Be it ever so humble..
Who : Ellen Harvelle and others (open to anyone who'd like to come through)
What : Celebrating the Roadhouse (version II)
When : The evening of March 20th
Rating : pg-ish, probably some language
Status : Ongoing
( It wasn't home, but it was close enough for her )
What : Celebrating the Roadhouse (version II)
When : The evening of March 20th
Rating : pg-ish, probably some language
Status : Ongoing
( It wasn't home, but it was close enough for her )
“It wasn’t until our daughter..” Ellen’s hand trembled and she threw back a rather sizeable shot of whiskey, “..until Jo was born that we opened the Roadhouse. We turned it into a gathering place for hunters in the region. They could trade information, weapons and get medical attention without worrying about the prying eyes of the public at large, or law enforcement.”
“I’ve known John Winchester since the boys were small. Their father had one hell of a reputation as a hunter. He used to come around the Roadhouse every time he was in the area, right up until the night that Bill was killed.”
She leaned her elbows against the bar, her gaze drifting over to the Winchesters. Ellen couldn’t really pinpoint the moment that those two became like family to her, but like Bobby, she had started to look after them like they were her own.
“Took me a long time to forgive him for what happened. But that’s the life of a hunter,” she said, pulling her attention back to Anna. “Sooner or later, you run up against something that’s just a might bit faster or meaner,” there was an edge of bitterness in her voice. While she didn’t regret the fight, or what they stood for, it was a terribly lonely thing, being left behind even in death.
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Maybe that had been the wrong question to ask if the point was to relax and have fun. But she liked Ellen, and she wanted to understand the lady better. Besides, apart from their current rather unencouraging situation, what else did they really have in common to talk about?
"Sam and Dean found me hiding in my father's church after I broke out of an asylum where they'd put me because I could hear angels talking," she said. "I didn't know it was because I was one of them. I'd run away to become human and forgotten. First Hell sent demons to kidnap me, and then Heaven tried to have me executed." Exactly who Heaven had dispatched on that errand, she kept to herself.
"The guys turned it into a big game of celestial chicken." She shook her head slightly, still a little dumbfounded at the sheer audacity of it. "Ran them right into each other, and while they were fighting I nabbed my grace back and became an angel again. If not for them, I'd be..." She laughed, not as bitterly as she'd have thought. "Well, I am dead, now, I guess. But that came a lot later. And it was mostly my own fault."
There was a whole lot more to the story than that, but she wasn't going to spread her dirty laundry (or others') out on Ellen's bar. If Dean and the others hadn't seen fit to fill the lady in on the sordid details, she saw no reason to. "We...haven't always gotten along, since," she contented herself to say. "But they're good guys. All of them. I don't like that we all got dragged here, or the things this place does to people, but I'm grateful to have a chance to try to make things right."
Well, as right as they ever could be. The jury was still out as far as what could be mended and what couldn't. But if she went to her grave for good right this minute, she'd rest easier than before, and that was worth something to her.
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“Family never gets along, least not all the time. That’s how you know its family,” she said with a crooked smile.
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Still was, for that matter.
She'd had another family, too, of course, but the thought of her human parents invariably brought a jab of anguish laced with guilt. She hadn't known into whose lives she would fall, of course, or what consequences the choice would have for them. But that scarcely absolved her of responsibility for what had happened.
Ellen's philosophy to the contrary, she had rarely disagreed more than mildly with the unassuming deacon and his wife. And had never felt less than loved and wanted. They'd been so happy to have a child of their own, and she liked to think in her less self-recriminating moments that maybe they would have wanted her even if they had known.
In her more cynical moods, she couldn't imagine anyone, however good-hearted, taking in a child who was destined to lead bloodthirsty hellspawn straight to their door.
As always, she couldn't dwell on it for long or she risked dissolving, so she forced a smile and changed the subject.
"Ellen, when you have some time, do you think you could teach me about patching people up?" It was something she'd never needed to know in either of her former lives. But she'd lost the ability to heal at will, and without it, she had only the limited first-aid skills she'd picked up as a human girl to fall back on. She'd already seen that in a place like this, that just wasn't going to cut it.
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Anna was a nice girl. A tad skittish, but nice, and the more Ellen got to know her, the more she was starting to like her. "Sure, hon. I'll show you what I can, but most of it is gonna be a hands-on experience. I learned by doing, and picking the brains of any good docs that came through the old Roadhouse. You okay with that?"
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So far she'd had to ask Bobby for directions so she could help relocate his shoulder, had no idea what she might have been able to do for Reno and had all too happily fled the room rather than watch or help the others attend to Cas's hand. She was afraid sooner or later she'd come across something life-threatening, and that no one who knew what they were doing would be available.
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