Chapter Text
The first thing to do was to settle the birds down. Jo wasn’t sure about much, but she was sure about that one thing: her shit could wait; the raptors needed reassurance and calming and possibly food or medicine. She could do that while she tried to figure out what the hell was going on, right?
The last thing she could remember for sure was waking up in an exam room with an eagle with a broken wing staring at her like he was trying to decide if she was food or not. Before that, she didn’t know. Obviously stuff had to have happened, since she wasn’t a newborn baby, but she didn’t remember anything specific. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened to me, do you?” The eagle just cocked his head and walked off. Jo shook her head and followed.
As long as she didn’t let herself think about it, she could take care of the birds. She knew where things were, what each bird needed, and she even found herself calling a baby falcon “Fred” once even before she checked the band for a name. Luckily, none of them seemed to need anything beyond routine care or attention, so Jo could just shut off her brain and go with it.
When she got out front, though, a scent hit her nostrils that bypassed everything else. She stared at the pretty redhead at the desk. “Um, hi?”
“Hi!” The woman flipped through a small stack of cards. “Jo. You’re Jo Harvelle. I have your new ID, and thank fate for today being the day new IDs arrived for me to hand out, because it means I know you’re Jo and these are yours too.” She handed Jo the badge and two tickets to a Halsey concert. “Well, one’s mine, but since they came in the same envelope and the seats are next to each other I’m assuming we planned on going together.”
“Makes sense.” Jo stared at the tickets. The envelope said “For Jo”, and the two tickets inside had Jo and Charlie scribbled on them with little hearts next to the names. “So… are we… this looks like a date, right? It’s not just your scent getting to me?”
Charlie’s smile nearly blinded Jo. “Looked like a date to me before I could smell you. Great. I’m sure I’d be looking forward to it if I could remember anything about Halsey’s music!”
“You too, huh? What the hell is going on around here?” Jo tucked the tickets into her back pocket. “Animals seem fine, but I don’t remember anything.”
“It’s not just you and me,” Charlie reassured her. “I found a list of phone numbers of people who work here and started calling, and nobody seems to know anything. Whatever it is, it’s bigger than just this place, because a lot of those people were at home.” She paused for a moment, brow creasing. “At least, they assumed. It’s possible they were here this morning and it just took a while to catch up?”
“Maybe.” Jo pulled out her phone and looked at the list of contacts. “This might be better… if I knew who to call. Who works here, who doesn’t.”
“That’s what I’m here for, right? I have the list!” Charlie waved a hand at her computer screen. “Let’s see who we can find.”
After a few tries, Jo ended up calling Dean Winchester, whoever that was. No proof he wasn’t connected to the sanctuary somehow, but unlike Lisa Braeden, Madison Bryce, and Aaron Bass, he wasn’t on the list of employees. Dean didn’t remember anything either, and as it turned out, he was connected to the sanctuary indirectly. While searching for clues to their identities, his girlfriend found her ID badge from there. The only thing that felt off to either of them was the brambled stick under Lisa’s pillow.
A call to Sam Winchester was equally unhelpful, although no one at his place had found any evidence of connection to the sanctuary. “I guess we should probably assume it’s not just us, then,” Jo decided.
“Seems like. If everyone’s forgotten everything, that means no one’s going to have any idea what happened, doesn’t it.” Charlie leaned back in her chair, glancing at her phone. “What do we do now?”
Million dollar question, wasn’t that. “See if you can find a schedule or something, and then call all the employees to make sure people come take care of the birds when they’re supposed to?” Charlie started to protest, but Jo shook her head. “Like you said… no one’s going to have any idea what to do about the memory thing, and that includes us. So we focus on what we can do. We can take care of the birds, and get things organized around here, and hope that when we get the chance to go home we can figure out where exactly that is for us.”
“Oh, that’s easy, I can get the address and put it into my phone and get directions. I hope your phone can do the same thing. Then there’s just recognizing the place and figuring out which key, but I’m hoping instinct will do that, like hacking into the computer, but if not I doubt we’re the only people out there looking stupid trying to figure out how to get into our own homes, right?”
“Probably not,” Jo said with a huge smile. “I am sure glad you’re here and so smart. I feel bad for the people who don’t have that.” She waited a moment while Charlie did her thing on the computer. “So? Do we live together?”
“No.” Charlie sounded as disappointed as Jo felt. “I live in an apartment complex for omegas, and your address looks like a house.” Her smile came back, although not as big as before. “There’s probably a good reason for it. Maybe we haven’t been dating all that long? Or the omega place gives me somewhere to go when hormones and pheromones get out of whack?”
Jo shrugged. Either of those sounded plausible. “For all we know, this could be our first date. It doesn’t feel like it, I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time and with the scent I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t be dating, but you’re right. We don’t know anything for sure.” She bit her lip, shoving her hands in her back pocket. “Should we… what if…?”
“Neither of us is mated to someone else, or we wouldn’t smell so good to each other. If we were dating someone else, well… we can’t have been too happy with it. Those tickets…” Charlie shook her head. “I suppose there could be some kind of arranged mating that just hasn’t happened yet. If we get our memories back, things might be a little awkward, but what if we don’t? I don’t think we should put our lives in a holding pattern. There’s still no need to rush… and why does saying that make me fear your mom?”
Jo shuddered. Of course, without her memories, there was no way she could answer that question, but she certainly felt it too. “I’ll tell you if I ever figure it out. But you’re right.”