AN: If you're not listening to Florence and the Machine's 'Cosmic Love', you should be. This is an AU ending for 5x10, Abandon All Hope. Also, I'm totally ripping off Stardust.
Before there were Angels, there were Stars…
…A stretcher. They were talking about making a stretcher. It was laughable, really. She wasn't going anywhere, not like this.
"Stop," she said, voice weak, but instantly grabbing their attention. "Guys, stop."
They froze, watching her with dreading eyes. Her mother looked between them and her, half-broken already.
"Can we –" she broke off, letting out a soft pained sound. It was hard not to. "Can we be realistic about this, please?"
The boys approached, and she attempted to draw herself up, but only succeeded in letting out another soft grunt as her displaced insides twisted. Something was really, really wrong in there…
"I can't move my legs. I can't be moved. My guts are being held in by an ace bandage. We gotta – we gotta get our priorities straight here."
Mom shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving her face, soundlessly mouthing no, as Sam and Dean exchanged desperate looks. She hated it, she hated that she was hurting them, she hated that this had happened at all…this was not what she had wanted when she got here, never what she wanted, what was intended…
"Number one," she gasped, "I'm not going anywhere."
Ellen's voice shook. Tears, rage, helplessness. "Joanna Beth, you stop talking like that."
"Mom." She looked up at her, at this woman who was her whole world. "I can't fight. I can't walk. But I can do something."
"Jo, no." Ellen gripped her hand, knuckles white, but Jo couldn't feel the pinch of her grip through the pain burning a hole in her side. She could feel the warmth of her mother's skin though, and it was heart-breaking. "No, honey, you can't; you don't – we don't know what that could do…"
"Mom, I have to try," she breathed back. "You know I have to try, and this could be our one chance." She braced herself. Her heart was breaking already, but this would break her mother's. "I need you to go," she said. "I need you to get the gear and go with Sam, find someplace safer to hide."
"Jo –"
"Please." She tried to smile reassuringly. "Please, Mom."
Ellen shook her head, confusion and pain clear on her face. "But I – I thought you needed..."
Jo just looked steadily back at her, her smile real now. "I found it."
Ellen stilled, confusion clearing. She turned, looked up at a thoroughly puzzled Dean Winchester. "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, God."
"What's going on?" Dean asked. He looked unnerved. "Guys? What's all this about? Jo, what're you planning?"
Jo smiled at him. "It's going to be okay," she told him, voice sounding small and weak even to her own ears. Sincere though, and that was important. It was time to believe, now. No more pretending. "Mom…"
Ellen was crying. Two streams of tears trailed unacknowledged down her face as she leaned forward and kissed Jo's forehead. Jo felt the moisture on her face, mingling with the cold sweat and blood and her own tears.
"I love you," Ellen told her, dark eyes fierce and implacable. "But so help me you had better come back because I –" Jo saw her throat work as she swallowed a sob. "I can still ground you, young lady."
Jo managed a laugh, despite the torn muscles in her stomach, and reverently touched her mother's face. Ellen gave her a brief smile back and climbed to her feet. "Sam. Come with me, please."
"Why?" Sam asked, frowning at both women, and at the same time Dean said, "whoa, hey."
"Ellen," he continued, "what the hell is going on?"
"I need your help," Jo said, meeting his gaze when his eyes fixed on her. She's always been a sucker for a pretty pair of eyes. It was no wonder, really. "Dean, there's something that I can do, something only I can do, and only you can help me to do it. Mom and Sam need to go somewhere safe until it's done."
He approached her slowly, taking those few, crucial steps, and settled carefully beside her. She leant her head back against the counter and gazed at him.
"What are you going to do, Jo?" he asked, his focus on her absolute and fierce. There was something in his voice, under the low, baritone-calm of it. He was afraid, she realized, not for himself, but for her.
She smiled, softly, radiantly, and saw him draw a breath of surprise.
"In July of 1984," she told him, "you sat in the back seat of your daddy's car and made a wish on a star." She felt the tears on her face as that precious memory swam through her mind, shivering and half-lit, like ripples moving upon water reflecting a night sky. "You were so small, and so sad. There were lights in your eyes, and on the glass of the windows."
Dean was staring at her, looking shaken and terrified and like he was swallowing around his heart. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. "Fireworks," he rasped. "It was the fourth, and we were driving to Pastor Jim's. People were letting off fireworks and I could see them from the road. Jo…"
"What did you wish for, Dean?" she interrupted gently.
He swallowed hard, jaw working. His eyes were shining. She's seen that look before.
"For a safe place," he said. "I wished for a safe place. Jo, how – how do you know this? How could you –?"
She just smiled sadly and reached up one blood-stained hand to touch his face. He drew an unsteady, rattling breath as she did, but didn't move away or stop her. She ran her thumb over his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, and drew him to her, putting her cheek against his so that her face was hidden from Sam and her mother. Her whisper was only for him.
"I was the star."
AN2: Told you so.