lyssie | fic: SPN, Graveyard Matters , PG

disclaimer: not mine, though they should be since I'd treat them like people rather than disposable commodities.
fandom: Supernatural
length: 1000, rating: PG
characters: Jo and Ellen Harvelle
notes: no spoilers?

karate0kat asked for their first joint hunt. My knowledge of the universe is still pretty sketchy, btw. (I'm sorry, I have neither a Jo nor an Ellen icon. I do have Kara and the other Ellen, though)

Graveyard Matters
by ALC Punk!

The first words out of her mother's mouth in an hour, and they were almost insulting.

"Did you remember the salt?"

Jo rolled her eyes but didn't raise her voice above a whisper. Attracting attention in a cemetery was a bad idea, most nights. And on a night like this, with a spirit out there, just waiting for victims... Being quiet might not help, but it was all she had. "Yes, mom." Keeping the irritation from her tone was damned hard, and she almost managed it.

"Do not get snippy with me, Jo--"

A footstep made Jo freeze, her hand coming up and cutting her mother off.

Of course, Ellen was already moving, crouching behind a tombstone, as though she'd heard the sound before Jo did. Just like all those times her mom had heard her doing something she shouldn't be. Jo ducked down behind her own headstone and slowly raised up to peek over the edge.

"Hello, pretty-pretty."

The voice raised the hairs on the back of her neck, especially since it was coming from behind her. Jo whirled, bringing the shotgun up and firing into the spirit, making it rear back and screech as the salt shot tore through it.

Word on the street said the man had been walking a couple weeks, mostly spooking locals. Didn't matter if he was harmless, he was creepy, and Jo doubted it would take him long to get bored enough to do harm to the living. Spirits always did, and she hadn't met one yet that didn't.

Ellen fired from her side, and the ghost was ripped into pieces, scattered through the area, the bits struggling to re-coalesce.

Scrambling to her feet, Jo grabbed the shovel she'd dropped, "C'mon," she snapped, "It won't take him long to get back together."

At some point during the frantic dig-down-to-the-coffin-before-the-ghost-gets-us, her mom stopped worrying about her. At least not out loud. Jo hoped it was the beginning of her mother appreciating her competence, but didn't hold out a lot of hope. Her shovel clanged against the top of the coffin and she dug harder.

"Hurry, I can see him--"

"Is the salt ready?"

"Don't interrupt me, Joanna Beth."

The annoyance and fear in her voice told Jo all she needed to know. She worked harder, then smashed the tip of the shovel through the wood of the coffin. Ellen fired above her, but she ignored the sound of the shotgun and pulled out the stash of salt, pouring it down into the hole, smiling a little as the ghost shrieked above her.

It was hard to ignore the stench of the recently-dead that slowly drifted upwards, but she had practice. She used to put Vick's under her nose before it got too annoying to remember.

Smashing the hole bigger, she tried to keep dirt from sliding back in as she worked. The hole needed to be big enough for the oxygen to get in while the body burned. Jo wasn't entirely sure a body this fresh would burn evenly, either. She had hopes that the gasoline can her mother had hauled along would do the trick. There weren't any handy crematoriums to break into nearby, at least not while carting a corpse and being chased by a spirit.

"You almost done down there?"

"Pass me the can," Jo called to her mother. She didn't really notice the things slithering and wriggling to get under cover as she pointed her flashlight into the coffin--practice made perfect, after all. And she'd been gutting beetles since she'd been old enough to hold a knife.

The acrid smell of the gasoline overwhelmed the pong from the body, and Jo pounded more holes in the lid before she climbed out to join her mother. "Gotta light?"

Ellen lit a match, then the crumpled ball of paper containing the obituary.

Watching them drop into the open coffin, Jo took a step back, pulling her mother with her.

The fireball that erupted caused the spirit to shriek and Jo to worry about someone calling the local fuzz.

"Honey, how long does this take?"

As though her mother had never done this before. Jo narrowed her eyes, but didn't call Ellen's bluff, "I've never done someone so recently-dead. Maybe an hour?"

"Cops'll be here before then."

The spirit cried out again, then began to shrivel and dissipate. "I don't know, it's a Saturday night. Could be a lot of robberies."

Ellen snorted, "You got a contingency plan, if they put the fire out before he's ash?"

"Sure. We come back." Jo moved to look into the grave, pleased to see the coffin was already on fire, though the body was taking its time. Maybe if they'd let it have a few more weeks of decomposition, it would have gone faster. But she'd been unwilling to allow it that sort of time. Ghosts were always angry, always destructive and dangerous. She didn't need victims on her conscience because she'd been waiting for the body to get easier to burn.

The wind kicked up and the thick, greasy smell made her gag. With a growl, she stepped back, trying not to puke up dinner.

"Ugh. C'mon, there are sirens in the distance and I need a drink." Ellen picked up the empty gas can.

Like this was the sort of thing they did all the time, some sort of weird mother-daughter bonding ritual. Jo didn't argue, though she considered being sarcastic, or asking her mother if she was sure this was enough to prove that Jo had what it took to be a hunter.

Then again, there was no point in starting that argument up again. Jo didn't need to stop hunting, and she didn't really need her mother, though it was nice to have company on a hunt.

In the end, though, she could do this on her own. She didn't need to lean on anyone, and that was a lesson her mother needed to learn.

-f-