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All Jo wants is a fucking break, for once, just one week where she isn't crashing though abandoned buildings and calling in people for easy-as-pie salt and burns she could do her damn self.
She figures New Orleans is like Halloween for demons: too easy, too predictable, so why even bother?
At least, she hopes that's how it is.
From Intracoastal City, she tracks her way back to Highway 90 and takes it all the way to the Big Easy. Something other than a seedy motel is too much to ask, she knows, but she finds something decent enough on the far side of Storyville. It's walking distance to St. Louis #2, to Cafe du Monde and Armstrong Park, for less than eighty a night, discounted a little more since she went ahead and booked the whole week. It's exactly where she wants to be, and Ellen can kiss her ass for seven days. Won't kill nobody to take a break.
She never had time to get ready before shipping off into the wilds of America, and it's starting to wear. It's been starting to wear.
...
There's a guy wearing a sandwich board in Jackson Square, yelling about the coming judgment and the Whore of Babylon. Jo snorts to herself. Honestly, that'd be the least of our problems. Will be. When it comes.
She can travel the whole country and protect as many seals as she wants, but there's no if in her head anymore.
She beelines past the guy selling skeleton paintings tucked into the fence, past sandwich board guy and a gaggle of kids drinking beers in full daylight on the grass. She's headed for the cathedral.
Daddy taught her right and wrong, taught her demon deaths and how to shoot and what to look for, but he never taught her about God. Doesn't matter. Jo prays when and where she wants to, and anyone with something to say about it can go get fucked. Once upon a time she'd of had to tell a lot of hunters that, Dean Winchester included, but it's a little less cut and dry now that some angel went and raised him from the pit. Serves him right is what she thinks.
Don't make fun of Jo's music and don't make fun of Jo's praying.
Inside Saint Louis, it's dark and cool. An older black women prays silently in a pew towards the front. Jo takes it in, the stained glass, the altar, the silence. There's no one else around. There could be a seal here, Jo thinks, but won't go further. It's her week off, dammit, or it's supposed to be.
Tucked in a corner there's a stand of red prayer candles, just a few flickering. She drops a dollar in a box set to the side, kneels on the little padded stool, and lights a candle for Dean. Louis himself is looking down on her, holding the crown of thorns. He knew something about holy wars, Jo knows, but not like this. Not against real and actual evil. She drops another dollar and lights one for Sam too.
She prays for them both, for Dean and Sam, then for Ellen and her daddy in heaven. It's dark and cool and quiet in the church, but she knows they're all still out there. Dean, Sam, the angels, the kids drinking beers on the grass. Sandwich board guy, yelling about The End.
When it comes, Jo prays. When it comes.