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Ellen and Jo wait for the hellhounds in the Carthage hardware store. Hearts pounding, blood soaking Jo’s ace bandage from her gut wound, the clock tick-tick-ticking their lives away. As soon as Ellen moves to open the door, the denizens of Hades will swarm in and be blown to kingdom come. “Go straight back to hell, you bitches!” snarls Ellen, and just before she lights the fiery inferno, just after Ellen tells her daughter that she’ll always love her and Jo takes what her mother thinks is her last breath, the angel Castiel arrives, appearing in front of them as if he’d never left. “Where the hell have YOU been?!” demands Ellen. Castiel quickly takes in the situation.
“Talking to my brother,” he says shortly. “We had a little…family spat.” He peers down at Jo concernedly. “She looks rather bad.”
“No shit,” snorts Ellen, trying vainly to blink back tears. “I think—I think she might be gone.”
“No.” The angel shakes his head. “Not just yet.” Instead of healing Jo by placing his fingers on her head (since he has been cut off from most of the powers of Heaven), Cas tips the girl’s head back and breathes into her mouth, and as he performs this modified form of CPR, he takes out his angel blade and cuts his own arm with it, dripping blood onto the bandage covering the grievous wound. There is a bright light that almost instantly starts to fade. Ellen’s eyes have widened. “We don’t have much time before she starts fading again,” mutters Castiel, crouching down and drawing Jo gently yet firmly into his arms. “Take the bomb switch from her and then grab hold of me.” Ellen does, extricating the detonator from her daughter’s clenched hands. “Now push it on my mark. One. Two. Three!” Ellen presses the button and he twists his free hand to open the doors, and as the hounds slaver and growl and leap invisibly through the now unlocked entrance, Ellen latches onto Castiel by clamping her arms around his torso and linking her hands at the base of his neck just below his Adam’s apple. If the angel coughs as a result of the tightness of her grip she isn’t sure because all of a sudden they are in Bobby’s family room, making him drop his bottle of whiskey and nearly fall out of his wheelchair in surprise.
“Jesus Christ, boy, would it kill you just once to knock?!” The middle-aged hunter breaks off scolding the angel as soon as he sees Jo and immediately wheels to knock everything off of the kitchen table before covering it with a spotless sheet. “Bring her over here,” the man gruffly orders Castiel. The angel lays Jo down and inspects her worriedly. He had managed to superficially knit the wound together, but she has obviously already lost a lot of blood…that makes him think of his talks with Lucifer and Meg, and then there are Sam and Dean…he has to get them out.
Castiel steps back from the table with a quick nod and utters, “I’ll be back.”
Bobby barely looks up; focused on the task of keeping Jo hydrated and alive, he gives the angel a terse nod.
It is Ellen, tears still shining in her eyes, who says to him: “Wait a sec,” and throws her arms around his neck in a fierce tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispers into his trench coat. “Thank you for coming back and for rescuing my daughter.” Castiel blinks and nods, unsure why there is some sort of blockage in his esophagus. Is his vessel coming down with something?
“You are very welcome.” He says sincerely after a moment. He had grown fond of both Ellen and Jo, especially after the previous night. Drinking together has some ineffable benefits to strengthen the bonds of humanity, he decides as he searches out Sam and Dean, finding them in the graveyard at the edge of Carthage and appearing there with his finger to his lips for silence. With the usual flash of light, they too return to Bobby’s living room. Dean almost instantly stumbles away from Cas, leaning over to catch his breath and perhaps to grieve; he had borne witness to the store blowing up and has not seen Ellen and Jo yet. Sam, however, is dazed and frozen beside Castiel. The angel takes stock and guides the larger Winchester brother to a chair before moving to stand beside the other man. “Hello, Dean. May I offer you any assistance?”
Dean holds his right arm out with the index finger raised in warning.
“Don’t, Cas. I don’t need it. I just gotta catch my breath.”
“Your head is bleeding,” the angel continues, heedless of Dean’s warning. “And you may have some broken ribs. This could have punctured one of your lungs. If you would just allow me to help…”
“DAMN IT, Cas, I said NO!!!” Dean yells, pushing the angel away with fury in his eyes. “I don’t need it, I don’t want it; Ellen and Jo are DEAD because I needed somebody’s help.”
“You were lucky we were there to save your sorry ass,” replies a tart voice from the kitchen.
Dean whips around so fast it would be comical in any other situation, except that there are currently tears in the Winchester’s eyes and his voice is cracking as he says,
“Ellen?!” She nods and walks over to him.
“Yes, it’s me. Come here, baby,” she wraps her arms around him, and his face falls into her shoulder. He is shaking, afraid to ask, but…
“Jo?"
“In there,” Ellen jerks her head toward the room behind her, where Bobby still leans over the kitchen table. “She’s lost a lot of blood, but thanks to Castiel here, I think she’s gonna be all right.” Dean backs up to look into his surrogate mother’s face, licking his lips and staring straight into her eyes to be sure that she’s not putting a positive spin on things just to make him feel better. But no; Ellen wouldn’t do that—not for something like this. In her eyes shine hope and truth.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, I’m serious, Dean,” the mother smiles slightly. “She’s going to be okay.”
“Thank God,” croaks Sam’s voice from where he has shakily stood. “Ellen—”
“Yes, big man, I’ll hug you too,” she smiles and goes over to him, leaving Dean standing as if sucker-punched, staring into the kitchen, frozen at the sight of Jo’s pale, pale face.
He finally gets his legs to move. They feel leaden, but he makes it over to the table at last and chokes out, “Bobby, can you—is she—?” Bobby sighs and his shoulders settle as those sharp dark sparking eyes look up at Dean from under the bill of his baseball cap.
“It’s gonna be touch-and-go for a while. She lost more than two pints of blood because of that damned hellhound. If your angel hadn’t gotten to her when he did…” his gruff voice trails off, but Dean understands. He clears his throat and works his jaw furiously as he looks away from both Jo and Bobby, trying desperately not to cry. There is a sudden sharp intake of breath and then a miniscule amount of movement from the female hunter. Dean’s eyes instantly snap back to gaze at her. Jo opens her eyes and looks up at Dean, the fingers of her right hand twitching as she attempts to give him a reassuring wave. He closes his large, rough, warm hands around Jo’s cold pale small ones and silently gives in to the sobs.
After about five minutes, which at the same time seems infinitely long and to take no time at all, Dean lets go of Jo and goes back over to Cas, who has not moved away from the spot where he had stood when Dean shouted at him. The Winchester feels bad about that, since the angel was only trying to help, and he’d saved the rest of what Dean considers his family to boot. With a twitch of the lips that could be considered a cringe of regret by anyone else, he claps a hand on Castiel’s shoulder.
“Hey, Cas, man, I’m sorry I snapped at ya,” Dean says quietly. “I shouldn’t’ve lost my temper. You were just trying to help, I get that. And you saved Jo and Ellen, okay, so uh, thanks. That means a lot to me. To us.” He looks over at Sam, who is still talking to Ellen in an undertone. Castiel nods.
“It was—no problem,” he says crisply. “Well, actually, there were exponential problems to contend with, but I know that ‘no problem’ is something humans say when they want others to think everything went well, and so I thought it should be said.”
Dean rocks back on his heels, rolls his eyes, and sighs.
“Cas, just shut up,” and he pulls the angel into a rough embrace. Castiel freezes. He supposes he should have expected this, since Ellen had hugged him not long before, but Dean doing it catches him off-guard. Somehow, the strength with which Dean is holding him releases some pent-up emotions inside Castiel, and he closes his eyes and relaxes into the hug. There is a shift and a grunt, and then Dean’s voice mutters in his ear, “Y’know, normally when I hug somebody, they hug back.”
“Oh. Uhm, sorry.” Cas carefully brings up his arms and rests them upon Dean’s shoulders, his hands spread across the hunter’s back. “Is this satisfactory?” Dean chuckles, and that wonderful sound reverberates through Castiel’s own chest as it is pressed against Dean’s.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Well done.” For once, he doesn’t sound snarky; it seems like he means what he says. Castiel also wonders if Dean might be thinking about more than just the reciprocated hug. His own voice is both grateful and serious as he replies,
“Thank you, Dean. You have done well too.”
~~~
After making sure that Jo is stable and getting her as comfortable as possible, Bobby goes to sleep. Nobody begrudges him that because he’d stayed at the kitchen table, working vigorously for hours, to keep the flow of blood staunched and Jo alive. Sam had fallen asleep too—practically on his feet—and nobody said much about that either; although Dean does worry for his little brother, especially after the way Lucifer had spoken to him in the graveyard. Cas stays around for a while longer and then departs again to keep an eye on wherever Death is going. But he is seen casing the house’s perimeter much later in the night, keeping watch.
It’s Ellen and Dean who take the nighttime vigil. Ellen leaves to get more food and supplies from the store and to clear her head, she says; Dean thinks she’s probably also going to go have a good solid cry somewhere—relief is sure to be flooding over her now that her daughter is out of immediate danger. Dean is left to pull up a chair next to Jo and keep an eye on her; holding her hand in his and squeezing it as if he’s never planning on letting go.
Jo wakes up a few minutes after her mom leaves, and he does his best to smile at her.
She manages to say, “Hey, Dean. …I’m glad you’re not dead. And that I’m not either, because after our goodbye in the hardware store I really didn’t wanna be gone just yet.” Dean chuckles and raises an eyebrow.
“My goodbye kiss was that good, huh?” She rolls her eyes at him.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I just had to stick around to make sure you knew it wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Goodbye.” The young Harvelle turns her face to look directly into his, hissing in pain; even the smallest movement sends a nerve signal to her still-gaping wound. “You’re gonna have to stick with me, Winchester—since you started that whole thing back there.”
He nods at her seriously. “I know. I’m willing to stick it out, Jo.”
“Well, don’t sound so enthusiastic about it!” she scathes. He sighs.
“No, I’m just…I’m just kinda burnt-out at the moment. The devil chokin’ me out, bashing me over the head, and then me thinking the rest of my family is dead—that takes it out of a person, you know?”
“Oh boo-hoo, cry some more.” Jo squeezes his hand and smiles to let him know that she really does appreciate how worried and grief-stricken he was about her. His bottom lip trembles and he sucks in a shaky breath.
“I, um, I thought I’d lost you, Jo. And uh, that didn’t feel good. Not good at all.”
“No, I imagine it didn’t.” They sit like that, fingers laced together, until the door opens with a bang and Ellen is back. Dean quickly extricates his fingers from Jo’s, who has fallen into a light doze, but Ellen just tsks and shakes her head at him.
“Relax, sunshine. I’m not gonna cut your fingers off. Or do anything else untoward to ya.”
“Good. I had about enough of that from Lucifer.” She chuckles.
“Besides,” she adds shortly, “I’ll leave that to Jo. If you hurt her…whatever I do will be nothing compared to what she’d do in response.” Dean snorts.
“Well, almost getting ganked by hellhounds to save my ass—I would think that’d probably be the worst thing I could do to her.” Ellen puts the grocery bags she’d carried inside down on Bobby’s kitchen counter, turns, folds her arms, and stares at him. The look on her face says it all: No, that is NOT the worst you can do, Dean Winchester. And you know it ain’t. He nods and focuses on the tiles of the floor, breaking eye contact. She comes forward and raises his face so that his eyes must once again meet hers.
“Chin up, boy. Don’t you get all morose and whiny just because I gave you a little talking-to. I’m a mother; you know I’ve gotta watch out for my girl.”
“Yes ma’am, I do.” Dean looks at her, and there is understanding and gladness in his eyes because she is willing to do this for her daughter. And something in the expression also says that he is so grateful she is here; he knows his own mother would do the same…and Ellen is the closest thing he has to a mother now. He doesn’t say anything—at least, not in words—but she hushes him.
“Shh, baby, I know,” Ellen pulls Dean's head against her abdomen in an embrace and his arms come up to grip her hard around the midriff as he realizes—for the third time that night—that he does not want to lose the rest of his family and he is SO glad that she and Jo are safe.
“I’m glad you’re here, Ellen,” he says quietly into her shirt. He feels her nod.
“I know, Dean. I am too.”
After a comfortable interim she adds, “Now, why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll watch over her for a while.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. It’s a mother’s job. Plus, I bought more coffee—and some fresh eggs for breakfast. We’ve got to have as much energy as possible to go after Death, you know.”
Dean goes cold. He had nearly forgotten what it was that Lucifer had been doing in that graveyard. How is that possible? His dad would be ashamed of him!
But as Dean turns and retreats to stretch out on the living-room couch under one of Bobby's thick wool blankets, he catches sight of Jo’s face, serene in repose, and remembers that family doesn’t end with blood—and it is more important than anything he will ever hunt.