Built for Hurricanes - SPN - Jo, Gen
Title: Built for Hurricanes
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Jo, gen
Rating: R for language and violence.
Word Count: ~3800
Summary: Jo Harvelle doesn't have an epic destiny.
Author's Note: Title comes from song, A Boat on the Sea. Written for bunnymcfoo in the Fandom Free For All, who asked for: Fic: Supernatural - Jo. I'd love, love, love, love, love to get the story of how Jo ended up tending bar away from home, how she learned to be a hunter on her own, and what kinds of trouble she gets into and out of. I hope you like it! Also, I would like to thank scintilla10 for the awesome, last minute beta. I couldn't have done it without her.
Jo Harvelle does not have an epic destiny. No demons want a piece of her, except for the ones that she pissed off. There’s no malevolent entity scheming about Jo’s role in the apocalypse. Jo has no role in the apocalypse. Heaven and Hell don’t give a shit about her; she’s not even important enough to be a pawn. She’s just a miniscule dot in the midst of the spiraling revolution, one that will get swept away when the floods roll back. One of the casualties.
************
Ever seen a small town at 3 o’clock in the morning? It’s empty. Everything feels dead. Everybody’s gone inside and fallen asleep, dreaming of flowers or something equally saccharine. Stepping outside her hotel room, there’s truly no one else around. Sure, there is the sound of insects and maybe the wind, but there’s nothing human. The world is utterly empty except for whatever monster she happens to be hunting.
Jo is not a social butterfly by any stretch of the imagination. Trying to relate to the average blissfully unaware layman is difficult when she knows all about the monsters in the dark. And expecting her to be like any other blond bimbo is a mistake.
But Jo grew up at the Roadhouse. She grew up surrounded by hunters, where the regulars were affectionately known as her “uncles,” for as long as she could remember. She helped her mom out at the bar with simple chores when she was little and graduated to full-blown amateur bartender when she was old enough. She talked to the customers. She asked them questions, probed their heads for hunting knowledge, demanded they tell her everything they knew. From the moment Jo Harvelle was born, she was surrounded by people.
But now she’s alone, in self-imposed exile. She needs to learn how to hunt on her own, without the help of anyone; not the Winchesters and definitely not her mother. She’s been training her whole life for this. Jo always knew the boogeyman was real. No one ever told her supernatural things were just stories. And she knew, without a doubt, that her father would always protect her.
Well, she has his knife. She has the knowledge. She can fight. All things she learned from him. All things she patterned after him. It’s good enough.
Step outside and it’s like a whole other world, one most people don’t ever see, don’t want to see. No sane human being would be wandering such an empty, unknown world. Nothing out here but the monsters waiting in the dark…and Jo of course. So what does that make her?
************
For a while, Jo does okay. She does mostly hauntings, ghost and poltergeists, and none go pear-shaped like the one in Chicago. The easy salt and burn, the occasionally salt n’ burn an object. She deals with some stupid kid in North Michigan who played with an Ouija board and summoned a demon. She even takes care of a chupacabra that found its way across the border in San Ysidro.
No one dies, at least. She saves lives. Jo gets knocked around a little: thrown into walls, cut by falling chandeliers, choked every now and then. Sometimes she needs stitches but it’s nothing she can’t do herself. No life threatening injuries, just some nifty scars.
It’s a Black Dog in the woods near Delta, Wisconsin that nearly gets her. Iron rounds are best for these things but the fucker gets the drop on her and Jo drops her gun.
Her Dad’s iron knife saves her again and she guts it, but not before it claws the shit out of her calf, right through her jeans.
Jo can’t help but scream. It hurts, it feels like someone set her all her nerve endings on fire and it’s not just her legs that hurt, it feels like it got her entire body. Adrenaline should make the pain easier to handle, Jo thinks, but at the moment it just seems to heighten it. It’s the worst injury she’s ever gotten in her life.
Jo half-drags herself to her car, only one of her legs functional, the other screaming at her, stumbling all the way. She whimpers and shrieks the entire time, in too much pain to really care about how undignified she feels or how hunters should be able to take more damage or how a decent hunter wouldn’t allow a stupid fucking Black Dog to get the drop on her.
When she finally makes it, Jo’s exhausted; she’s sweating, bleeding, pain growing more and more intense. The world has started spinning and her vision is blurring at the edges. She gets her hands on the trunk where she keeps the first aid kit and promptly falls over dizzy. Jo can hear her own breathing, harsh and ragged and the only sound around. She feels dirt on her cheeks and her eyes are heavy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to close them. The last thought before she blacks out is the realization that she dropped her father’s knife.
Jo wakes up at a hospital. The good news is a ranger found her in the early morning; they caught her wound in time so it’s not infected and she’s going to be fine. The bad news is they found her actual ID, not one of the many fake ones, and called her emergency contact.
So her mother knows what happened and is on her way. Probably to drag her back and yell at her for being careless.
It’s not hard for Jo to sneak out of the hospital. She waits until the doctors and nurses are distracted, then unhooks her IV drip, gets her clothes and effects back, steals a few painkillers and antibiotics for the first-aid kit, and finds her car in the hospital parking lot. Someone helpfully drove it over, thankfully. Her leg still hurts like a motherfucker, but she’s not bleeding to death, she’s in no danger of dying, and she’s a goddamn hunter, she can handle a little pain.
Driving is also painful, but there’s no way Jo is leaving town without getting back her gun and, more importantly, her father’s knife.
They weren’t hard to find, in the woods under some leaves (the Black Dog’s corpse is missing, the park ranger probably found it), and Jo breathes a sigh of relief when she gets her hands back on the knife. Only one more thing left to do; Jo calls her mom’s cell with her own (she’s going to have to get rid of it now; Ash could track it).
Ellen knows who it is right away. “Joanna Beth, what the hell were you thinking?” The sting of anger is just barely warming up in her mother’s voice.
“Hey mom, I left the hospital already so you don’t have to come see me. I’m just letting you know I’m okay now and I‘m leaving town. Bye.”
Jo hangs up before her mother can say anything else, turning off the cell phone. She feels like a coward afterwards but mostly, she feels so stupid. Getting wounded, allowing her mom to track her down, if only for a moment; it’s a mistake she can’t make again. There’s also no way she can hunt on this leg and not get an even worse injury. A freaking ghost could take her out now. There are a lot of hunters out there who have death wishes, but Jo is not one of them.
A break sounds, well not nice, but necessary.
So Jo drives to Duluth, which is out of Wisconsin, but close enough that Jo doesn’t have to drive too far on her leg. It’s a good a place as any to settle for a few weeks with a normal job and rest up before heading back on the road.
************
The worst thing about Sam attacking her is that Jo suspected something was off when she turned her back.
The worst thing is that she thought it really was Sam and not a demon at all. It’s not like she knows anything about Sam Winchester, not really. Just because he’s a hunter doesn’t mean he’s a good guy.
The worst thing about Sam attacking her is the sheer helpless panic she felt, the wild fear in her heart that came from no rational place, the kind of fear she doesn’t even feel on hunts. She gets scared and worried on hunts, but this is the only time she was terrified. He had his hands on her and bent her over the counter and she had to beg him to stop. It hurt so much to be reduced to that.
The worst thing is the only reason he did stop was because he wanted to. It was nothing she did. Nothing she could have fought off. She couldn’t have made it any better or worse.
The next day she tells her boss (shit, she can’t even remember his name) she’s quitting and leaves town right away. It’s time she got back to hunting anyway.
************
Afterward, Jo thinks she’s a better hunter. She starts sleeping with her knife under her pillow and her primary gun either on the pillow next to her or on the bed stand. She always drew salt lines everywhere, but now she draws a Devil’s trap in front of the hotel door, either on the floor or ceiling and fuck it if the maids have a problem with it. She draws one under her car as well and in the trunk too.
She starts wearing an anti-possession amulet and, for good measure, gets a tattoo on her back, a swirl of intricate geometric symbols and designs that should ward against evil. During the entire time the guy was working on her tattoo, Jo laid her head on a pillow she brought with her and held on to her knife hidden underneath.
After a ghost grabs her by the hair and throws her across the room, Jo decides to take her medical scissors and chop it all off. It looks ugly and haphazard; Jo has no idea how to cut hair. She doesn’t care. Long hair is impractical, anyway. Jo stops wearing makeup too. Not that she ever wore much makeup to begin with but it’s a waste of time to apply lip gloss and foundation when she could be doing far more useful things; training, sharpening her knife, cleaning her gun.
Jo won’t say she’s edgy or paranoid. Jo is just being a good hunter, a better hunter than the one in Duluth. If Jo had been a better hunter then, Sam (the demon, not Sam) wouldn’t have gotten the jump on her like that and almost --
Jo can’t even complete that thought.
While she’s pool hustling at some bar in east nowhere, Tennessee, someone puts his hand on her shoulder. Jo spins around and breaks the guy’s nose, reaching for her knife in the process. It takes nothing but seconds.
The guy just wanted to ask if he could buy her a drink. He walks away muttering something like, “Fucking crazy-ass bitch.” Jo really doesn’t care. Like those words matter at all when she’s fighting demons and pissed-off ghosts on a regular basis. When there are much worse things in the world.
After that, though, nobody wants to play pool with her. All the guys she was with are muttering variations of the same thing. Jo goes back to the hotel room. It’s not like she likes being around people much anyway.
Jo hasn’t even called her mother in months. She has no idea what to say to her. The best her mom gets right now is a postcard, with no details, just her name. Just enough to let her mom know she’s alive and nothing else. That’s all that matters, anyway.
Yes, it’s spineless of her, but Jo can’t handle talking to her mom right now.
In Alabama, some teenage girl, can’t be more than fifteen, tries to thank Jo for saving her from a vampire (Jo used hairspray and a lighter, and made plans to go torch the nest) by hugging her. Jo stiffens up, pulls the girl off and tells her to go home.
A little boy in Missouri whose house had been haunted smiles at her and tells her she’s the most wonderfullest person in the world. Jo tries to smile back but even the kid notices it’s forced.
In Kentucky, some guy tries to hug her after she saves him from the reanimated corpse of his dead dog (don’t ask). Jo won’t think about it later, but she flinches at the time and very nearly goes for her knife. The guy notices and backs off. Things get very awkward afterwards but it’s not like it matters. Jo doesn’t have to be friendly to the people she saves. Just as long as she saves them.
Besides, she’s learned a new method of communicating: shotguns full of rock salt, an iron knife in her small hand. That’s all she needs. Jo is a hunter. So she hunts.
************
Sometimes, Jo thinks about quitting. She’d never say it out loud; her pride always wins out in the end. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about it. A lot of hunting is just planning and waiting and long hours of driving and insomnia. That’s plenty of time to be alone with nothing but her thoughts for company.
Jo thinks about what her life would be like if she gave it all up now and just went home. The Roadhouse is, after all, still there, waiting for her. Go back to college and actually graduate this time, just like her mom wanted her to. Get a dog, maybe. Jo always wanted a puppy. Or find a nice boy and get married. Or just settle down. Ignore everything that goes bump in the night and just stay home. It’ll please her mother. It’s probably what her father would have wanted her to do rather than risk her life every day.
But after that, it gets too hard to imagine. It sounds like a fucking joke; it’s so ridiculous her life would ever go that way. It’s not her. It’s too late. She’s scarred all over now. Jo can’t walk into a building without checking for all the exits and making sure she’s close to at least one. Her body has become a collection of ugly scars she’s utterly unashamed of -- each saying “I survived a Black Dog. I lived through a vampire attack. I can fucking take what you throw at me.”
She’s not unscathed and perhaps she’s paranoid and anti-social, but she’s alive and saving other people. That’s what matters, after all.
This is her life. This is what’s hers. This is all she’s ever wanted, you know. This is all she ever thought about doing, since she was a little girl. While all the little girls wanted to grow up and be ballerinas, school teachers and vegetarians, this is what she wanted. To hunt. To save lives. To honor her father. Everything before that (college, working at the Roadhouse, high school) was just leading up to this.
************
Eventually, Jo works up the nerve to call her mother.
Ash does not pick the phone. Neither does Mom. Instead Jo gets a pleasant female voice that says, “This line has been disconnected.”
Jo doesn’t really hear anything after that.
Her heart is not pounding. Her pulse is not racing. Her body is calm, except for the cold pit of dread in her stomach.
She tries her mom’s cell phone. This time, the pleasant female says, “This service has been discontinued.” Fuck. Jo tries Ash’s cell phone and gets, “This number is no longer in service. Please try again.”
She can’t reach her Mom. She can’t reach anyone.
Jo drives nonstop, a 15 hour drive from Harmony, Ohio all the way to Nebraska. She gets no sleep and eats nothing and stops for nothing and the only thing she can think about is Mom and Ash and The Roadhouse. Her mind fills with awful scenarios and all it does is makes her drive faster.
When Jo arrives, she nearly drives past the place because she doesn’t recognize it. That pile of debris and rubble on the ground can’t be the Roadhouse. Her home can’t be a pile of burnt wood and scorched earth.
She steps out of the car, keys still in the ignition, to take a closer look. A piece of the sign is still there, the ROA of Roadhouse in sooty letters. Nothing but broken pieces, only enough left over to break her heart.
This is when she panics. This is when Jo has to lean against the car because her knees have given out on her. This is when Jo feels so sick inside, she’d be throwing up if she had anything in her stomach. A punch in the gut doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Jo pulls out her cell to call her mom or Ash and makes a horrible choked sob in her throat when she realizes she has no idea if they’re alive or dead. Did they die in whatever the fuck fire or bomb or whatever that did this?
Her hand is shaking and Jo can’t figure out who to call. For one insane moment, Jo almost dials 911 before realizing how useless it would be.
Useless. She’s useless. She’s lost and has no idea what to do in face of the destruction of her --
She’ll call Bobby, Jo decides and has to dial three times because her fingers won’t press the right buttons. Waiting for someone to pick up is the most painful wait of her life.
“Hello?” Bobby’s weary voice rings out on the line.
“Bobby!” Jo shouts and her small voice sounds like it is wrenched out of her throat. She won’t admit it later but she is just an inch away from sobbing and she’s definitely crying some because goddammit, even hunters have to cry sometimes.
“Wha-who is this?”
“Bobby, where’s my mom?” Jo repeats into the cell, edging dangerously close to hysterical territory.
“Jo?” Bobby asks. “I take it you’ve seen the Roadhouse.”
“Bobby, tell me where my mom is!” she screams into the cell phone and sinks to the ground.
“Your mom is fine, Jo. She’s been staying here. She’s sleeping right now. We’ve been trying to contact you but no one knows your damned number.”
Oh, Jo thinks. Good. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, taking a deep breath. Bobby stays mercifully silent while Jo collects herself.
“And what about Ash?”
It takes a little while for Bobby to reply but when he does, Jo already knows the answer. “He didn’t make Jo, I’m sorry.”
Jo sucks in a breath and holds back the tears and sobs and everything else that wants to come out. Bobby’s an excellent hunter. She won’t do this in front of him, she’s better than this.
“Ok,” she breathes. “Ok, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.” She hangs up before Bobby can say anything. She didn’t even think to ask what happened. What does it matter? The end result is still the same.
For a while she just sits there, on the ground where she used to run around as a little kid. She sobs a little, small hiccupping noises, and wipes at her tears with her dirt-stained hands.
Jo looks up and stares at the remains. It looks so small and pathetic. So hard to believe this was her home, that hunters once found solace and safety here. She never thought it could be vulnerable to attack. This is where she met her first boyfriend. This is where she grew up, surrounded by mom and dad and so many “uncles.” This is where she and Ash played pranks on each other until Ellen told them to knock it off. This is where her daddy told her grand stories of saving lives and what it means to be a hero. This was supposed to be safe.
And now, now it’s just gone. Ash is dead. The bed she used to sleep in is gone. Her dad’s personal effects, the ones useless for hunting and kept just for sentimental value, are gone. Pictures, momentos, all gone.
It hasn’t even been a year since Jo left and now she doesn’t have a home.
Time passes; she’s not sure how much but after a while, Jo stands herself back up as steadily as possible and gets into the car. Her hand trembles as she starts the ignition. She’s a hunter. There is no safety. It’s stupid to think there ever was.
************
When Jo arrives at Bobby’s, her mom answers the door. She looks so much more tired than usual, with dark circles under her eyes and the lines on her face deeper. Jo probably doesn’t look any better, in all honesty. No food or sleep for a day will do that to you. Ellen opens her mouth to say something but Jo breaks the silence first.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Her mom stares at her in shock, blinking. “You’re sorry about running off?”
“No.” Jo surprises herself with the firmness of her words. “I’d do that again and I’ll keep doing it and nothing’s going to stop me. But I am sorry for avoiding you for so long. It was stupid and…and childish of me.”
That took a lot of Jo’s pride. This is the most honest conversation she’s had in months, the longest conversation she’s had in months. Ellen stands at the door for a few minutes before her face softens and she pulls Jo in for a hug.
Jo almost starts crying again. She hugs back, of course. Her mother’s arms make her feel like a little girl again and instead of feeling angry or patronized, Jo lets herself bask in the warm glow. She can’t remember the last time she let her guard down so much and for a moment, Jo feels safe. It’s only a moment, but it’s enough.
Jo realizes it doesn’t cost any of her pride to say she missed her mom.
************
Jo Harvelle does not have an epic destiny. Heaven and Hell don’t give a shit about her. She has no role in the apocalypse. She’s just another one of the casualties at the end of the day.
But that’s not the point. It’s not about whether she lives or dies.
This is about her and her father. This is about doing the best she can to honor his memory, to help people, to be the hero in her father’s stories.
For now, all that matters is her and the road. And the hunt. And so it goes.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Jo, gen
Rating: R for language and violence.
Word Count: ~3800
Summary: Jo Harvelle doesn't have an epic destiny.
Author's Note: Title comes from song, A Boat on the Sea. Written for bunnymcfoo in the Fandom Free For All, who asked for: Fic: Supernatural - Jo. I'd love, love, love, love, love to get the story of how Jo ended up tending bar away from home, how she learned to be a hunter on her own, and what kinds of trouble she gets into and out of. I hope you like it! Also, I would like to thank scintilla10 for the awesome, last minute beta. I couldn't have done it without her.
Jo Harvelle does not have an epic destiny. No demons want a piece of her, except for the ones that she pissed off. There’s no malevolent entity scheming about Jo’s role in the apocalypse. Jo has no role in the apocalypse. Heaven and Hell don’t give a shit about her; she’s not even important enough to be a pawn. She’s just a miniscule dot in the midst of the spiraling revolution, one that will get swept away when the floods roll back. One of the casualties.
************
Ever seen a small town at 3 o’clock in the morning? It’s empty. Everything feels dead. Everybody’s gone inside and fallen asleep, dreaming of flowers or something equally saccharine. Stepping outside her hotel room, there’s truly no one else around. Sure, there is the sound of insects and maybe the wind, but there’s nothing human. The world is utterly empty except for whatever monster she happens to be hunting.
Jo is not a social butterfly by any stretch of the imagination. Trying to relate to the average blissfully unaware layman is difficult when she knows all about the monsters in the dark. And expecting her to be like any other blond bimbo is a mistake.
But Jo grew up at the Roadhouse. She grew up surrounded by hunters, where the regulars were affectionately known as her “uncles,” for as long as she could remember. She helped her mom out at the bar with simple chores when she was little and graduated to full-blown amateur bartender when she was old enough. She talked to the customers. She asked them questions, probed their heads for hunting knowledge, demanded they tell her everything they knew. From the moment Jo Harvelle was born, she was surrounded by people.
But now she’s alone, in self-imposed exile. She needs to learn how to hunt on her own, without the help of anyone; not the Winchesters and definitely not her mother. She’s been training her whole life for this. Jo always knew the boogeyman was real. No one ever told her supernatural things were just stories. And she knew, without a doubt, that her father would always protect her.
Well, she has his knife. She has the knowledge. She can fight. All things she learned from him. All things she patterned after him. It’s good enough.
Step outside and it’s like a whole other world, one most people don’t ever see, don’t want to see. No sane human being would be wandering such an empty, unknown world. Nothing out here but the monsters waiting in the dark…and Jo of course. So what does that make her?
************
For a while, Jo does okay. She does mostly hauntings, ghost and poltergeists, and none go pear-shaped like the one in Chicago. The easy salt and burn, the occasionally salt n’ burn an object. She deals with some stupid kid in North Michigan who played with an Ouija board and summoned a demon. She even takes care of a chupacabra that found its way across the border in San Ysidro.
No one dies, at least. She saves lives. Jo gets knocked around a little: thrown into walls, cut by falling chandeliers, choked every now and then. Sometimes she needs stitches but it’s nothing she can’t do herself. No life threatening injuries, just some nifty scars.
It’s a Black Dog in the woods near Delta, Wisconsin that nearly gets her. Iron rounds are best for these things but the fucker gets the drop on her and Jo drops her gun.
Her Dad’s iron knife saves her again and she guts it, but not before it claws the shit out of her calf, right through her jeans.
Jo can’t help but scream. It hurts, it feels like someone set her all her nerve endings on fire and it’s not just her legs that hurt, it feels like it got her entire body. Adrenaline should make the pain easier to handle, Jo thinks, but at the moment it just seems to heighten it. It’s the worst injury she’s ever gotten in her life.
Jo half-drags herself to her car, only one of her legs functional, the other screaming at her, stumbling all the way. She whimpers and shrieks the entire time, in too much pain to really care about how undignified she feels or how hunters should be able to take more damage or how a decent hunter wouldn’t allow a stupid fucking Black Dog to get the drop on her.
When she finally makes it, Jo’s exhausted; she’s sweating, bleeding, pain growing more and more intense. The world has started spinning and her vision is blurring at the edges. She gets her hands on the trunk where she keeps the first aid kit and promptly falls over dizzy. Jo can hear her own breathing, harsh and ragged and the only sound around. She feels dirt on her cheeks and her eyes are heavy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to close them. The last thought before she blacks out is the realization that she dropped her father’s knife.
Jo wakes up at a hospital. The good news is a ranger found her in the early morning; they caught her wound in time so it’s not infected and she’s going to be fine. The bad news is they found her actual ID, not one of the many fake ones, and called her emergency contact.
So her mother knows what happened and is on her way. Probably to drag her back and yell at her for being careless.
It’s not hard for Jo to sneak out of the hospital. She waits until the doctors and nurses are distracted, then unhooks her IV drip, gets her clothes and effects back, steals a few painkillers and antibiotics for the first-aid kit, and finds her car in the hospital parking lot. Someone helpfully drove it over, thankfully. Her leg still hurts like a motherfucker, but she’s not bleeding to death, she’s in no danger of dying, and she’s a goddamn hunter, she can handle a little pain.
Driving is also painful, but there’s no way Jo is leaving town without getting back her gun and, more importantly, her father’s knife.
They weren’t hard to find, in the woods under some leaves (the Black Dog’s corpse is missing, the park ranger probably found it), and Jo breathes a sigh of relief when she gets her hands back on the knife. Only one more thing left to do; Jo calls her mom’s cell with her own (she’s going to have to get rid of it now; Ash could track it).
Ellen knows who it is right away. “Joanna Beth, what the hell were you thinking?” The sting of anger is just barely warming up in her mother’s voice.
“Hey mom, I left the hospital already so you don’t have to come see me. I’m just letting you know I’m okay now and I‘m leaving town. Bye.”
Jo hangs up before her mother can say anything else, turning off the cell phone. She feels like a coward afterwards but mostly, she feels so stupid. Getting wounded, allowing her mom to track her down, if only for a moment; it’s a mistake she can’t make again. There’s also no way she can hunt on this leg and not get an even worse injury. A freaking ghost could take her out now. There are a lot of hunters out there who have death wishes, but Jo is not one of them.
A break sounds, well not nice, but necessary.
So Jo drives to Duluth, which is out of Wisconsin, but close enough that Jo doesn’t have to drive too far on her leg. It’s a good a place as any to settle for a few weeks with a normal job and rest up before heading back on the road.
************
The worst thing about Sam attacking her is that Jo suspected something was off when she turned her back.
The worst thing is that she thought it really was Sam and not a demon at all. It’s not like she knows anything about Sam Winchester, not really. Just because he’s a hunter doesn’t mean he’s a good guy.
The worst thing about Sam attacking her is the sheer helpless panic she felt, the wild fear in her heart that came from no rational place, the kind of fear she doesn’t even feel on hunts. She gets scared and worried on hunts, but this is the only time she was terrified. He had his hands on her and bent her over the counter and she had to beg him to stop. It hurt so much to be reduced to that.
The worst thing is the only reason he did stop was because he wanted to. It was nothing she did. Nothing she could have fought off. She couldn’t have made it any better or worse.
The next day she tells her boss (shit, she can’t even remember his name) she’s quitting and leaves town right away. It’s time she got back to hunting anyway.
************
Afterward, Jo thinks she’s a better hunter. She starts sleeping with her knife under her pillow and her primary gun either on the pillow next to her or on the bed stand. She always drew salt lines everywhere, but now she draws a Devil’s trap in front of the hotel door, either on the floor or ceiling and fuck it if the maids have a problem with it. She draws one under her car as well and in the trunk too.
She starts wearing an anti-possession amulet and, for good measure, gets a tattoo on her back, a swirl of intricate geometric symbols and designs that should ward against evil. During the entire time the guy was working on her tattoo, Jo laid her head on a pillow she brought with her and held on to her knife hidden underneath.
After a ghost grabs her by the hair and throws her across the room, Jo decides to take her medical scissors and chop it all off. It looks ugly and haphazard; Jo has no idea how to cut hair. She doesn’t care. Long hair is impractical, anyway. Jo stops wearing makeup too. Not that she ever wore much makeup to begin with but it’s a waste of time to apply lip gloss and foundation when she could be doing far more useful things; training, sharpening her knife, cleaning her gun.
Jo won’t say she’s edgy or paranoid. Jo is just being a good hunter, a better hunter than the one in Duluth. If Jo had been a better hunter then, Sam (the demon, not Sam) wouldn’t have gotten the jump on her like that and almost --
Jo can’t even complete that thought.
While she’s pool hustling at some bar in east nowhere, Tennessee, someone puts his hand on her shoulder. Jo spins around and breaks the guy’s nose, reaching for her knife in the process. It takes nothing but seconds.
The guy just wanted to ask if he could buy her a drink. He walks away muttering something like, “Fucking crazy-ass bitch.” Jo really doesn’t care. Like those words matter at all when she’s fighting demons and pissed-off ghosts on a regular basis. When there are much worse things in the world.
After that, though, nobody wants to play pool with her. All the guys she was with are muttering variations of the same thing. Jo goes back to the hotel room. It’s not like she likes being around people much anyway.
Jo hasn’t even called her mother in months. She has no idea what to say to her. The best her mom gets right now is a postcard, with no details, just her name. Just enough to let her mom know she’s alive and nothing else. That’s all that matters, anyway.
Yes, it’s spineless of her, but Jo can’t handle talking to her mom right now.
In Alabama, some teenage girl, can’t be more than fifteen, tries to thank Jo for saving her from a vampire (Jo used hairspray and a lighter, and made plans to go torch the nest) by hugging her. Jo stiffens up, pulls the girl off and tells her to go home.
A little boy in Missouri whose house had been haunted smiles at her and tells her she’s the most wonderfullest person in the world. Jo tries to smile back but even the kid notices it’s forced.
In Kentucky, some guy tries to hug her after she saves him from the reanimated corpse of his dead dog (don’t ask). Jo won’t think about it later, but she flinches at the time and very nearly goes for her knife. The guy notices and backs off. Things get very awkward afterwards but it’s not like it matters. Jo doesn’t have to be friendly to the people she saves. Just as long as she saves them.
Besides, she’s learned a new method of communicating: shotguns full of rock salt, an iron knife in her small hand. That’s all she needs. Jo is a hunter. So she hunts.
************
Sometimes, Jo thinks about quitting. She’d never say it out loud; her pride always wins out in the end. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about it. A lot of hunting is just planning and waiting and long hours of driving and insomnia. That’s plenty of time to be alone with nothing but her thoughts for company.
Jo thinks about what her life would be like if she gave it all up now and just went home. The Roadhouse is, after all, still there, waiting for her. Go back to college and actually graduate this time, just like her mom wanted her to. Get a dog, maybe. Jo always wanted a puppy. Or find a nice boy and get married. Or just settle down. Ignore everything that goes bump in the night and just stay home. It’ll please her mother. It’s probably what her father would have wanted her to do rather than risk her life every day.
But after that, it gets too hard to imagine. It sounds like a fucking joke; it’s so ridiculous her life would ever go that way. It’s not her. It’s too late. She’s scarred all over now. Jo can’t walk into a building without checking for all the exits and making sure she’s close to at least one. Her body has become a collection of ugly scars she’s utterly unashamed of -- each saying “I survived a Black Dog. I lived through a vampire attack. I can fucking take what you throw at me.”
She’s not unscathed and perhaps she’s paranoid and anti-social, but she’s alive and saving other people. That’s what matters, after all.
This is her life. This is what’s hers. This is all she’s ever wanted, you know. This is all she ever thought about doing, since she was a little girl. While all the little girls wanted to grow up and be ballerinas, school teachers and vegetarians, this is what she wanted. To hunt. To save lives. To honor her father. Everything before that (college, working at the Roadhouse, high school) was just leading up to this.
************
Eventually, Jo works up the nerve to call her mother.
Ash does not pick the phone. Neither does Mom. Instead Jo gets a pleasant female voice that says, “This line has been disconnected.”
Jo doesn’t really hear anything after that.
Her heart is not pounding. Her pulse is not racing. Her body is calm, except for the cold pit of dread in her stomach.
She tries her mom’s cell phone. This time, the pleasant female says, “This service has been discontinued.” Fuck. Jo tries Ash’s cell phone and gets, “This number is no longer in service. Please try again.”
She can’t reach her Mom. She can’t reach anyone.
Jo drives nonstop, a 15 hour drive from Harmony, Ohio all the way to Nebraska. She gets no sleep and eats nothing and stops for nothing and the only thing she can think about is Mom and Ash and The Roadhouse. Her mind fills with awful scenarios and all it does is makes her drive faster.
When Jo arrives, she nearly drives past the place because she doesn’t recognize it. That pile of debris and rubble on the ground can’t be the Roadhouse. Her home can’t be a pile of burnt wood and scorched earth.
She steps out of the car, keys still in the ignition, to take a closer look. A piece of the sign is still there, the ROA of Roadhouse in sooty letters. Nothing but broken pieces, only enough left over to break her heart.
This is when she panics. This is when Jo has to lean against the car because her knees have given out on her. This is when Jo feels so sick inside, she’d be throwing up if she had anything in her stomach. A punch in the gut doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Jo pulls out her cell to call her mom or Ash and makes a horrible choked sob in her throat when she realizes she has no idea if they’re alive or dead. Did they die in whatever the fuck fire or bomb or whatever that did this?
Her hand is shaking and Jo can’t figure out who to call. For one insane moment, Jo almost dials 911 before realizing how useless it would be.
Useless. She’s useless. She’s lost and has no idea what to do in face of the destruction of her --
She’ll call Bobby, Jo decides and has to dial three times because her fingers won’t press the right buttons. Waiting for someone to pick up is the most painful wait of her life.
“Hello?” Bobby’s weary voice rings out on the line.
“Bobby!” Jo shouts and her small voice sounds like it is wrenched out of her throat. She won’t admit it later but she is just an inch away from sobbing and she’s definitely crying some because goddammit, even hunters have to cry sometimes.
“Wha-who is this?”
“Bobby, where’s my mom?” Jo repeats into the cell, edging dangerously close to hysterical territory.
“Jo?” Bobby asks. “I take it you’ve seen the Roadhouse.”
“Bobby, tell me where my mom is!” she screams into the cell phone and sinks to the ground.
“Your mom is fine, Jo. She’s been staying here. She’s sleeping right now. We’ve been trying to contact you but no one knows your damned number.”
Oh, Jo thinks. Good. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, taking a deep breath. Bobby stays mercifully silent while Jo collects herself.
“And what about Ash?”
It takes a little while for Bobby to reply but when he does, Jo already knows the answer. “He didn’t make Jo, I’m sorry.”
Jo sucks in a breath and holds back the tears and sobs and everything else that wants to come out. Bobby’s an excellent hunter. She won’t do this in front of him, she’s better than this.
“Ok,” she breathes. “Ok, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.” She hangs up before Bobby can say anything. She didn’t even think to ask what happened. What does it matter? The end result is still the same.
For a while she just sits there, on the ground where she used to run around as a little kid. She sobs a little, small hiccupping noises, and wipes at her tears with her dirt-stained hands.
Jo looks up and stares at the remains. It looks so small and pathetic. So hard to believe this was her home, that hunters once found solace and safety here. She never thought it could be vulnerable to attack. This is where she met her first boyfriend. This is where she grew up, surrounded by mom and dad and so many “uncles.” This is where she and Ash played pranks on each other until Ellen told them to knock it off. This is where her daddy told her grand stories of saving lives and what it means to be a hero. This was supposed to be safe.
And now, now it’s just gone. Ash is dead. The bed she used to sleep in is gone. Her dad’s personal effects, the ones useless for hunting and kept just for sentimental value, are gone. Pictures, momentos, all gone.
It hasn’t even been a year since Jo left and now she doesn’t have a home.
Time passes; she’s not sure how much but after a while, Jo stands herself back up as steadily as possible and gets into the car. Her hand trembles as she starts the ignition. She’s a hunter. There is no safety. It’s stupid to think there ever was.
************
When Jo arrives at Bobby’s, her mom answers the door. She looks so much more tired than usual, with dark circles under her eyes and the lines on her face deeper. Jo probably doesn’t look any better, in all honesty. No food or sleep for a day will do that to you. Ellen opens her mouth to say something but Jo breaks the silence first.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Her mom stares at her in shock, blinking. “You’re sorry about running off?”
“No.” Jo surprises herself with the firmness of her words. “I’d do that again and I’ll keep doing it and nothing’s going to stop me. But I am sorry for avoiding you for so long. It was stupid and…and childish of me.”
That took a lot of Jo’s pride. This is the most honest conversation she’s had in months, the longest conversation she’s had in months. Ellen stands at the door for a few minutes before her face softens and she pulls Jo in for a hug.
Jo almost starts crying again. She hugs back, of course. Her mother’s arms make her feel like a little girl again and instead of feeling angry or patronized, Jo lets herself bask in the warm glow. She can’t remember the last time she let her guard down so much and for a moment, Jo feels safe. It’s only a moment, but it’s enough.
Jo realizes it doesn’t cost any of her pride to say she missed her mom.
************
Jo Harvelle does not have an epic destiny. Heaven and Hell don’t give a shit about her. She has no role in the apocalypse. She’s just another one of the casualties at the end of the day.
But that’s not the point. It’s not about whether she lives or dies.
This is about her and her father. This is about doing the best she can to honor his memory, to help people, to be the hero in her father’s stories.
For now, all that matters is her and the road. And the hunt. And so it goes.