Work Text:
Waking up in the bunker with Joseph broke the Deputy. His eyes, the shaking of bombs, the loss of control hit her all like a ton of bricks and they cracked and broke at her sanity. The first day, Joseph prayed over her while she thrashed in her handcuffs. He only stopped when her wrists bled and she tried to bite through her own tongue.
The first five days of life in the bunker went as so: Wake up, cry, attempt suicide, be stopped by Joseph, have Joseph pray, get force fed, listen to the world dying, fall into exhausted sleep. It took those first five days for the bombs to stop, the ground shaking. Then something worse set it.
Silence.
The Deputy stopped speaking when the world above died. When Joseph tried get words out of her, she ignored him. Even when he grabbed her face, forced eye contact, at one point even begging with tears in his eyes, she was silent.
One day, when perhaps Joseph could no longer stand her stench, he remove her handcuffs briefly only handcuff her again with her hands in front of her. The Deputy tried to fight, but she was weak, so weak, and her blows might as well been gusts of wind on Joseph’s skin. He carried her weak form when she could not walk, into a room with a tub, filled with lukewarm water and a rag. He gently sets her on the ground next to it.
“You must be cleansed, be clean for what lies beyond Eden’s Gate.” The Deputy could only muster the thought that even though the world was gone, Joseph could not stop himself from speaking in half baked riddles. He murmured something but she didn’t care to listen. Then he left.
The Deputy was surprised. Joseph had stripped of everything and he left for what? Her modesty? Her mind twirls but she looks to her side sees the tub. The water. Deep. Deep enough.
Joseph was only gone for a minute, and when he came back, the Deputy had been under the water for 45 seconds. He scrambles to remove her from the water and when he brings her up she gurgles and gags. He brings her to the floor, turning her on her side, murmuring and sobbing into hair, his salty tears mixing with her own.