Title: Lost and Found

Chapter: Eight

~~~~~~~~~~

Jo was awake.

Sam stood watching her a moment, then opened the door and went inside the panic room. He didn’t think she’d even tried the door once, her attitude having a feeling of brokenness to it, as though she’d accepted she wasn’t going to be able to escape. If she’d tried the door, she would have found it unlocked, the only guard being one of them.

He didn’t like seeing her like this and knew Dean didn’t either. This latest bit of Jo wasn’t one he’d recalled ever seeing.

Going to her, he put a hand on her arm, gently shaking her. “Jo.”

She rolled onto her back and stared up at him.

“How’s your head?”

“How do you think it is,” she snapped.

“Worse.” Maybe she wasn’t cowed after all. Maybe she was just regrouping after the latest blow to her sanity.

“Give the man a gold star.”

Crouching down, he snagged her hand. “How badly did you skin up your hands earlier?”

“You’re just now remembering that?”

Her left palm wasn’t bad, a slight abrasion on the heel of her palm. Her right one, however, had a dark line in the center of her palm. Sam peered at it. It was a long splinter. He touched the open end. They’d need tweezers and a needle to get it out. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “We’ll get this out for you.”

“Damn right you’ll get it out.”

He started to stand, but her left hand grasped his shirt, tugging him back down.

“Who was that man up there? You called him Bobby. He…he looks just like my dad, but I know he isn’t.” She shook her head, hair tangling on the thin pillow. “So who is he and how do I know him? And don’t tell me it’ll come to me, Sam, because while I’m seeing things, they’re still not making any sense. I know I know him.”

“And you know I can’t tell you.”

She shoved him back and rolled onto her side again. “Then what good are you?”

It was an obvious dismissal and he left, heading up the stairs. He’d get supplies together and let Dean come take out that splinter for her.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dean paced the kitchen, knowing he was rambling almost incoherently and honestly not caring.

Bobby was doing dishes. The calm way he was scrubbing pans and rinsing them irritated Dean. He supposed he’d feel better if he wasn’t the only one who seemed the least bit frantic to get Jo back in one piece. Sam was acting all calm, cool, and collected, a thing he still did even after getting his soul back. His calm was a different sort than it had been, not the soulless inconsideration he’d shown, but rather a quiet, mature, practical calm like Bobby was displaying now.

“How can you just stand there doing dishes?”

“Will you sit your ass down and shut up,” Bobby said in a harsh bark. “Worrying on it ain’t gonna get her back faster. You’ve done all you can for the time being and can’t do anything more until she wakes up.”

Something Sam had told him, too. Only his words had been , ‘Can’t do anything until she admits she’s awake,’ because Jo was awake. She just wasn’t talking, lying on the cot that was chained to the wall, her back to the door. What betrayed her were the movements of her body when they talked to her. She’d shift on the cot ever so slightly. Standing outside, Dean had heard her crying.

“I can’t sit down,” he admitted, continuing on with his stories of the past couple days as Bobby moved on to drying the dishes and pans. He was going over old ground that Bobby had already heard and knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. With a snort of disgust at the entire situation, he wound down his soliloquy with an emphatic, “My God, Bobby, she’s a pain in the ass!”

He dried his hands on a dishtowel that had seen better days and replied, “You expected Jo Harvelle to just let you kidnap her? You remember her at all? Petite, feisty blond with a mouth on her that made her mama proud?”

“Do you have any idea how may times we had to run after her?”

“Like I said.”

Sam came into the kitchen. He picked up the first aid kit that was out on the counter and started back towards the basement, then stopped. “Is this right, Dean?”

“Sam?”

“Is what we’re doing with Jo right? The making her remember. I mean, it’s causing her real physical pain now.”

Bobby set the towel down and crossed his arms. “He has a point. If she’s been fine in that new life this long, maybe making her remember is wrong. Maybe something good could come from Zachariah’s evil. You could let her go, let her go back to that life. He set her down there without the knowledge --”

“Playing devil’s advocate now? He took away who she is. How is right not to give that back to her?”

“I’m just sayin’ --”

“I get it, okay? What’s to say something won’t see her, remember her, and go after her? How would she defend herself without knowing who she is and what she can do? And what if she remembers on her own and we didn’t push this? How betrayed would she feel by that?” He shook his head. “I, for one, have no intention of letting her down again. Besides, she’s remembering already and pretty soon it’ll all come crashing through for her anyway.”

Bobby’s stare was hard. “Just checking your motivations here.”

“My motivations.” He raised his brows. “Jo would want this and you both know it.”

Sam waved the kit at him. “Speaking of what Jo wants…. She’s got a nasty splinter in her right palm. Why don’t you take care of it?”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because you need to spend time with her; time that might bring back more memories, that’s why.”

Snatching the kit from his hands, Dean went down into the basement. Sam had left the panic room door wide open and while he’d expected to find Jo at least up out of the cot, she wasn’t. “You going to lay there and mope all day?” He snapped on a light, directed it towards the cot so he’d have light to work by.

“You going to be an insensitive prick all day?”

“Sit up. Let’s get that splinter out.”

With an irritated sigh and a long glare, she sat and held out her hand. Setting the kit down, he studied the splinter. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you, Jo? Damn, that’s a big splinter.” He opened the kit and started probing at the wound. She hissed. He got a good grip on the splinter with the tweezers and paused, thinking back to an exchange they’d had that one time she’d doctored him up. With a quick glance up at her, he said, “Don’t be such a baby,” and pulled the splinter free.

Her response was a welcome one, the light of comprehension in her eyes. It wasn’t a full return of her memories -- he thought that would be a bigger reaction. It was, however, a spark of knowledge of who he really was.

Jo knew him.

~~~~~~~~~~

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense and Jo decided not to even bother. That man upstairs, though he looked and sounded like her father, wasn’t her father and she couldn’t even begin to puzzle out who he really was. She knew him, knew she knew him, and was too tired to figure it out.

Her life was a fantasy, her memories a lie, and she couldn’t fight it. Nor could she fight the headache. It was there and it wasn’t going away. This place…. Something here made it the worst it had been. If she had the chance to run, she knew she’d take it, despite not getting very far the other times. Jo had to try and keep trying.

Periodically, Sam or Dean would come down and talk to her, try to get her to talk. She was just so very tired though. Constant pain sapped the strength from her limbs.

Sam came in, looked at her hands and soon, it was Dean there with her, trying to take that horrible splinter out. He told her not to be a baby and she remembered Duluth with more clarity.

Her pulling something…a bullet…from his shoulder, staunching the flow of blood with gauze and taping it up. Dean hissing, ‘Butcher.’ and her replying, ‘You’re welcome.’ The tangled emotions she’d felt right then for him had ranged from sad acceptance to friendship. She hadn’t loved him, not really, but she’d liked him a lot, dreaming in idle moments that he noticed her and turned to her for more than the friendship that had been between them. Right then, she’d acknowledged that he probably never would see her waiting there. She’d given up on the dream of Dean Winchester.

She hissed as Dean pulled a splinter from her palm, echoing the word he’d spoken then. “Butcher.”

He paused, holding up the tweezers and the sliver of wood. “You’re welcome.”

The true memory was enough to know that he was definitely not the brutish man she’d been made to believe he was. He was a friend and he was doing this, all of it, because he cared for her. “I know you.” What she still didn’t know, however, was what their exact relationship had been. That kiss she knew they’d had…. Had it been a goodbye kiss of a friend who’d finally seen all they could have been? Or the bittersweet kiss of a man losing the lover he’d recently taken, regretting what they could have had and wouldn’t? She knew she’d given up on the dream of having him as hers in Duluth, yet had that dream ever come true? There was still information she didn’t know.

He bandaged up her palm. “Care to come upstairs awhile? Have some coffee, maybe some food?”

“No more coffee. I’ve had enough for a very long time.”

“Beer then?”

Jo licked her lips, wanting very much to ask him what they’d been to each other and why he’d fought so hard for her. The only conclusion she could come to was that they’d been more than friends. Why else would he fight like that to make her remember? “A beer would be good.”

She sat at the kitchen table with him, watching Bobby warily. “I remember you in a wheelchair,” she blurted out.

He nodded. “I was in one for awhile.”

“Did you just heal and not need it anymore?” She wasn’t trying to be insensitive with a frank asking, just to gather information.

“Something like that.” Like Dean and Sam, he wouldn’t elaborate.

The kitchen had a warm, lived-in feel to it. Jo was comfortable there, as much so as if it was her own kitchen. She knew if she got up and foraged in the fridge, she wouldn’t feel weird about it and none of them would say a word.

A phone rang, Bobby answering it. He said something about FBI and hung up. Across from her, Dean sighed.

“You ready to tell us what you remember?”

She shook her head. “None if it makes sense. Maybe later.”

Night rolled in and it was with relief that Jo realized they weren’t going to stick her back in that basement room and lock the door. Nor did Dean handcuff her. In fact, they seemed to forget altogether about keeping her contained.

She lay on the couch, a blanket over her, listening to the sounds of the house quieting as they all settled down into sleep -- except Sam. Sam was frustratingly awake as the hours past. It was closing in on dawn before he laid down and even longer before his breaths turned even in sleep. Her heart pounded hard and fast in her chest. Slowly, she got up and slipped on her shoes, careful not to wake Dean or Sam. She left the house and moved down the driveway as the first rosy rays of sunlight peered over the horizon.

Nearing the end of the driveway, Jo came to a stop. There was a car parked in the center of the drive, blocking it. She recognized the vehicle before her and stepped to it, putting out her hands and touching the hood. It was cold, of course, though for a second she could almost hear an amused voice saying, “If Bobby can start it, he can move it. Grab your bag, Jo, we’ll hike the drive.” After a moment, she went to the passenger door, opened it, and eased inside. It was dusty inside and smelled faintly musty. The dust tickled her nostrils and she rubbed at her nose until the urge passed. Jo knew this vehicle. She’d ridden in it many times. Smiling, she ran her hand along the dashboard, seeing a flash of herself with her bare feet propped up, painting her toenails, a breeze ruffling her hair.

With a frown, she leaned over and down, feeling beneath the driver’s seat and pulling out the slim item there. It was a small photo album with a stylized ‘H’ in the center.

Without hesitation, she flipped it open. The first picture was of a smiling couple and a toddler standing before a building. The sign on the building read ‘Harvelle’s Roadhouse’. She gasped, felt the pain in her head deepen, yet she couldn’t look away from the picture.

Images assailed her, harder and faster than before, but somehow with a cohesion they’d lacked previously.

A barroom. The woman from her dreams showing all sorts of emotions, from happiness to sadness. A man in a leather jacket showing similar emotions. Jo as a child being picked up by that man and swung around, giggling and smiling.

A house. That same woman cooking in a kitchen, Jo herself arguing with her as she assisted her in chopping vegetables. Jo doing homework at a scarred wooden table, the woman leaning over her muttering in disgust that what they taught in those business classes was useless these days. Unpacking boxes while the woman asked why she’d had to quit in the middle of the semester. Playing cards at that kitchen table.

The cemetery. Standing crying in the rain as an empty coffin was lowered into the gaping hole in the earth. Laying flowers on that grave.

This car. Arguing with the woman, but in a warm way, as though the argument was an old familiar one they knew they’d never see eye to eye on. Studying a map with her, reading off information from a notebook to her.

The house she’d just left. Planning something big and very glad to see Dean and Sam Winchester. Meeting the angel Castiel and thinking he wasn’t what she’d thought an angel would be. Drinking beer and watching her mother make friends with the angel.

Her mother.

The woman she’d kept seeing was her mother.

Ellen.

The man in the leather jacket was her father.

Bill.

“Oh!”

Her mother beside her, holding her as she’d died.

Memories broke free, eclipsing those lies she’d been given, flooding her head as if a dam had broken. That ache in her head increased even more until with a final blinding burst that took sight from her for several long seconds, Jo Harvelle was whole once more.

She blinked, touching the picture with one finger. “Mom. Dad.”

The first picture was Ellen and Bill Harvelle, holding her in front of the Roadhouse, grinning because they’d pain off the mortgage and now owned it free and clear. Her parents had looked so young there….

She flipped more pages, reliving a past she’d forgotten, crying in joy and sorrow at those good and bad things that were the sum of her.

Her dad had taught her how to ride a bike and her mom to swim. She recalled going to school in her favorite dress at seven and getting in trouble when she’d punched the boy who’d made fun of it. Later, she’d dated that boy and punched him again when he’d copped a feel without even bothering to try to kiss her first.

Her mother had taught her to drive at fourteen and saved money carefully so Jo could go to college. Going off to college and feeling alone and left out, missing the Roadhouse and those regulars that had come through since she’d been small. Returning home to her mom guilt-tripping her about quitting school and moaning about how she’d wanted a normal life for her.

Screw normal, Jo thought. Normal was boring.

A birthday party for her at the Roadhouse, all of the regulars attending. Her mother teaching her to mix drinks.

She found pictures of her and Ash, making cross-eyes at the camera with their tongues stuck out, and then a picture of Sam and Dean that she hadn’t even known Ellen had put in there. When had she done that? It was an older picture, from before the Roadhouse had exploded, Sam and Dean at the bar side by side, giving Ellen a couple of rakish grins.

They all looked so young, even herself.

Everything they’d told her was true.

Jo remembered crushing hard on Dean at first, then her crush fading as reality had set in, time had passed, and a friendship formed. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other often or talked often, but every time they’d met after the initial meeting, Jo had felt like she’d always known him and that no time at all had passed. They’d been able to pick up a conversation where they’d left off, a thing Jo had only been able to do with a couple other people.

She had given up on the dream of Dean Winchester, but she’d never given up on him as a man. He was one out of a million -- and she didn’t even think he realized it.

Turning her head a fraction, she acknowledged Dean’s presence there in the open door of the car. He was standing there waiting, watching her with his lips slightly parted and a look of wonder on his face. It was clear that he’d been there to witness her entire return of memory.

He cleared his throat, indicating the album. “Bobby found that in the car when he had it brought here. It was his idea to park the car here by the end of the driveway and put the book under the seat where he’d first found it.”

She saw him fully for the first time in days. Dean Winchester. Former crush, friend, and man very dear to her heart. Jo loved him. She wasn’t in love with him, because they’d hardly tried that route together, but she did love him. He was special to her and always would be no matter what their relationship ended up being. Reaching out, she placed her hand on his cheek, thumb sweeping across his cheekbone. He pressed his face to her hand, turning to it, lips grazing her palm. Jo blinked. “I would so bust your balls right now if you hadn’t been completely right in doing this, Dean.” Dropping her hand from his face, she turned the page in the album. The next one was blank and Jo closed it.

“Don’t I know it.” He made a motion with one hand. “Scoot over.”

She did and he joined her in the car, thigh pressed to hers, arms against hers, the warmth of his body washing over her in a welcome bath. “Where’s my mom?”

“Don’t know. Cas is looking for her in heaven.”

“She’s there?”

He shrugged. “He said he found a trace of her there, so…yeah. I guess. We don’t know for sure if she’s still there though.”

“If she’s there, he’ll find her.” She was confident that Castiel would discover her mother’s whereabouts.

“Cas liked Ellen.”

“She liked him, too.” Jo swept her hand along the cover of the album. “It feels wrong to be here without her, to not have her standing here fussing.”

“We’ll do everything we can to find out where she is, Jo. You know that.”

“I do.”

She wet her lips, thinking about the past few days. Dean and Sam had come for her, risking personal injury to retrieve her from being lost. She knew it had been frustrating for them and they had to have worried they wouldn’t be able to get her back in one piece. “You came for me. You could have easily left me like that and you didn’t.”

“You needed me, Jo. You needed us.”

Truer words never spoken. She had needed them to fight to save the woman she’d been since she’d been in no condition to fight for herself.

He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, a quick caress. “You fought so hard to save people. How could I not fight just as hard to save you?”

There was more there, Jo saw it, felt it; words he wanted to say and wouldn’t. He hadn’t set out with such desperation to save simply another victim of supernatural forces or someone he’d casually cared for. He’d saved her because of who she was and because, on some level, she meant something deep to him, perhaps even something he had yet to admit to himself. She read that in him in a second.

Jo slid closer, turning on the seat, her arms going around him, hugging him as much for his sake as her own. “Thank you for bringing me back.”

“You’re welcome.” There was a hitch in his breaths that she ignored, staying in place against him, not looking up from his chest until he took one long breath and pushed it back out. She gave him time to recover from the emotions he was feeling.

She sat back a fraction. “Dean? I really was dead, wasn’t I?” It was all there in her memories. The Hellhound slicing her side open, bleeding to death in a hardware store in Carthage. Consciousness slipping away before she’d pushed that button. Obviously the plan had given Dean and Sam time because they were both alive now. She, too, was alive though, when she was supposed to be dead.

“You were.”

“How does a person deal with that? How do I deal with getting a second chance at life?” How did she cope knowing she’d gotten a second chance when so many others never would? It hardly seemed fair.

He kept an arm around her, a brace against her back. As many times as he’d died and returned he should be an expert by now. “When you’re tired of living, it’s a trial to come back and have to live, but you…. Jo, grab on to life. Do those things you always wanted to do and never did. Zachariah meant it as a curse, but I think you can turn it into a blessing. For yourself. For everyone you love and who loves you.” He looked at her then, a hint of hope in his eyes.

Leaning her head back, Jo smiled. “Good advice. Shall we go in and let Bobby and Sam know I’m okay?”

Dean slid from the car, and when his hands lingered in helping her from the vehicle, Jo didn’t protest or say a word.

They returned to the house slowly, arms about each other, Jo carrying that photo album and thanking God for her mother’s stubborn refusal to go digital.

Sam and Bobby were waiting, anxiety in their eyes.

She gave them a small smile and nodded. Sam returned the nod, the set of his shoulders relaxing while Bobby fairly collapsed in his own relief. With a last squeeze of Dean’s side with her hand, Jo pulled away from him. “If you don’t mind, Bobby, I’m going to take a long shower and go to bed for a few hours. I didn’t sleep much last night.” Halfway across the room, she paused and turned back, holding out the album, asking her question in a general way. “How did you know seeing the pictures would work?”

It was Bobby who answered. “Honestly? We didn’t, but you and Ellen were all you both had for years. The pictures she chose to keep with you as you traveled had to have major significance, pieces of you both pasted in an album --”

“Kept safe,” Dean said softly. “Photographic evidence and put it with that car you and Ellen used….”

“Unconditional love can make you whole.” Sam’s gaze lifted to her, happiness and sadness mixed together there. “I think it comes down to that, Jo. You and Ellen…. It was unconditional. You loved each other no matter what, fought against each other, with each other, for each other and, in the end, that love stayed right through to the end.”

“Sound like you know something about that.”

Sam nodded. “We’ll tell you all about saving the world…and each other…later. You’ve missed a lot, Jo, but we’ll play catch up once you’re rested.”

With a last fond glance at all of them, Jo headed up the stairs.