Work Text:
Ruega por nosotros pecadores,
ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte.
✝
Hermès wakes in the infirmary after the incident with Sports Maxx. She's only just regained consciousness, and as the memories of what just happened flood back, her first thought is holy shit, this hurts. Her second is I want to see Jolyne.
It's become something of a habit over the past few weeks, since figuring out the guards schedule, where some nights Jolyne will slip out of her cell and into Hermès' a few doors down. It's meant to be lights out, with all the prisoners locked in, but Jolyne being able to unravel most of her body into string means barred doors are not entirely an issue. Gwess won't snitch; she's a little scared of Jolyne now.
FF will join them too, if they feel like it, leaving Atroe’s body in their cell and creeping down the hallway as a damp mass of… whatever they are. They always leave wet footprints on the stone cell floor, like they're perpetually fresh out of the shower.
Hermès just worries that tonight, Jolyne might be in bad enough shape that she can't come. She's not as worried about FF, who wasn't in most of the fight and can mould themself back together with enough time and water, but Jolyne- Hermès didn't really get a good look at her injuries before passing out herself. For all she knows, Jolyne could be unconscious in another room of the infirmary too. But like clockwork, glowing blue string slips through the crack in the infirmary door.
Watching Jolyne reform herself is always a little odd. Stands in general are a little odd, or more than a little, really, but there's something particularly captivating about Stone Free. There's something about its liquidity, the way it moves, fluid and untethered. Jolyne comes back into existence, becomes tangible again, and as she pushes her hair- unbraided at this time of night- over her shoulder, Hermès is filled with the urge to reach out and touch her just to know she's truly there, and her fingers won't just pass through like they would water. It's been one hell of a day.
“Hey,” Jolyne says, and Hermès breathes a sigh of relief. “I'm glad you're awake.”
Hermès doesn't remember much of what happened since collapsing in Jolyne’s arms earlier, only drifting back into consciousness to the smell of antiseptic wipes and pure agony in every part of her body. It's good to know that Jolyne's okay. There's only a few scratches on her, and one nasty looking cut down her forearm, slicing through her butterfly tattoo.
“Your arm okay?” she asks.
“S’nothing. FF did their thing and I stitched the wound up with Stone Free earlier. Shouldn't take too long to heal. But I should be asking you that question.”
Jolyne's hair frames her face in black and blonde waves, the bleach in her bangs starting to grow out with how long it's been since she's had a touchup. She's in prison regulation pajamas, the top few buttons left open.
“Been better. But I'm doped up on painkillers, so it don't feel like much. Looks worse than it is,” Hermès lies. The nurse must've given her something for the pain while she was out, but nowhere near enough to numb the agony coming from the deep gouge in her arm, and, well, everywhere else too. She just doesn't want Jolyne to worry.
“Thank God,” she says, though Hermès knows she's not really religious. It's the sentiment of it though. Hermès, who's still Catholic… kind of, cursed God when Gloria died, but she'd almost felt holy as she'd followed Sports Maxx to the chapel every morning.
“I was really worried,” Jolyne says. “They wouldn't let me come see you.”
The guards here are bastards at the best of times, and seem to really have it out for Jolyne in particular.
“What happened, uh, after…” Hermès trails off. Just after. Jolyne knows what she means. Hermès has only just started to feel coherent enough to even think about it.
“FF patched us both up as best as they could. You were unconscious, so we got you here. Then I guess the guards found the carnage.” She half laughs, but it's anxious and shaky. “I was asked a few questions, but they didn't believe anything I said. They're gonna question me properly tomorrow. Probably’ll ask you too. You've only been out a few hours though. Didn't miss too much.”
The clock on the infirmary wall, lit dimly by blue moonlight, reads just past eleven.
“They find his body then?”
Jolyne shrugs. “Dunno. Prolly not, cuz he's in that pipe. They must've found that girl though, and the mess in the cemetery. Locked everyone in their cells early.”
She sounds oddly nonchalant for someone discussing a dead man trapped in a water pipe, but over the last few weeks, killer Stands and invisible zombies have become the new norm. Besides, it's not like Sports Maxx’s death is any loss to the world. Hermès knows she's glad. Though, revenge doesn't quite feel as sweet as she's dreamed of.
“I didn't want you to have to kill him,” Jolyne says quietly, after a pause.
“What? He- he killed her. He killed my sister. You think I shouldn't have avenged her?” A crumpled sob catches in Hermès' throat.
“It’s not that. Fuck that bastard. He deserved what he got and more. But you- I didn't want you to have to become a killer because of scum like him.”
“I don't regret it.”
“I would've done it for you. If I could've- I-”
“You know I had to.”
“Yeah.”
It sounds like there's more she wants to say, but she just can't get it out. Hermès rolls over in her hospital bed, wincing at the pain in her arm but wanting to look anywhere except at Jolyne. She sounds so genuinely sincere- and Hermès hates it. Her blood doesn't run cold at the knowledge she's now a murderer, and even the small part of her that's still a devout Catholic doesn't fear Hell at all. If God is just, and He surely is, He will recognise that Sports Maxx deserved it all, and that Hermès avenged a martyr.
“Dios te salve, Maria,” she whispers, in the cadence her father would always pray in, and when she says Maria, she thinks instead of Gloria, and her blonde hair and sad eyes and how there was always dinner on the table, no matter how short they were on money, or how much Hermès rebelled.
She finishes the rest of the prayer under her breath. Jolyne, in the chair beside her bed, stays quiet.
“I needed to kill him,” Hermès says, after a while. “I needed to. You couldn't have done it for me. It was my revenge.”
“I know. I'm just… sorry that any of this had to happen. I'm sorry about your sister.”
She falls silent again, and Hermès thinks of Jolyne's father, and the shadowy stranger that is Whitesnake. Jolyne probably understands better than most people do.
“Tell me about her,” Jolyne says, and Hermès doesn't really know where to begin. It's hard; there's so much, yet nothing at all to say about Gloria.
“She was blonde,” Hermès says eventually. Bleach blonde, like the girls on the covers of magazines. Hermès hadn't noticed then, but it was glaringly obvious now, how Gloria had dreamed of a different life just as much as Hermès had. Gloria dreamed of Hollywood glamour and LA mansions that glittered in movies and commercials, but she'd only let herself want that life in her bed late at night, flipping through the same old copy of a B-list fashion magazine, the one a customer had left behind in the restaurant one day. She could never justify buying magazines monthly, not with how tight money was, but she'd linger a little in stores and flip through new issues, before putting them back on the shelf. Drugstore bleach was the only indulgence she allowed herself.
“She was blonde,” Hermès repeats, “and pretty. The sort of girl you'd see in movies. She coulda been in movies, if she'd wanted to. Coulda done anything. Coulda married a rich guy, left the restaurant behind, but it was all she had left of dad, and she would never abandon it. Would never abandon me, even though I was a bitch to her.”
Hermès thinks back to teenage years spent hating everything about her life. She'd joined the track team at school because all she wanted to do was run, and some nights when she couldn't stand to be at the restaurant or their little apartment above it, she'd run through city streets away from the poorer suburbs where they lived, until the buildings started getting bigger and shinier.
She'd stand, out of breath, and stare for a while at strangers in nicer clothes than she could ever dream of affording stumbling out of fancy cars and into restaurants and nightclubs. They were nothing like Gloria's restaurant at home, or the seedy clubs that Hermès would sometimes sneak into with her friends. Eventually, she'd grow tired of feeling so out of place, and traipse back home, where Gloria would've left a plate of food on the kitchen counter for her, gone cold in the hours Hermès had stayed out.
“She was too good to me,” Hermès concludes.
It seems inadequate; a few words can barely scratch the surface of who Gloria was. Hermès has thought about her every day for the last six years, but now, when asked, she can barely sum up a response.
“I'm sorry,” Jolyne says, a little stilted. She's the sort of person who finds it easier to beat a problem with her fists, rather than talk about it. From the little Hermès knows about Jolyne's father, she thinks it runs in the family. She doesn't think either of them are really used to heart to hearts like this.
“I just wish I'd been better to her.”
“She loved you. And you were still a kid. Don't blame yourself too much.”
“I know she loved me,” Hermès forces out. “That's- that's the worst part.”
It'd be so much easier if Gloria had resented her. Hermès deserved it, really, with how she'd act out, biting back whenever her sister would ask for more help at the restaurant, and staying out late without telling her a thing. Gloria worried so much, perpetually anxious about everything crashing down, and Hermès curses her younger self for adding to that stress.
‘You were a kid,’ Jolyne said, but at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, Hermès should've known better. At seventeen, she'd lost her only remaining family. She wonders bleakly what Gloria would think of her now, if she'd be ashamed of what her little sister has done. She hopes killing Sports Maxx has granted Gloria some relief up in heaven, and mumbles a short little prayer under her breath again.
Hermès remembers very little of the days following Gloria's murder, but she had abandoned the restaurant soon after, taken what little she had from the apartment and slept on different friends' couches until graduation. It was a shitty school year, but Gloria had always wanted Hermès to do well in school, so she tried to get through the last of it at least. To say she did well would be a lie, but she scraped passing marks at least. It was after graduation and after her friends had gone off to college that Hermès started looking into Sports Maxx in earnest.
At twenty, the news of his arrest reached Hermès, and while it was devastating for a moment, her resolve never faltered, and she directed her hatred into another plan. It's something she'd dedicated herself to for so long that having it be done is a strangely empty feeling. Hermès wonders who she could've been if not for all her rage, if she'd been better to Gloria, if she hadn't ran out that night, if and if and if-
“It's okay,” Jolyne murmurs, and it's not, but her hand is warm and grounding in Hermès’. Just like earlier, Hermès gets the feeling that with Jolyne by her side, she's free to cry without judgement, to let out all the grief that's festered over the years. She sobs shakily, and Jolyne wordlessly squeezes her hand tight.
Letting herself cry after so long is overwhelming, and even after the tears finally stop, it's difficult to slow her breathing back down. It'd be mortifying if she was in this state in front of anyone other than Jolyne.
“What am I gonna do now-?”
What is there for her? She's barely in her twenties but she's in jail, with no family left to speak of and Stand users trying to kill her, and even if she makes it out, her criminal record will make doing anything at all almost impossible. Was this worth it? Had she done any of this for Gloria, or was it all something to devote herself to so she wouldn't have to focus on the grief?
“We'll get outta here,” Jolyne murmurs. “Us, and FF, and Emporio.”
“And then what? We'll be wanted criminals.” Hermès laughs mirthlessly.
“We'll save my dad-” at this, Jolyne pauses, looking momentarily guilty, “and- and after that, we can do anything! Move out of Florida, maybe. I think my dad's got connections. Family in Italy or something.”
“I've never left Florida.”
“I went to Japan a couple times as a kid. Don't really remember a lot of it though. My grandma lives there, haven't seen her in years. She's got this big ass house, bet we could stay there a while.”
Hermès half smiles. “You'll hafta teach me the language then.”
Jolyne grins back. “I can't really say much. I know how to introduce myself and tell someone to fuck off. That's about it.”
“‘S all you need.”
“Guess it is.” She pauses, and really looks at Hermès, in a way that's vulnerable but somehow comforting. “Hey,” Jolyne continues, quieter. “I’m glad you're okay. I'm really glad that, like, we met, y'know? Wish it could've been in better circumstances, but I'm happy I've got you. And we're gonna get out, for sure.”
Hermès opens her mouth to reply, but footsteps become audible in the hallway outside the infirmary.
“Shit,” hisses Jolyne. “I gotta go before the warden notices I'm missing.”
She gives Hermès' hand a squeeze before letting go and moving towards the door.
As Jolyne starts to unravel back into thread, Hermès remembers something.
“Jolyne, the disc! Sports Maxx, his disc. I got it earlier, in the cemetery. It should still be in my clothes. You should take it.”
Jolyne nods, and removes the disc from where Hermès' clothes are folded on the bedside table.
“Thanks. I'll be back.”
With that, she slips through the door, and out into the corridor beyond.
“Thank you,” Hermès whispers to an empty room.