gave her his flask, and she kept that keepsake too.
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The fourth time Joanna meets Gabriel, she remembers his face.
He comes in every Friday night and orders a Bahama Mama, sits at the end of the bar and sips his drink, leaves her a really nice tip and then heads out. She never asks him who he is, just nods cordially, thinking he is one of her fathers old friends. Hunters travel a lot.
One such Friday every thing's going normally until Robbie, one of the regulars who skulks around Duluth, starts getting handsy. She brushes him off a few times, just smiling and rolling her eyes. He just keeps it up, eventually she decks him one in the face, but by that point he's too drunk to feel it so all her right cross does is piss him off more. Enraged, Robbie grabs Jo by the hair and smashes her head down on his table.
Suddenly, her Friday night regular is there, Robbie's arm jacked up tight behind his shoulder blades, his shoulder desperately straining at it's socket. Gabriel might have only been 5'8" but he was apparently stronger than he looked. "I think that you might have had enough, friend." There's something dark and dangerous in his tone, more so than just any old hunter. Jo shivers when she hears him talk like that. The look in his eyes made her almost fear for Robbie, because if looks could kill Robbie would have been hamburger.
Gabriel 'escorts' the man out, and when he gets outside with the drunk...well lets just say Cast Away had a decent idea to it. He comes back in and is instantly at Jo's side, checking out her split brow, it bleeds like a bitch, but it wasn't too deep. He sticks around that night, all the way up until close, glaring at the guys who even get close to touching her. She just laughs and smiles at him.
After the bar finally closes, and she's cleaning up, he's making conversation. "Hey, you still feeling it?" He asks as she wipes down the bar, gesturing at her eyebrow.
Joanna shakes her head, "Naw, it's fine. Just split it really, it won't even need stitches." She picks up his last glass and his money, realizing he's tipped her twice what he usually does. She doesn't say anything about it, but does smile at him in thanks.
When it's time to close up for good they're both standing outside the door awkwardly. Jo finally breaks the silence by hugging Gabriel and kissing him softly on the cheek with a whispered "Thanks" before heading toward her car.
Gabriel stood there in stunned silence for several long minutes after she had driven off.
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The Fifth time Jo met Gabriel, she half-expected him.
Her mother was the most insufferable woman sometimes! Ellen had simply refused to let Jo go out hunting, and that was even after she'd gone to Duluth! God forbid that Joanna come back to check up on her mother at all, as if that had been a good idea. So of course, true to form, Joanna had stormed out after her mother kicked her out of her home for a few hours. Jo and Ellen both knew it was temporary, they were both strong willed stubborn women, so a few hours after letting her mother cool down, Jo would return home and a tense peace would be reached.
Until it came up again.
So while she waited for time to pass she'd ended up at a children's park. It wasn't far from where her mother lived, and it was such a lovely night. Jo sat down on the swings and just sat around for a time, enjoying the view and the night. When she felt someone standing behind her she only startled a little, but then she smirked, awaiting a voice that always seemed to be on the edge of laughter.
"You know, you shouldn't be out on your own like this...someone might take advantage of you," her old regular, someone who she'd known her entire life without really knowing him. He always showed up at the right moment, or so it seemed. She felt hands on her back, and she lifted her feet so that he could start pushing her on the swings. Sitting still she had been entirely too tall for this swing set, but as he started to push her, she noticed that her legs were really just the right size. Alarm bells went off somewhere in the back of her mind, but they were quiet enough that the whoosh of the swing drowned them out.
"You know you always show up at just the right time, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were stalking me." Jo replied with, laughing as she hadn't laughed in years. Swing sets made everyone and everything better, it was just a fact of the universe. Her Dad used to take her to parks and push her on the swings when she was little.
Those were really good memories.
"Just call me your Guardian Angel, hun, always here in times of trouble." Jo shook her head, just enjoying the feel of wind around her, like she was flying. Gabriel pushed her higher and higher, so what if he used a little Grace to make the world work right so he could? Who was gonna say anything? The little girl with the bouncing curls had grown up and turned into one of the most beautiful humans that Gabriel had ever seen.
She was brave, and beautiful, and looked like a bad ass with a shot-gun in her hands. She was a fire-cracker and Gabriel adored her. He would do almost anything to hear her laugh or see her smile, she was his fire-cracker. The world would just have to deal with that fact.
"Well, if you're my guardian angel, why're you pushing me on a swing set and not taking me flying?" She asked in an off-hand sort of joking way. She did love the feeling of flying, it was what almost all of her dreams were about, flight and strong arms to catch her as she dove off a cliff.
Half of flying is the falling.
She heard a 'humph' noise from behind her, as if what he was doing wasn't enough. She laughed her magical laugh again, so she didn't hear the snap. She gasped, and screamed at the sight before her. She was in the air, very high in the air. Somewhere over the east coast. Falling. She flailed around in the air, and a few seconds of free-fall later she felt arms wrap around her and she wasn't falling any longer. It was almost like Gravity didn't affect the two of them any longer.
"Okay then Jo, I'll take you flying." She could hear him, clear as a bell. There was no splitting whistle of air rushing around her. She could breathe, and she was doing so, very quickly. Trying to regain her sense of balance and rightness. She wasn't sure which of the two would come first.
"What-the-hell-was-that-what-the-hell-are-you?!?" The two questions come out in a rush, as she tries to hold very still so that she doesn't go falling again. She doesn't want the ground any closer than it already is without a parachute...or something to save her from becoming like a bug on the earth's windshield.
"I told you, Jo, I'm your Guardian Angel, I wasn't kidding. As to your other question, that was me being a bit spiteful. I'm sorry, I should have warned you." His voice was still filled with humor, he almost sounded like he was apt to start laughing over the whole thing. He didn't, but she could feel the laughter rolling around inside him where her back was pressed up against his chest. He was warm, she noticed, especially in comparison to the cold of being this high up in the atmosphere.
"Oh," was all she could think of to say. That was Joanna Beth Harvelle, master orator. Mistress of words!
"Hold on." came his reply, she had a few moments to realize what he meant before they were moving fast enough to make the ground move by at a crisp jog. He showed her where night became day, and the other side of the world, the two ice caps, everything. In only a few short hours or so it seemed. She relaxed(a little) when she realized that he wasn't going to let her go and watch her fall to her death.
Only a little, though.
He gave her the night sky and a kiss on the forehead when he dropped her off in front of her home.
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The one time Jo didn't meet Gabriel, he just showed up late.
"Momma? Where is he?" Jo asked, her voice weak and her whole body numb. Her blood was all over the floor, soaked through the Ace bandage holding her side roughly in the place where it should be. She was sitting next to her mother, the doors open, waiting for the hellhounds to cross the salt lines. Ellen gripped her daughters shoulder tighter when she heard her speak, both of their hands on the trigger to blow these dogs to bits.
"Who honey, where is who?" tears strangled her voice, choking her words, hearing death in her daughters voice. This was something she couldn't save her daughter from, only go through it with her.
"My Guardian Angel, where is he?" Jo sounded so tired, her voice quiet as if she was almost asleep, but Ellen knew that it didn't mean she would be going to sleep. Her daughter was at death's door...
"He'll be here, baby girl, he'll be here." Ellen didn't see the point in telling Jo the truth, because Jo made a small 'mmm' noise and then silence. Ellen sobbed just once and then heard the hounds creeping through the building, snuffling at the blood and bombs littering the floor. She hit the button and nothing but white light.
Gabriel picked through the wreckage with tears streaming down his face...he'd been too slow! Gabriel was never too slow. "Joanna, come on, I know some part of you made it through...you're a tough one, c'mon girl." It had been several decades since Gabriel had honestly cried, and that had mainly been because The Bicycle Thief was so damned sad!
Carthage had been left a ghost town, by the time Gabriel got there, Death having risen. Lucifer and his new pet had left, presumably to cause havoc somewhere else in the world, thank Dad. The two women's bodies were charred and in pieces...there were Hellhound pieces littering the street outside where the bomb had gone off as well as inside mixed in with rubble, salt, and iron nails. At the center of it all were two bodies...or a few pieces of them.
Gabriel picked a few pieces apart from others, and looked at them. Jo and Ellen. He looked at the pieces and set them apart in two piles and stepped back, rubbing his hands together. "Alright, ladies. Get ready. We're doin' a Lazarus." Two snaps later and Jo and Ellen were standing in the middle of some rubble, looking confused. Jo looked around first and saw Gabriel, she rolled her eyes and walked over, hand raised to smack him.
The crack from her hand hitting his face was deafening in the silent town. "You're late!" Was all she said, Gabriel laughed and picked her up in a swing around, legs flying hug. During which he said a brief thank you to his ever absent Father.
"I know, I know, but I'm here now, better late than never?" He replies hopefully, while Ellen just looks on confused.
Author: falling_dominos
Rating: PG-13?
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Gabriel
Word Count: ~3k
Spoilers: Up to 'Abandon All Hope'
A/N: I have a fondness for Jo/Gabriel, my fondness resembles my love of tea so sweet it feels like your teeth might fall out of your head. Yep.
The first time, Jo doesn't even remember meeting Gabriel.
He wandered into the Roadhouse and got a little girl wrapped around his leg for his trouble. She was all smiles, blond curls and bright eyes. He bent down and picked her up in his arms, bouncing her a little to make her laugh. This little girl had a magical laugh. "And what's your name, little one?" He asked, eyes sparkling just like hers, filled with child-like wonder.
"I'm Joanna Beth!" She replied, as if that was the best thing in the world. He looked around for the little girl's mother though he didn't see anyone looking around frantically for a lost little girl, though some of the men in the bar watched him warily, guns on the bar top cocked. Ah, the daughter of a hunter it seemed. He felt a little pinch on his cheek and turned back to face his adorable little compatriot. She was looking at him earnestly, borderline pouting at him. It really was the cutest thing he had ever seen. Ever.
"Well, aren't you demanding, little Joanna! You know what? I have something just perfect for you...would you like it?" Gabriel asked, watching her little blond curls bounced as she nodded enthusiastically. He couldn't help but feel moved by her, so he put her down and pulled out a lollipop, the damn thing was almost as big as her head, but she took the stick in both hands and turned to go show her mom.
"Mommy! Mommy! Lookit what he gave me!" She held up the giant lollipop, smiling to her mother who had been wrapped up in conversation with her husband, Jo's father, Bill. Ellen looked down at her little girl and laughed, her eyes crinkling around the corners.
She kneeled down by her little girl, "Joanna, who gave you that big ol' candy?" Ellen asked, still laughing as her three year old struggled to hold up the lollipop. Jo turned to point at Gabriel, but he'd already left.
Jo cried for hours.
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The second time Jo met Gabriel, she was dressed up like an angel.
She was playing the angel in her church Christmas play. She was ten and looked so cute in that white robe with the headband halo and feathered wings strapped to her back. She still had blond curls, but was no longer the cute, pudgy cheeked toddler. She'd turned into a bean pole of a tomboy.
After the play, he showed up backstage, waiting for her to come out so she could go back to her mother, holding a brightly wrapped box. She emerged from changing back into her street clothes and Gabriel was there to meet her. She didn't remember him, but smiled anyway. "Heya mister, who ya waitin' for? I can go an' get 'em if ya want." She said, offering to go and get one of her fellow cast-mates for the older man.
He had brown hair, and smelled like toffee. The man smiled at her and shook his head. "I'm here for you, miss Joanna."
"The name's Jo, mister." Jo replied tartly, she'd been going through a little bit of a rebellious stage, and had decided that she wanted to be called Jo instead of Joanna, though her mother still called her Joanna Beth when she was angry. Which was often, since her father had passed two years ago.
"Oh, pardon me. Well I got you something since you did so well in the play, Jo. If you don't want it though, I'll just give it to one of the other kids." Gabriel made to turn around and walk off, but stopped at the hand on his arm. He handed over the present, a switchblade with a mother of pearl inlaid handle and a stuffed angel. When she looked back up to say thank you he was gone.
She kept both of those things for the rest of her life.
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The third time Joanna met Gabriel, she didn't know it was him.
Joanna's senior prom was looking dull. She didn't have a date, and no one liked the 'freaky girl who lives outside of town in that bar'. She'd gotten dressed up and everything! It was turning into such a sucky night. Jo sighed and stood over by the punch table, debating on heading back home.
She heard a fluttering noise, which made her look around in search of the strange noise, thinking it was some sort of hurt bird or something. She didn't find anything, but when she looked up there was a teen-aged boy at the punch table, dumping a flask into the punch while no one was looking. She laughed a little, and he looked at her, startled. "Shit, you scared me! Don't do that!" He exclaimed, capping his flask and slipping it back into his trouser pocket.
She shook her head, still trying not to laugh. "I'll try not to, but I'm pretty sure someone else spiked the punch earlier, god knows what it tastes like now." The boy shrugged, picking up the ladle and bravely filling himself up a cup. The grimace he made at the taste of the punch made her laugh even harder, hands wrapped around her waist bent nearly double. When she finally calmed down enough she straightened back up to find the boy still there.
"Hey, uh...you wanna dance?" He gestured out to the floor vaguely. He smiled and she swore she saw something familiar. She didn't have a date, and apparently this boy had abandoned his, so why not?
"Sure!" She said too quickly, and smiled at the boy, blushing like mad.
They spent the rest of the night dancing and talking a little, and making out under the bleachers. Clumsy teenage things with wandering hands and each of them hitting their heads on the struts of the bleachers. His name was Gabe. He dropped her off at home, smiling out the drivers side window he told her he had a while to drive to get home, and she'd made his night.
He gave her his flask, and she kept that keepsake too.
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The fourth time Joanna meets Gabriel, she remembers his face.
He comes in every Friday night and orders a Bahama Mama, sits at the end of the bar and sips his drink, leaves her a really nice tip and then heads out. She never asks him who he is, just nods cordially, thinking he is one of her fathers old friends. Hunters travel a lot.
One such Friday every thing's going normally until Robbie, one of the regulars who skulks around Duluth, starts getting handsy. She brushes him off a few times, just smiling and rolling her eyes. He just keeps it up, eventually she decks him one in the face, but by that point he's too drunk to feel it so all her right cross does is piss him off more. Enraged, Robbie grabs Jo by the hair and smashes her head down on his table.
Suddenly, her Friday night regular is there, Robbie's arm jacked up tight behind his shoulder blades, his shoulder desperately straining at it's socket. Gabriel might have only been 5'8" but he was apparently stronger than he looked. "I think that you might have had enough, friend." There's something dark and dangerous in his tone, more so than just any old hunter. Jo shivers when she hears him talk like that. The look in his eyes made her almost fear for Robbie, because if looks could kill Robbie would have been hamburger.
Gabriel 'escorts' the man out, and when he gets outside with the drunk...well lets just say Cast Away had a decent idea to it. He comes back in and is instantly at Jo's side, checking out her split brow, it bleeds like a bitch, but it wasn't too deep. He sticks around that night, all the way up until close, glaring at the guys who even get close to touching her. She just laughs and smiles at him.
After the bar finally closes, and she's cleaning up, he's making conversation. "Hey, you still feeling it?" He asks as she wipes down the bar, gesturing at her eyebrow.
Joanna shakes her head, "Naw, it's fine. Just split it really, it won't even need stitches." She picks up his last glass and his money, realizing he's tipped her twice what he usually does. She doesn't say anything about it, but does smile at him in thanks.
When it's time to close up for good they're both standing outside the door awkwardly. Jo finally breaks the silence by hugging Gabriel and kissing him softly on the cheek with a whispered "Thanks" before heading toward her car.
Gabriel stood there in stunned silence for several long minutes after she had driven off.
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The Fifth time Jo met Gabriel, she half-expected him.
Her mother was the most insufferable woman sometimes! Ellen had simply refused to let Jo go out hunting, and that was even after she'd gone to Duluth! God forbid that Joanna come back to check up on her mother at all, as if that had been a good idea. So of course, true to form, Joanna had stormed out after her mother kicked her out of her home for a few hours. Jo and Ellen both knew it was temporary, they were both strong willed stubborn women, so a few hours after letting her mother cool down, Jo would return home and a tense peace would be reached.
Until it came up again.
So while she waited for time to pass she'd ended up at a children's park. It wasn't far from where her mother lived, and it was such a lovely night. Jo sat down on the swings and just sat around for a time, enjoying the view and the night. When she felt someone standing behind her she only startled a little, but then she smirked, awaiting a voice that always seemed to be on the edge of laughter.
"You know, you shouldn't be out on your own like this...someone might take advantage of you," her old regular, someone who she'd known her entire life without really knowing him. He always showed up at the right moment, or so it seemed. She felt hands on her back, and she lifted her feet so that he could start pushing her on the swings. Sitting still she had been entirely too tall for this swing set, but as he started to push her, she noticed that her legs were really just the right size. Alarm bells went off somewhere in the back of her mind, but they were quiet enough that the whoosh of the swing drowned them out.
"You know you always show up at just the right time, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were stalking me." Jo replied with, laughing as she hadn't laughed in years. Swing sets made everyone and everything better, it was just a fact of the universe. Her Dad used to take her to parks and push her on the swings when she was little.
Those were really good memories.
"Just call me your Guardian Angel, hun, always here in times of trouble." Jo shook her head, just enjoying the feel of wind around her, like she was flying. Gabriel pushed her higher and higher, so what if he used a little Grace to make the world work right so he could? Who was gonna say anything? The little girl with the bouncing curls had grown up and turned into one of the most beautiful humans that Gabriel had ever seen.
She was brave, and beautiful, and looked like a bad ass with a shot-gun in her hands. She was a fire-cracker and Gabriel adored her. He would do almost anything to hear her laugh or see her smile, she was his fire-cracker. The world would just have to deal with that fact.
"Well, if you're my guardian angel, why're you pushing me on a swing set and not taking me flying?" She asked in an off-hand sort of joking way. She did love the feeling of flying, it was what almost all of her dreams were about, flight and strong arms to catch her as she dove off a cliff.
Half of flying is the falling.
She heard a 'humph' noise from behind her, as if what he was doing wasn't enough. She laughed her magical laugh again, so she didn't hear the snap. She gasped, and screamed at the sight before her. She was in the air, very high in the air. Somewhere over the east coast. Falling. She flailed around in the air, and a few seconds of free-fall later she felt arms wrap around her and she wasn't falling any longer. It was almost like Gravity didn't affect the two of them any longer.
"Okay then Jo, I'll take you flying." She could hear him, clear as a bell. There was no splitting whistle of air rushing around her. She could breathe, and she was doing so, very quickly. Trying to regain her sense of balance and rightness. She wasn't sure which of the two would come first.
"What-the-hell-was-that-what-the-hell-are-you?!?" The two questions come out in a rush, as she tries to hold very still so that she doesn't go falling again. She doesn't want the ground any closer than it already is without a parachute...or something to save her from becoming like a bug on the earth's windshield.
"I told you, Jo, I'm your Guardian Angel, I wasn't kidding. As to your other question, that was me being a bit spiteful. I'm sorry, I should have warned you." His voice was still filled with humor, he almost sounded like he was apt to start laughing over the whole thing. He didn't, but she could feel the laughter rolling around inside him where her back was pressed up against his chest. He was warm, she noticed, especially in comparison to the cold of being this high up in the atmosphere.
"Oh," was all she could think of to say. That was Joanna Beth Harvelle, master orator. Mistress of words!
"Hold on." came his reply, she had a few moments to realize what he meant before they were moving fast enough to make the ground move by at a crisp jog. He showed her where night became day, and the other side of the world, the two ice caps, everything. In only a few short hours or so it seemed. She relaxed(a little) when she realized that he wasn't going to let her go and watch her fall to her death.
Only a little, though.
He gave her the night sky and a kiss on the forehead when he dropped her off in front of her home.
-----------
The one time Jo didn't meet Gabriel, he just showed up late.
"Momma? Where is he?" Jo asked, her voice weak and her whole body numb. Her blood was all over the floor, soaked through the Ace bandage holding her side roughly in the place where it should be. She was sitting next to her mother, the doors open, waiting for the hellhounds to cross the salt lines. Ellen gripped her daughters shoulder tighter when she heard her speak, both of their hands on the trigger to blow these dogs to bits.
"Who honey, where is who?" tears strangled her voice, choking her words, hearing death in her daughters voice. This was something she couldn't save her daughter from, only go through it with her.
"My Guardian Angel, where is he?" Jo sounded so tired, her voice quiet as if she was almost asleep, but Ellen knew that it didn't mean she would be going to sleep. Her daughter was at death's door...
"He'll be here, baby girl, he'll be here." Ellen didn't see the point in telling Jo the truth, because Jo made a small 'mmm' noise and then silence. Ellen sobbed just once and then heard the hounds creeping through the building, snuffling at the blood and bombs littering the floor. She hit the button and nothing but white light.
Gabriel picked through the wreckage with tears streaming down his face...he'd been too slow! Gabriel was never too slow. "Joanna, come on, I know some part of you made it through...you're a tough one, c'mon girl." It had been several decades since Gabriel had honestly cried, and that had mainly been because The Bicycle Thief was so damned sad!
Carthage had been left a ghost town, by the time Gabriel got there, Death having risen. Lucifer and his new pet had left, presumably to cause havoc somewhere else in the world, thank Dad. The two women's bodies were charred and in pieces...there were Hellhound pieces littering the street outside where the bomb had gone off as well as inside mixed in with rubble, salt, and iron nails. At the center of it all were two bodies...or a few pieces of them.
Gabriel picked a few pieces apart from others, and looked at them. Jo and Ellen. He looked at the pieces and set them apart in two piles and stepped back, rubbing his hands together. "Alright, ladies. Get ready. We're doin' a Lazarus." Two snaps later and Jo and Ellen were standing in the middle of some rubble, looking confused. Jo looked around first and saw Gabriel, she rolled her eyes and walked over, hand raised to smack him.
The crack from her hand hitting his face was deafening in the silent town. "You're late!" Was all she said, Gabriel laughed and picked her up in a swing around, legs flying hug. During which he said a brief thank you to his ever absent Father.
"I know, I know, but I'm here now, better late than never?" He replies hopefully, while Ellen just looks on confused.