Title: Oh Mama I Can Hear You Crying
Summary: Tag to All Hell Breaks Loose pt 2. After losing everything to the Roadhouse fire, Ellen makes her way to Bobby's. And finds out the Yellow Eyed Demon took more then she thought possible.
Rating: T for cursing and ANGST up the Wazoo.
Warnings: Angst and Angst and more Angst. Probably some sexual tension too.
Pairings: Subtle Jo/Dean
AU: I have wanted to do a story that focused on Jo and Ellen in the aftermath of the season 2 finale for FOREVER. They got absolutely no attention after that season, and well...that sucked. So I'm filling in the blanks. This is gonna a two-shot. Chapter 2 should be up hopefully within the next few weeks. No promises though.
They all used to joke once in awhile, their little rag-tag family at the Roadhouse, in the midst of hearty, rowdy drunken nights, about how Ash might end up buying it one day. Maybe from falling off the pool table he liked to sleep on or knocking into a wall in a drunken stupor. Ellen never made a habit of getting plastered or fooling around with what-ifs and maybes on anyone. After Bill died, she couldn't bear it. Why the hell did they even focus on Ash those nights? Out of all the career hunters in that bar pretty much fixing to end up on a burning pyre someday, killed by something god-awful, they all chose to contemplate how that crazy brainiac would kick it? Sickest thing, is none of their imaginations came close to how reality played out.
Ellen let out a shuddering, hitching breath and crumpled back against the driver's seat of her pick-up, her entire form still quaking from the sickening horror of finding the Roadhouse she'd built with Bill...her livelihood, her home, every freaking thing she owned and loved in that building burned down into dust and cinders. Along with Ash, and most every good friend, good hunter she'd come to know.
She curled trembling fingers around the steering wheel, swallowing back down the rush of nasty bile at the god-awful memory of the charcoaled, deformed, unrecognizable chunks half buried midst the smoldering wreck of her bar. She'd thrown up until only stomach acid came choking up when she'd caught sight of a shriveled, charred hand—Ash's stupid, cinder-smudged wristwatch he'd loved clinging to the scorched bone.
And just knowing whatever bastard demon set fire to her place planned on her going up in smoke with everybody else…Ellen always had trouble believing in a God and all that feel-good higher power stuff since Bill was ripped from her, but how in hell could she explain that bizarrly-timed phone call from "Jo", luring her away from the Roadhouse just minutes before it became a deathtrap? And when she'd called the number back, it was disconnected. Calling any of Jo's other numbers hadn't put her in touch with the real Jo either. Was it a demon just playing a sick game with her, letting her see her home and friends burned to death? No, she'd never seen or heard of any demon saving a hunter's ass, for any reason.
Burning down the Roadhouse was sure as hell a message but bearing in mind the last talk she'd had with Ash not long before the fire, something about the Winchester's business, it wasn't intended for her. Something hadn't want the Winchesters getting any help. So letting her escape, that couldn't have been part of the plan. Not with them knowing she was a Winchester ally. So what the hell did that leave? Ghosts didn't hang around her place, every hunter made sure of that. Couldn't be that. Angels? Normally Ellen laughed at the idea but this time she paused. Something saved her. Something that cared enough—or was sadistic enough—to reach out using Jo's voice. And why would it go through the trouble of saving her?
It hurt her head too much to think about, so Ellen threw the truck in park and shoved the driver's door open, staring wistfully towards Bobby's junkyard. Call after call she'd placed to Bobby's house had gone unanswered. Just like with Jo. Goddamnit, if those fucking demons got him too… Ellen reached back into the glove compartment for her pistol, slid herself out the truck and quietly clicked the door shut.
Fear and instinct restrained her from shouting out Bobby's name into the yard as she haltingly made her way. Demons could be here too. And if so, they'd figure out she escaped the fire and they'd finish the damn job. The junkyard silence was ominous, filled with an explosion of some sort waiting in the air. Then Ellen's eyes snagged on a silhouette of the Impala sitting out in the lot and her body relaxed unexpectedly despite herself, giddy relief bubbling up throughout her veins. The boys were here. She needed to let Jo know.
Shouting ripped apart the tense stillness. Bobby's unmistakable, furious bellow reverberated and bounced off the hundreds of surrounding metallic tons, "You stupid ass! What did you do? What did you do!?"
After the fleeting moment of sheer joy that Bobby was still kicking, she was instantly tight with tension again. Bobby howling like that meant some bad shit was going down. He didn't get riled up. But if anybody had some sort of hold over that crusty hunter, it'd be those damn boys.
Finally, whoever Bobby was screaming at gathers up the stones to speak, voice broken and degraded, and far too young to sound so beaten down. "Bobby…"
Dean. Ellen sucked in a strangled gasp. Unexplainable dread pooled in her stomach, and Ellen couldn't do much else but listen as she shouldered closer.
"You made a deal? For Sam. Didn't you?" Ellen never thought her heart would stop solid and die within her chest again, not after the night Bill was brought home cut open like a slaughtered animal. Not after the moment she'd learned her only child had got herself kidnapped by a bloodthirsty, sadistic ghost of a serial killer. But here it was, happening all over again over the son of John Winchester. And by the time the shouting match and confessions were over, Ellen's stomach was about to eject itself out of her body. Her upheaving emotions fumbled up her steps and caused her to hit her foot stupidly against an old, rusty bucket lying there, giving herself away like some dumb kid. She could pick up the charged tension circling her, deadly resolve of the guys to kill and attack whatever enemy they thought stalked them.
Half a second later both Bobby and Dean tackled her, would have bowled over her to the ground if not for the split-second fire of recognition in Dean's violent green eyes. "Ellen?" his voice stumbled as he jerked back, frantic stare rapidly passing her over and mouth agape in utter disbelief, looking every inch so much an overwhelmed, destroyed little boy that Ellen broke. The shaky, twisted smile she returned both of them was ruined by the pooling tears in her eyes.
Dean tugged her forward, crushing her in a fierce bear-hug he only reserved for family. And Ellen's arms rose up and clutched that boy to her chest as if he was her own kid, salty tears smearing stains against his leather shoulder.
They held onto each other, a long, long time before her searing fury at him slowly burned holes through the cushioning cloak of elation. Sick with it, Ellen pushed herself out of the Winchester's grasp and choked out. "Tell me you didn't do it."
Brows furrowing, Dean stared perplexedly. He opened his mouth but she barreled on.
"Tell me you didn't sell your goddamn soul to a fucking demon, kid!" Ellen's desperate fingers claw fistfuls of his leather jacket, seconds from closing around that stupid boy's throat. Her teeth clenched, her anguished, desperately furious stare chasing after Dean's evading eyes. "Damn it, Dean!" voice breaking apart, her one hand let go of his jacket and seized his jaw, forcing him to look down at her.
Bobby swore something terrible under his breath and took a stomping clomp towards the house, clearly not intending to give Dean any help.
That stupid boy's features, one moment a grim mask of stubborn stone, crumbled under Ellen's agonized eyes. "Ellen…" he sighed as he had with Bobby but this time it caught painfully, like he'd been stabbed deep in the gut. He focused an achingly raw, entreating gaze into her. "I had to." Dean bit his lips, jaw hardening rebelliously. "You heard everything, right?" he ground out every word warily, barely able to ignore the horror overwhelming Ellen's expression. "Sam—they killed him." the way his tone splintered, the bare-boned torment eating through Dean's face, it speared a dagger straight through her. "I couldn't get to him in time and I was supposed to just let him die?"
A stinging, coarse-handed slap smacked him hard in the face, cutting off the rest of his self-righteous crap speech. Hand trembling, Ellen's half-crippled shout is somehow worse than Bobby's. "So what? You just gonna throw yourself into hell's pit forever just so Sam can come back? You even think how that's gonna wreck Sam when he finds out? You even…" suddenly Ellen couldn't hold back the sob, the honest-to God sob that tore out her throat. "You even care about throwing yourself away?"
If Dean was gonna answer her, the reply was lost in Sam's far off, tension-filled call of, "Dean? Bobby?"
Jolting, Dean and Ellen both stiffened and painfully tried to smooth over their expressions. Last thing Sam, and Ellen, needed was for him to find out with her to hear it. And she couldn't bear to watch the heartbreak tear up that sweet boy.
"We're ok, Sam!" Dean yells out to him, tone somehow so much lighter than it'd been before, not even a trace of the wrenching, tortured mess he'd been just seconds before. "And we got a surprise for you! Get over here."
Barely 10 minutes on the road after leaving the old Devil's Gate cemetery, one of Bobby's older cells cranked out a ringtone from inside the console—Elton John's, Don't Go Breaking My Heart of all things. Ellen lifted a curious eyebrow at it as Bobby muttered and pulled up to his ear. "This is Bobby."
The volume on the old flip phone was turned up so Ellen could hear the spent, blistered croak on the other line, "Bobby? I-I've been trying to get ahold for days! Why the hell weren't you answering?" Damn. Whoever this caller was in a bad way, sounding like they'd spent the night on a nasty bender and still wasn't all there.
"Well for starters, I've had a shitty couple days. I only was just staring down into the pits of hell. Barely got away with my head still attached so I couldn't take any calls." Bobby groused back. "Who is this?"
"I uh—past few days have been worse than shit for me too." Ellen's lips parted as she listened, suddenly hearing through the stranger's coarsened rasp. A maternal instinct catching afire you could call say, suddenly knowing in her bones that caller was her baby girl. Her hand shot out, yanking at the cell. "Give me the damn phone."
"Ok, ok!" the old hunter huffed, one arm struggling with the steering wheel as his other tossed the cell to her. "Not like we need to wreck after escaping Hell's Gate with all of us in one piece. Mostly."
Ellen barely heard him or cared for any living thing except the person on the other line, cracking out brokenly, "Jo?"
A tense, stunned moment of nothing on the other end, then a trembling near whimper, bleeding a vulnerability Ellen hadn't heard in years. "Mom? Is that you?" God, Jo sounded 4 years old again, lonely and missing a daddy.
"Course it's me, honey." Ellen gulped and sucked in a painful breath, desperately trying to pour all the comfort she ached to give into mere words. "I—I tried getting ahold of you, blew up your freaking phone. You never answered. I uh, I thought the demons got you too."
"I—didn't get any calls from you. I-I thought you'd burned up with the Roadhouse." Jo took a long time articulating that, tone halting and suffocating—like she was struggling with tears and losing.
"Almost did." Ellen bit her lips, tone stumbling badly at the memory of most of their friends dead. "D-Dumb luck I made it out. We ran out of pretzels, so I went for them. I wasn't gone that long and when I came back…" she couldn't finish that. There wasn't any need to tell her daughter of the honest-to-God demonic-looking flames devouring the only home she'd known. The desperate screams and frenzied scrambles a few hunters still alive made, trying to bust out. And no need to tell Jo some crazy story about getting a phone call from her that lured Ellen away in time, when she clearly wasn't the one who made that call. "How did you hear about the Roadhouse?"
A hiss sounding as if it passed through a clenched jaw was Jo's response. "Some demon I exorcised was bragging about it." heavy, brooding tension thick as syrup. "It—yapped about you all burning alive. I thought it was just more demon crap—trying to mess with my head. Until I tried calling Ash. When he didn't answer I got worried. So I tried Donna, Lewis, Karl, anyone I could think of and I still got nothing. I-I knew something happened. I drove all the way down here and I saw—" and Jo shuttered apart with a quivering, wounded cry, "I—I saw everything burnt to nothing... so I was pretty damn sure you burnt up with it..."
"I'm so sorry, honey." Ellen murmured, fresh tears slipping down her cheeks, a metaphorical knife twisting in her heart. "I should've done more to find you. I didn't want you thinking you were all alone. With this demon shitstorm chasing us, I barely got out it alive anyway."
"But you're still here." Her daughter rasped out, voice thin and whispy—exhausted to the bone, Ellen could tell.
"Yeah, still here." She promised gently, surprised the flimsy flip-phone hadn't snapped in half yet from her death-grip. "I'm not going anywhere, Jo."
Jo was so quiet absorbing those words into herself that Ellen's alarm soared. Shit, she must've been out of her mind out there by herself. Ellen drew in sharply, recognizing this same eerie symptom from years ago. Way back, after Bill died, a 4 year-old Jo had been silent as stone for weeks, pliable, didn't kick up a fuss about anything. It wasn't natural or healthy and it should've been sending off screaming alarm bells to Ellen. But she'd been half out of her mind with grief so the worry for Jo had been numbed, tossed to the side as a devastated Ellen fought to run the bar by herself and keep herself and Jo alive in such a twisted world. And Jo hadn't cracked up, until the day a damn Crocotta looking to make hunters its next meal nearly killed Ellen when it took on Bill's form. Not until she'd nearly had her mother ripped from her too. And Jo wasn't really any different at 20.
Even when she and Jo butted heads and screamed at each other, even after Jo had run off to the ends of the earth away from Ellen to chase the job that got her father killed, at their core they were mother and daughter. Family. It had been just the two of them for so long keeping each other going until Ash and others came, and neither of them ever forgot that. Not really.
"I meant it, I'm not gonna leave you, Jo." Ellen repeated more firmly, pouring every ounce of conviction into her voice, hands curling into fists in her lap. "You're stuck with me for a while longer."
Jo gave a feeble grunt of agreement, still too weak with emotion to really do much else. Ellen didn't push her, just let a cleansed silence fall between them for about a minute until finally Jo's unsteady, "What happened? The Roadhouse-what happened?"
"The fucking Yellow Eyed Demon happened." Ellen spat, the gentleness to her voice fell away and sharpened into a razor. "He sent his fucking minions to burn us all to the ground so we couldn't help the boys."
"Dean and Sam? Are they ok?" Her daughter demanded urgently, almost with a stain of guilt, like she just remembered they existed. But it was excruciatingly tough to care about anybody else when you thought your whole family is gone and you're the only one left. Ellen remembered that feeling pretty damn well.
"They're..." Ellen bit her lip until it almost bled to keep from stuttering and betraying Dean. Not that she made any promises to him or freaking cared about keeping her word even if she had, but Jo did not deserve the news this way. Not over the cold, unfeeling expanse of miles between them, not something so devastating and heart-shredding about Dean Winchester.
Jo was pretty terrible at hiding it. All the hours the brothers spent at the Roadhouse, Ellen's eyes had watched Jo. Watched how Jo lit up with barely hidden pleasure every time Dean walked through the door, how she went out of her way to be near him or talk to him, didn't even try hustling him out of his money, and that was when the full weight of it hit Ellen square in the chest. Jo was crazy about the guy, and Ellen wasn't gonna be the one to plunge a knife through her heart.
"They're fine right now. Damn demon put them through the ringer though." Her heart constricted so bad with the real truth, the horror that thing had put those boys through, Ellen would rather she'd been stabbed, shot, beat, anything but this agony. "It uh…opened up a gate to hell, of all things. Let out I don't know how many demons through it."
"What?" her daughter was practically shrill, disbelief and confusion warring for dominance.
Bone-aching weariness suddenly drowned the older Harvelle. God, this was another conversation she didn't want to have over the phone. "Where are you, Jo?"
"About 20 miles outside of Bobby's. Where are you?"
Ellen's mouth fell open in surprise, a sharp chuckle leaping up unexpectedly from her chest at the burst of shock at Jo not only being in the same freaking state but just miles from them. "Seriously? What lead you all the way out here to Dakota?"
"Bobby." Call it Motherly Intuition or some other crap, but she could hear the faint pull of a smirk in Jo's tone. "I was worried about him, he wouldn't answer any of my calls either. I—thought he was dead too. I was on my way to check on him…figure out what to do next, when you called."
"Then meet us there. Sam and Dean are headed that way too, you can catch up on everything since you've been gone."
"Ok." Another long pause then a shaky, "See you guys there."
"You be careful on your way, hear me? And Jo..." Her throat suddenly swelled shut around the massive lump that had been plaguing her since her home burned. "I love you, honey." She finally whispered, hoarse and faltering.
She could literally feel her daughter melting, crumbling the rest of the way through the trembling silence. They didn't say warm and fuzzy stuff like this very much. And it wasn't for Ellen not feeling the need or not wanting to. Those 3 words just seemed to choke her up and scare the hell out of her, baring her heart so completely like that. But she was done holding it all back now. She would've had a bullet through her skull if not for Bobby and the boys today. And with the Roadhouse and everybody gone, it was just her and Jo again really. At this point, she could crush Jo in her arms and never let her go.
"I—love you too, Mom." Jo's murmur was soft, more tender then she'd been in a long time. "I'll see you guys soon."
After Jo hung up, a clawing sobbing breath scratched its way up Ellen's throat, twisting Ellen's features so bad her pained grimace caught Bobby's critical eye. Bobby was smart enough not to talk to her with her emotions all over the place, not start with the "are you ok" crap or else Ellen might've socked him.
But she was startled instead by warm, callused fingers enclosing around her own clammy hand. Her head hitched up, brimming and wild eyes catching sight of Bobby with one arm reached over to grasp her. Not a word left his lips but he exuded a solacing comfort just by being there beside her, just with the light pressure his fingers gave. It made Ellen's heart twist all over again and a sudden wave of fondness overwhelmed her for the old crusty hunter. So much fondness she didn't trust herself to open her mouth without losing it, so she put all her heartfelt thanks into her grateful squeeze of Bobby's hand.
Bobby flashed her an understanding half-smirk, muttering gruffly. "I got old Johnny at the house when you want some."
To be Continued...
Author's Note: So, I always craved to see Ellen and Jo's reaction/feelings about Dean's deal. And since the show never expounded upon it, it gave me alot of leeway. I enjoy adding more layers to these two awesome characters. The next part will be in Jo's POV but a forewarning, it might take me a bit to write it. I'm in the middle of unpacking and organizing two houses, trying to get another job and just...life. All that comes first so when I find time, I will write Jo's part. And man, I look forward to it... ;) She's not gonna take this news well.
So, don't know if you guys noticed, but Ellen's reason for escaping the Roadhouse fire is a bit...expanded in my fic. I was never a fan of the "out getting pretzels" excuse. It just seemed lame, like the writers didn't want to think of a creative excuse for her. So this my little fanfic reason behind that story XD An eerie phone call Ellen can't explain. In my own headcanon, its an angel trying to save Ellen. Because I dig angels saving people.
Expect more angst in the next chapter :D I'm such a sadist.
Read and Review my lovely readers!