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“You found her?”
“She’s in pretty rough shape. But she’s alive.” Whitehorse sighs. “We’ve got to make sure she comes out of the bliss slow, or else we’ll lose her another way. She’s woken up once, needed adrenaline, but now she’s resting.”
“Fuck… I need to see her.”
“Jess, she ain’t awake. Not much point to it. Why don’t you get some rest yourself?”
“Hell no!” Jess cracks her knuckles against the palm of her opposite hand. “If I’m not with her, then I’m headin’ out to kill the peggies that took her!”
Whitehorse just looks tired. “They’re already dead. Cleared ‘em out getting to her.” He gestures back into the jail. “Why don’t you take advantage of the showers we got here? Do that and I’ll let you sit in and wait for her to wake up.”
Jess swears, but turns, marching off towards the showers.
She’s angry.
She’s always angry.
But Adora… She fixes that, sometimes.
Adora is very good at keeping things calm. Keeping things quiet. And maybe it’s a little funny she can keep things quiet, what with her being deaf. She can’t hear a damn thing without the hearing aids Jess had to hunt down.
Shit, she’ll have to check and makes sure they made it back with Adora. They were hard to find and the backups are stored with Mary in Fall’s End. Bit of a distance.
Jess sighs. Maybe she should just bring the backups along with them. At least until she learns ASL better. Grace has been teaching her, with Adora’s help, but it’s a slow process. Made even slower by the way Adora seems to addle her brain when their hands touch as Adora moves Jess’s fingers into the proper signs.
Jess wants to hate that too.
But Adora is proving hard to hate.
Jess might even like her.
And the damn cult keeps grabbing her. They want Adora worse and worse each day. It might be the only thing that she and the cult have in common.
Again, Jess swears. She ignores the look she gets from the man she’s walking past.
Admitting that she wants Adora-- on accident, but admitting it to herself… It’s going to come back to bite her. In this area, women like her-- like Jess, who prefer the company of other women to men-- are few and far between. She can name maybe a handful. Grace, for instance. Mary May. Addie has even mentioned girlfriends in her past, but none recent. There are maybe three or four others on the periphery, but Jess doesn’t know them well.
And women like her are liable to be hated by a chunk of the population. She keeps to herself when she can.
Either way, it’s a mistake. Every woman Jess has liked has been straight. If not straight, taken, or just not interested. Or doesn’t realize Jess is interested. It’s not like she’s good with flirting.
The showers are empty thankfully. She strips and starts up the water.
But Adora, God, Adora has to be one of those. She’s too good to be true. So she’s got to be straight right? Or she’s got someone back home. She hasn’t talked about anyone. The only people she’s talked about are family. She’s got two dads, though, so at least Jess knows she’s not homophobic. She has a cat. She’s got pictures of the little thing on her phone.
And, after being shown them, Jess had said the sort of thing Jess does. “Nice pussy.”
The first time she’d said it had been aimed at Peaches. Adora had laughed her ass off.
How the deputy can keep laughing, even with what they’ve seen in the last few weeks, Jess doesn’t know.
Jess runs her hands down her face, over the familiar bumps of her scars. It’s another thing she’s concerned about and pretends not to be. Even if Adora is the type to prefer women, there’s that whole thing with Jess’s scars. Not many would find them attractive. She looks down at herself. She’s got plenty of scars down her torso too.
She’d rather not think about them. Any of them.
Jess pulls her clothes back on and wonders when she’ll be able to wash those. Dirt, grime, and sweat cover them. Some blood, but most of it isn’t hers. With how she’s been living, it’s not a priority. But it would be nice.
Freshly showered, she heads back to the med bay. She’ll sit her ass down and wait. And when Adora gets up, the two of them are gonna go kill some peggies.
Adora is frowning in her sleep. From what Whitehorse had told her earlier, she’d woken up once in a bad way. Needed all sorts of help just to keep going.
There’s a smear of blood and dirt on her cheek. Her hands are filthy.
And again, Jess is angry. Adora is better than that. How could someone let her lay here like this? How disrespectful can you be? People here in the jail call Adora “Hero”, but they leave her blood covered, dirt covered, on the bed.
Jess grabs a wet washcloth and wipes the blood from Adora’s cheek and does what she can for Adora’s hands. It’s the least she can do. Feels wrong to leave her with it.
She tosses the washcloth aside and takes a seat in the chair that’s next to Adora’s bed. There are two others in the med bay, but dividers keep Adora sectioned off.
Adora has her hearing aids, thankfully. Jess has half a mind to take them out, as she sleeps better without them, but it feels like an invasion of privacy to do so.
Sitting there is annoying as hell. There’s a restlessness in her very bones that makes her want to get up and go hunting. The jail could always use more food. Or less peggies.
But she sticks at Adora’s side. There are worse places.
The peggie hunting is good when Adora takes point. They’ve cleared three outposts in the last week. And she’s great at breaking through roadblocks. Every shrine they’ve come across has been turned to rubble.
Adora is where the action is, most of the time. Sometimes, though, Jess gets stuck sitting on the riverside as Adora hooks fish after fish. She’d be more annoyed if it weren’t for the cute little noises Adora makes every time she pulls a decent catch from the water. Some nights they make a fire and cook the fish right at the riverside.
Before Jess can react more than giving a start, Adora wakes up with a gasp. She makes a noise as if the air has been strangled out of her. She seems panicked, sunken in on herself but ready to bolt as she sits up.
Her eyes land on Jess.
“Jess?”
Her voice is low, but the fact she’s speaking at all means her hearing aides must be working. She doesn’t like speaking without them.
“Yeah, girl, I’m right here. You alright?”
Adora’s voice fails her. Her hands are shaky, but she signs. It’s slow, slow enough that Jess can parse the words. She points at Jess with raised eyebrows. “Are you…” She sets the side of her pointer finger to her chin and jerks it forward in an arc away from her. “Real.”
Are you real?
Bliss. That fucking drug that Faith has been using to brainwash her part of the cult. Hallucinations, forgetfulness…
Jess wants to scream and swear and march into the compound of the damn cult and shoot everyone dead. But she stays there with Adora.
“I’m real.”
Adora finds her voice. “Are you sure?”
Jess isn’t great with people or providing comfort. But she does the only thing she can think of to prove she’s real. She offers her hand.
Adora’s is still shaking, the deputy, the woman who’s freed more people than Jess can count, is shaking as she reaches for Jess’s hand.
She seems surprised Jess is solid, is actually there. Half a second later, she’s pulled Jess clear out of her seat and half onto the bed. Her strength is breathtaking. She’s clinging to her front, mumbling the word “real” as she nuzzles against Jess’s neck, desperate to make sure she won’t disappear.
Jess doesn’t know what to say, but she lets it happen. It’s a little overwhelming having her so close. And until they can get out of this med bay, there’s nothing else Jess can do to help. It’ll help to kill some peggies, for sure. But right now, she can just comfort Adora as best she can.
It’s not long before Adora passes out again. This time she’s half sat up and leaning heavy against Jess. Her face is half hidden by Jess’s hood.
Tracy comes to check on Adora an hour later and Jess is still there.
Jess avoids eye contact, but she doesn’t miss the soft, knowing look.