Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, but boy howdy, if I did…
AN: Why? Because I can't leave well enough alone. And while Jo and Ellen went out in a blaze of glory…I still prefer them breathing.
Forever Meets the Dying Girl
The last thing Jo Harvelle ever saw was the light spilling in from between the slat blinds on the hardware store's doors.
Blood loss was taking its toll, and the world was already white-edged, swimming as she fought for clarity.
I won't go, she thought, I have to be awake, for the end…
But she was slipping, slipping down…
The world wheeled away, and as her head fell onto her mother's shoulder, Jo's mind fell somewhere else.
For a moment, just a moment, she forgot that she was dying.
She was in the Roadhouse.
The real Roadhouse, not its ruins back home in Nebraska. It was midday, the main bar room flooded with so much sunlight it was like a physical touch upon the skin.
Jo had loved days like these. She'd put the jukebox on as loud as it would go and, as late as sixteen-years-old, would pull on a pair of old wool socks and skate about on the parts of the wooden floor where the polish had held up against decades of sharp-soled hunters' boots…
Turning, she took in the room around her. The jukebox was there. So were the pool tables up on the half-floor. A bar towel was flung casually over a pile of trays by the taps. The chairs were all down at the tables, as though she and her mother had just gone through preparing for opening. She could smell hops and the salt of beer nuts; maybe someone had left the front storeroom open…
Maybe the last three years had been a dream.
Maybe this was her brain's way of saying, 'wake up and stop being a child.'
Maybe this time she could do better…
"Sorry, sweetie, it wasn't a dream."
Jo wheeled around, facing the bar again.
There was a girl standing there, leaning against the bar itself, as though she hadn't a care in the world.
Jo went on instant alert, hands clenching at her sides while the hair along her neck stood to abrupt attention.
"You really are dying," the girl continued, "in a hardware store in Carthage, surrounded by hell hounds." She gave Jo a rueful look. "Sorry. Again."
Jo swallowed. There would be no do-over's. No going back.
Deal with the now…however weird it was.
"How…?"
"Did we get here?" the girl said, raising her eyebrows and flicking one hand to encompass the bar.
Jo nodded.
The girl – if she was indeed a girl – shrugged. She was one of those people who spent their life hovering on the line between pretty and pretty average. She was someone who had to work at looking good.
At this particular moment, she was succeeding; the luxuriant sunlight showed up the warm lights in her dark hair and turned her otherwise brown eyes to liquid copper.
"I don't know how much Cas told you about us…"
"Us?" Jo felt compelled to interrupt. "Us, as in…angels?"
Pretty average became most definitely pretty when she smiled. "Smart cookie. Yeah, us as in angels. As in me." She stood fully, stepping away from the bar and taking a few slow steps towards Jo.
Jo watched her, but didn't step back. "You didn't answer my question," she said. "How did we get here? 'Here' shouldn't even exist anymore, for chrissakes."
"Like I said, I don't know how much Cas told you about angels, but for us time is somewhat malleable."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we stand suspended upon the moment you passed out. In a few minutes the hell hounds will throw open those doors and come for you and your mother. Ellen will wait until they're good and close, and then she'll blow you both to smithereens."
Well, shit.
"The hell hounds will burn up, too," she consoled Jo.
"But we'll both still be dead."
"Oh, yeah."
Jo sighed, running one hand through her hair. "This sucks."
The girl – the angel – smiled again. "It does. But it doesn't have to."
Say what?
"I've been watching you for quite a while now, Jo. Since the first of us came down last year. Since Dean Winchester was raised."
Dean…oh God, please let him be okay…
Focus.
"Why?"
"Well, for a kick off, you're special, Jo."
That set off a full orchestra's worth of bells.
Hunters, in their way, were special.
Azazel's psychic kids had all been special.
Hell, the Winchester boys were both special, and look where it had gotten them.
Jo regarded the angel warily.
"I think you've got the wrong girl," she said slowly. "I'm not special; no powers, no wacky family history, I mean, apart from the hunting thing." She tried to smile jokingly. "No extra limbs, even…"
The angel's own smile went a little lopsided, her face going rueful, perhaps a little apologetic. "I wouldn't be so quick to discount this, sweetheart. You're special in a way that not many of human race is anymore. Not for around two thousand years."
Curiosity got the better of her. "Special how?"
"Certain people can see angels in their true forms, or at least, a form they choose for themselves. It's a very rare trait, Jo. Not even Sam and Dean Winchester can do that, despite who they are, or even what they are."
Jo stared at her, blinking. That mention of Sam and Dean…'what they are'…what Sam and Dean were apart from hunters and their father's sons was…
"Vessels," Jo blurted. She swallowed hard. "You're talking about vessels."
The angel nodded, face entirely solemn now. "Yes."
It was like someone had kicked her in the chest. All the breath had left her and didn't seem to want to come back. "Does…does that mean that I – that I'm…?"
"Yes. It's in the blood, Jo. In your blood, just like it was in your father's and his father's and his mother's before that."
"Down the Harvelle line? The hunting line?"
Another nod. "Just as it is in the Campbell blood that Sam and Dean carry from their mother. Just as it will be in the blood of your children, should any of you live to have any."
Jo felt like her throat was going to close up.
"You have to understand, there are so few people left in this world who are capable of being vessels...so few who still carry it in their blood. But its not just that..."
There was affection welling on the angel's face, filling up her eyes.
"You still have faith, Jo… you still have hope. You still believe. And more importantly, you still care."
Jo's hands were shaking. She slowly shook her head. Mouthed a silent no.
But the angel nodded.
"It's how I found you, Jo. It's why I stayed. Why I watched you. It's why we're both here now.
"You've always been part of something bigger…"
This was too much. Just…too much.
Get a hold of yourself Joanna Beth Harvelle. You can fall apart later…if, y'know, there is a later…
"Why are you telling me this?" she demanded, feeling herself starting to get angry, hearing it in her voice. "Why are you telling me this now?"
The angel strode over to her. Her hands reached out, took Jo's and held them gently. Her face was intense, copper eyes bright as new pennies.
"Because this is your last chance do anything about it, Jo," she said urgently. "This is your last stand as Jo Harvelle."
Realization filled her.
"And what would I be after?" she whispered. She felt the first tears slip down her cheeks.
"We," the angel murmured back, "we would be Azrael."
Jo closed her eyes. Drew the scents of home into her lungs for the last time. Felt the sunlight on her skin.
"Then what do you need, Azrael?" she asked, voice hushed. "What do you need from me?"
Through a film of tears, the sunlight blurred, shapes bleeding into each other. Jo thought she saw the outlines of wings…
"Say yes, Jo," Azrael breathed. "Just say yes…"
A slip of the wrist, a quicksand twist, and time began again.
Ellen looked at the still face of her daughter and thought her dead.
The doors of the hardware store swung wide and hell hounds filled the aisles.
Jo cracked her eyes open and whispered her last word, just as her mother spoke.
"You can go straight back to hell, you ugly bitch!"
Ellen's fingers curled, a spark was born, and their world was consumed by flame.
But not before holy light engulfed Jo.
She shivered, and trembled, and felt the brush of ethereal feathers against her face.
Then Azrael opened her eyes.
As the explosion tore apart the store, holy fire joined the true flame, incinerating the hell hounds. Azrael held Ellen Harvelle to her at the eye of the storm of heat and light.
When the fires died down they were gone from there…and not a hundred feet away Dean Winchester stood and mourned.
Are you afraid?
I'd be a fool if I said no.
True enough.
Take her some place safe for me?
Of course…
Promise me.
I promise.
In the Roadhouse – the real Roadhouse, the ruins in Nebraska – light flickered over the blown, ashy ground. It touched once upon the ragged remains and then sunk, below and below and below…
…So that Ellen came to in the basement store room, surrounded on all sides by aluminum beer kegs, and spirits bottles, and two feet of concrete laced with iron bars.
The thing that her daughter had become still held her.
Ellen shivered, making a sound low in her throat, and struggled free.
Impossibly, a single forty-watt bulb burned to life overhead. As the light rose in the basement, so did the shadows. Ellen saw two, over her once-daughter's shoulders; great spreading arcs that touched the far corners of the room.
A great sob tore from her. Ellen clasped a hand over her mouth, as though to keep it back.
"You…you're not my daughter," she managed.
"No," the angel murmured sadly, watching her with Jo's brown eyes. "But one day I'll bring her back to you."
She stepped close, and Ellen couldn't help but shiver. It looked like Jo, smelt like Jo, and no doubt Jo was still in there somewhere, sleeping maybe…
"In the meantime, she exacted a promise from me, and I've never gone back on my promises."
Ellen stared at her. "What promise?" she whispered.
"To keep you safe, of course."
Before she could back away, the angel hand put Jo's right hand to Ellen's forehead.
"Sleep Ellen," she said softly with Jo's voice, as the world went dark, and sank warmly away.
"Sleep until the war is over, and I will bring your daughter back…"
AN: Let me know what you think.