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The evening settles over Wentworth prison with the promise of a new tomorrow. Orange light filters in through the windows of the unit. All is quiet tonight, despite the disruptive force that has split the red sea.
Jacs Holt sits on the edge of her bed. While given the previous night in medical, she has returned to her unit; bandaged hand and aching head, she debates an early night’s rest. Somewhere along the line, a betrayal intervened at the cost of personal injury.
She will make her pay.
The sound of familiar steps walks into the unit, past the first few cells until they stop at hers. Too light to be a guard, but too heavy to be another attack. Not so soon. Franky Doyle has made her mark.
“Jacs…” Simmo declares her arrival, low timbre voice echoing against the gray brick that walls them in. Jacs doesn’t acknowledge her at first. Only gradually, her eyes open.
“Simone.” Tired and in pain, she desires nothing in the moment to sleep, to lay her weary head to rest for one night in the bed she become accustomed to for the last seven years. Tentative steps come forward. “Close the door,” comes the order – the invitation to her personal sanctum.
The click of the door signals her moment, and she finally acknowledges her right-hand hench, her friend.
“Look, Jacs, I wanted to –”
“Save it. I’m not in the mood.” The quick dismissal buries the apology. A tender pink flush still mars the younger woman’s cheek, marking her for the earlier offence.
“I crossed the line. I shouldn’t have.” Cautious, Simmo stands before her matriarch, her friend. Sheepish, she buries bruised knuckles that still bear Bea Smith’s blood in the pockets of her teal pants. “Look, if it’s any consolation –”
“It isn’t.”
“Right.”
Silence befalls them; tired eyes glance over the changed gauze and cast that protects the broken and shattered remains of Jacs’ left hand, laid still over her stomach. Only the tips of her fingers peek out amid the mass of white, swollen and disfigured. Her own bruised knuckles are nothing in comparison.
She debates leaving; this effort is fruitless after today’s events, but loyalty keeps her in place, ready at the beck and call of Wentworth’s top dog.
“Sit.” With her good hand, Jacs gestures to the end of the bed. Hesitation leaves Simmo; she sits, knees together, hands in her lap. She’s been pinched again, a third sentence – longer this time – beneath her belt. Life with the Holts, however, has made it better for her family, easier to survive in a world set out against them. She can afford to send Carly to university if she wants. Spitz complains about it, but she can’t.
“What would you have done differently today, Simmo?”
The question breaks the suffocating silence; Simmo hangs her head. Side glances capture a proud profile, one that bears experience in the wrinkles around her eyes, around her mouth. The punishing overhead lights above painfully illuminate the bruise on Jacs’ forehead.
“I dunno,” She begins. It isn’t good enough. “Had to be Anderson, I think,” She adds; of course, everyone has a hand to play in this place, and despite being back only a matter of days, she’s picked up on the situation. “Smith wouldn’t have known, would she?”
“I don’t know,” her raspy reply ends the conversation with a sigh. There aren’t enough painkillers in the prison to alleviate the excruciating pain that comes with even the slightest shift in movement. “But I’ll need you. More than ever.”
A pause follows; their eyes meet at long last, and Simmo offers a small, strained smile. The waters of a woman scorned are hardest to navigate. Like a wounded predator, Jacs remains volatile, ready to strike at a moment’s notice to defend herself if need be. Though, powerful as she may be, she is exhausted, physically, and mentally, all the same.
Tentatively, Simmo reaches out, tucks pieces of gray waves behind her ear. She expects punishment again, even with the nearest hand incapacitated.
The very same woman who could be the cause of her own destruction in these walls, allows her in – loyalty and devotion at its finest.
“You’re exhausted,” She points out the obvious, but makes the statement. It’s still early, though the wake of this power shift makes itself known in the circles beneath Jacs’ eyes, and the slump of her shoulders. “I should let you sleep, Jacs.”
The right-hand woman intends to rise, but a sharp look, of fiery demand for respect, stops her.
“Stay with me.”
The request is not beyond the call of duty, but it surprises her to come so sudden, so softly spoken for a woman so powerful. Even Jacs herself looks up with parted lips, and widened eyes – surprised at herself for demanding such an... intimate request.
“If you want me to, I’ll– ”
“I don’t want to be left alone,” The confession speaks truth in its fullest; for the first time in years, she feels fear, a concern for safety that needn’t be explained. Simmo’s brows knit together with her concerns, but the issue won’t be pressed. She can’t, not with Jacs.
What Jacs does, Jacs does for her reasons. She’s learned not to question them, but to go with her, and prepare for the worst.
“I won’t... leave, I’ll be here. All night, if you need me,” Her attempt at humour falls flat, though the armour starts to come away, one piece of uniform at a time.
“Help me,” Jacs gestures to the way her bandaged arm disables her from removing the button down, with her iconic popped collar. Careful, calloused hands reach and pull the material around the cast, until the cotton material has been freed. She folds it, sets it on the chair. Exhaustion dictates that merely the undershirt and teal pants are enough for sleep. Slip on shoes are kicked off, caring little for where they land.
The arthritis in her ageing joints creak and protest the shift into bed; the thin mattress does little to avoid aggravating the issue. Once content to lay still, Simmo rises, takes her vigilante’s post in the plastic chair tucked in beneath the desk. Lest she overstep her boundaries, she turns it, faces the door. It won’t be a comfortable evening, but she does as she has been asked.
Orange fades to pitch black. Only the spotlights of the yard cast shadows into the room from the window; the dimmed light of the unit hallway filters through the smaller glass pane of the door. The women are quiet tonight – quieter that is than usual.
Simmo wakes with a start, a crick in her neck adding to the already uncomfortable ache from falling asleep upright. The sound of her alarm is from Jacs, stirring listlessly in her sleep. A soft cacophony of moans and murmured words fall from her lips.
Curious, she watches her leader falter in her sleep – and then, jerk awake with wide eyes, and cold sweat. Confusion belittles Jacs in the heat of the moment; the eyes of her most loyal stare back. She remembers the invitation to stay, and panic subsides.
“You haven’t been watching me the whole time, have you?” In her half-asleep state, the usual edge of her voice has disappeared, and her humour rises to the surface.
“N-no! Of course not, I just…” A scramble for words makes Simmo sit upright, plastic screeching against concrete. “You were… dreaming.”
“Yeah,” She admits, moves herself towards the edge of the bed farthest from the wall. Here, she tests devotion. “Come here, Simone.”
Dutifully, she is beckoned from her chair, rises in full and stretches before taking her rightful place. Where a husband cannot oblige such a tender devotion, she makes up for it. Carefully, to avoid adding insult to injury, she slips in behind Jacs, curling her legs beneath the thin cover, with one arm resting so precariously over her side.
For a woman that fears very little, even she can’t shake the desire to want protection, in whatever form it may come.
Chest to back, Simmo rests, breathes in the smell of Jacs’ perfume, the shampoo in her hair.
“I missed you,” She admits into her ear, nothing more than a whisper. She receives only a hum in return, but for Jacs, it means more than it doesn’t.
She pledges fealty to her devotion at the back of Jacs’ neck, a gentle kiss pressed to the skin.