31_days | [April 24] [Supernatural] [Occupational Hazard]

Title: Occupational Hazard
Day/Theme: April 24; The ashes underneath your nails
Series: Supernatural
Character/Pairing: Jo
Rating: G

The first time Jo is arrested the charge is grave desecration. The cops arrive just as the flames are sputtering out and Jo knows she should be grateful because otherwise she would have to go back and finish the job. Still it is a lot easier to explain if you've been picked up for loitering in a graveyard then for digging up and setting fire to a corpse. She should just be glad that the cops don't notice her salt shotgun which is concealed by the weeds behind the grave. If they looked for it they'd be sure to find it but luckily having found her, her lighter fluid, her shovel and Zippo they don't think to investigate further. At some point she will need to come back for it, she wouldn't want some kids to find it and shoot each other even if it is only filled with rock salt, and besides it would be a bitch to replace.

Jo knew that this was part of the new life she'd started. Hunters have a horrendous relationship with the law, the good ones break it on a daily basis. And this is hardly the first time she's done so or hardly the worst thing to be charged with. She didn't know of a single active hunter that hadn't been arrested at least once for grave desecration. Getting arrested was inevitable but it was also an uncomfortable and humiliating experience. As she sits in the back of the squad car with her hands cuffed behind her back she can't help feeling vulnerable, ashamed and also slightly pissed.

The shame and irritation come from the way the cops treat her, the way they look at her. She knows she shouldn't blame them, she dug up and set fire to someone's mother. But she did it to protect them as they go about their cushy little cop lives never guessing what they should really be afraid of, what the public really needs to be protected from. She doesn't need them to thank her but the least they could do is not look at her like she's some kind of degenerate. The older cop in particular seems determined to throw the book at her, so Jo focuses all her powers of persuasion and manipulation as she spins a story about how her mother's friend dear Aubrey Chambers wanted to be cremated (she mentioned it once college during a long night) but her mother and Aubrey and had fallen out of touch and at the time of poor Aubrey death her mother was unable to make her old friend's wishes known. Despite being total bull it's actually a decent story and research into finding the identity of the ghost comes in handy here, so Jo already knows that Aubrey did go to college and did not leave any sort of final wishes or living will regarding her body. Jo is a better actress than she gives herself credit for because the cop actually buys her story and stops scowling at her.

As she sits in lock up she knows things have gone in her direction. They are likely to go easy on her and even if they don't she can post bail and disappear. She's used her one phone call on Bobby (and forbidden him from telling her mom). He will send whoever is close enough with bail. The record won't even be under her own name thanks to the fake ID the cops found in her back pocket. They are her real prints on file so this may someday catch up with her but hopefully that day is a long way off. Jo knows she should feel relieved at how this has turned out but she can't help the queasy feeling in her stomach. One of the other women in lock-up calls to Jo and makes rude suggestions which Jo tells herself to ignore and not let the woman bait her. She is nothing like the other women in here, she was just doing her job. Jo looks at the grave dirt that has gotten under her fingernails and brushes some ash off her clothes, this is my life now she tells herself and prepares to wait for morning.

AN: For some reason this insisted on being written in present tense. My grammer teachers would be shaking thier heads at me.