Who: Juno & Marco When: Later in the afternoon Where: The station
Much like most things in Juno’s life seeing Simms’ broken dead body had been a double-edged knife. Satisfying, sure, but also sickening. And it had brought back memories of Rhett’s suicide screenshots, on top of driving home the point that she was a fucking failure. Two abusers, two deaths she hadn’t been responsible for. In a sense - in any sense that mattered to her - she hadn’t saved herself both times. And then there was all this rage she felt, all those thoughts and feelings she attributed to fatherly contributions to her genetic makeup that she tried but couldn’t get rid of. She felt like Simms had unleashed a beast Juno herself couldn’t really curb, and that scared her. Was this why her father drank, to see if the booze kept it down? It didn’t, but maybe he didn’t feel it so much if he was addled.
Whatever went through her mind, after helping Kate and herself Juno had vowed to find Marco. She wasn’t particularly anxious for him to see her like this - body and mind - but it had to be done. For a second Juno thought Simms had better not have hurt him, but then she reminded herself that it didn’t matter, because even if he had there was nothing she could do about revenge now.
She walked slowly, with a bag of ice over her head that impeded her sight and therefore her movements, and before she chose a door to go through Juno sighed. She would most likely not find Marco’s cell block first, and he might not even be there in the first place, and this was dumb. Just as she thought these things, a door opened, and Juno moved the ice a bit to look. It was him. And she didn’t know what the hell to say.
Marco’s afternoon had turned into a lot of wandering, and it was a wonder that he hadn’t run into Juno sooner. He had escaped his cell just as soon as Owen had been let out to help Cecilia, because he just needed to be fucking out. He hadn’t left the cell block at first, though. Things were speaking to him, telling him that beyond the door he would only find dead things and monsters, and while he had wanted so badly to find Juno earlier, now the state that his mind was in only left him wanting to avoid the horrors that he knew were behind the door.
Still, he had managed eventually, probably only just missing Juno as she went downstairs. He muttered to himself as he walked around the station, only stopping when he came across someone that he wanted to talk to, which went well almost none of the time, whether he was aware of that fact or not. Then, back to wandering, and hoping to find dry clothes in the process. He had taken off everything but his boxers the night before. Even though Oliver had had yet to leave his cell, Marco had gone back to him to ask where he might find clothes (and also to inform him that they were being watched and were all being controlled) but hadn’t gotten any real answer that could help. So he left the cell block and went back to the station.
And then there was Juno, with an ice pack on her face. Marco stared at her for a moment, his face set in that stiff, mask-like grimace that he so often took on on his bad days. He didn’t know for sure what the ice was for, though the voices provided some answers that he normally would know were wrong. She was broken. Simms had ripped her nose off. He was supposed to help her, and he didn’t, and he was a failure and needed to walk out into traffic. He was the worst boyfriend ever.
He took a step towards her, reaching a hand out until it was on her arm. He got close to her face, inspecting the bag of ice. “Is your nose gone?” he asked softly, watching her with some concern.
Right away Juno could tell Marco wasn’t okay by a longshot. He had that face on, the one that meant he wasn’t even halfway there, let alone ‘all’. The best course of action was probably to just stand still and wait. So, Juno did. She didn’t look at him the entire time either, fearing he might think she was against him somehow too. Looking off she saw Chase and Kiley chilling outside an interrogation room, but decided not to engage. They looked like they needed a little time alone.
Inhaling sharply, she allowed Marco to touch her though she trembled a little, and tried for a smile which failed because of her busted lip. She removed the ice from her nose. “Gone to shit, but still here.” She replied. “You okay?”
Marco wanted to be able to explain everything that had happened, but there was no way that he could properly explain. “They put thoughts in my head,” he explained. “I went to the water park, but I haven’t seen the doctor. Uh… I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. I tried to find you, but everybody died. I killed them, sixteen times. Are you okay?” He tilted his head as she stood there with her injury fully in view, and he kind of wanted to hug her for having been injured, but decided that it would be better to let her start the hug if she wanted to, because he couldn’t figure out how she was feeling right then.
“I don’t like this,” he added, pointing to her lip. It was something close to sympathy, and probably the most he could manage.
Not okay in the least. As soon as Juno heard a few sentences out of Marco she realized he hadn’t been taking his meds lately, most likely since he’d been down here. That made her really, really angry. They needed to stop fucking with his treatment as if it wasn’t enough to fuck with him like they did with everyone else.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She tried to sound soothing but neither her injury nor her mood allowed it. And she was too frazzled to lie, so she simply shook her head at his question. There was no point in explaining right now. “I don’t like it either. It hurts.”
Juno slid down the wall and slumped to the floor with a sigh. “Everything fucking hurts.”
Marco stood over Juno, looking down at her, then glancing around the room, then repeating, before he sat down in front of her. “You need medicine,” he mumbled as he looked her over again. He lightly knocked his knuckles on one of her kneecaps, before bending over to put his forehead on her knee, because it seemed like the right thing to do. Touching was weird, but this was Juno, and he should have been looking out for her, and now he just thought that he should be close to her. Shouldn’t he?
He still didn’t move to hug her, though. He just sat with his head against her knee, awkwardly bent at the middle and hunched. “Okay, yeah, uh, yeah,” he mumbled to himself, then picked his head up abruptly. “We need to fix you. Mix you. You need more face. How bad is it?”
“I did what I could.” Juno replied, shrugging. She put the ice over her nose again, and over her lip. It was convenient that both injuries were so close, at least. She watched him touch her knee with his forehead and raised her hand for a second letting it hover over his head before she patted it lightly, hoping it was okay.
Through it all sometimes he said funny things when he was like this, but Juno tried to never laugh. “I don’t know. It needs to swell down and then I guess we’ll see. It shouldn’t have been left alone for so long but…” She shrugged. It could have been much worse. Simms could have come back like he’d promised, and she might not have curb stomped the fucker before he did more damage. “No one hurt you, right?”
“They put their thoughts in my head,” Marco explained again, figuring that that counted as being hurt, somewhat. He wasn’t sure who They were, or how they were putting thoughts in his head, but it accounted for his feelings of a loss of control, which may not have been so strong if he had been able to get out of the cell and help Juno. Or maybe it was more from the medication being kept from him. Now that he was able to see Juno, to sit by her and see what was wrong, he still didn’t feel any better. He wouldn’t be able to shake this feeling of helplessness. Not for a while.
He crawled over so he could sit beside her, against the wall, but not touching her. After a moment of staring down at his hands, distracted by his fingernails, and then a voice in his head, he started rocking again as he spoke to Juno some more. “I drowned. There was screaming, and a baked potato. There was a lot of screaming. Everyone was mean that day. I couldn’t get the doors open, Alma. I’m sorry. Were you safe? I wanted to get you birds. Words. Birds.”
Juno nodded, unsure whether she understood or not. In a way they put thoughts in everyone’s minds, she supposed. It kind of hurt to move her head, so Juno didn’t look at Marco when he moved to sit by her side, and she didn’t urge him to speak until he felt like it, either. She had no idea what a baked potato meant in this context, but she had drowned too. And heard screaming. She finally looked at him to shake her head briefly. “It’s not your fault! No one could open the doors.” She looked down at her lap. “I wasn’t safe. He did this to me. But it wasn’t your fault, okay?”
Marco kept watching Juno, rocking still as he tried to come up with how to respond. For a moment he laughed, because he was uncomfortable, and people were happier when they laughed, but when Juno didn’t laugh too, he stopped and ran his hands over his head. “Okay. Okay, okay,” he murmured, agreeing with Juno that it wasn’t his fault, rather than the voice that insisted that it was. Not that that made him feel guilt-free. He went back to chittering to himself.
“This is it, though, right?” he finally asked, pointing up to her face again. He wasn’t sure he could take hearing that Simms had done worse to her, but he needed to know. Juno had been the one constant thought in his head, and he needed to know that she was okay, or else his mind would fill in the blanks. “I tried to find you. Juno. I tried to find you. Do you remember the popcorn?”
Juno wasn’t sure Marco believed what she was saying despite all the times he said ‘okay’, but she hoped he did. When he asked if the state of her face was ‘it’ she nodded, but then wondered if it was. Because she didn’t feel like herself, good or bad. She felt different, unhinged, and now that he was dead there was no one to unleash herself on, but she wanted to tear things - someone - apart all the same. She decided to focus on informing Marco instead of dwelling. “He used the fire hose, which hurt. Then he pulled me off the top bunk by the leg and I broke my face on the way down, I guess I’m lucky to have teeth. I have a couple bruises here and there too.”
For the first time in a while her gaze softened. Juno touched the tips of her fingers to Marco’s shoulder, shaking her head. “I know you did. No one could do anything. It’s okay.” She paused. “The popcorn?”
“The popcorn!” Marco said, which was apparently all he was doing to explain that any further. He watched her fingers as they moved to his shoulder, then looked back to her. He didn’t like any of what Simms had done to her, but given what he had watched him do to Edwin, and Chase, that was something of a relief. He tilted his head and got closer to Juno’s face again, looking to make sure that she did have her teeth. He resisted reaching out and taking her face in his hands, and after a moment he was distracted and watching something else, anyway. “I tried, though. Um...Yeah, I like goldfish.” Then he went back to rocking, this time staring down at the floor.
Juno’s brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed at Marco’s outburst about popcorn, but she said nothing more about it. She just wasn’t into being yelled at right now, a little or a lot. Juno wasn’t comfortable with him leaning in and looking at her face in detail again either, but she let him do it. If anything maybe he’d finally be sure she’d eventually be fine and nothing was missing. Well, except a little chunk of her lip but that was on the inside where the teeth had cut, and it could have been much worse. Like a bit of tongue. She sighed in relief when Marco looked away and went back to icing her face.
The statement about goldfish meant nothing to her, but it did make her think of Morena - and then Bearbear - and despair a little. Were they being taken care of? Were they dead? Had this all been another experiment in massive cruelty and when they went back their pets would all be dead of different causes but all due to mistreatment and neglect?
“Ohhh fuck,” she murmured when her heart started racing as the scenario became more and more real. It was good to know she still had those kinds of feelings, though.
Marco didn't know why Juno was cursing, which was enough for him to start rocking harder. He still didn't look back at her, instead finding something on the ceiling that momentarily made his breath catch. “We're okay,” he told her. “We're okay, we're okay, we're okay. We're just under the umbrella right now, they're watching us through the lights, but it's okay.” He gently put his hand on Juno's arm again, then took it off just as quickly. He just wasn't sure how to comfort her.
Juno didn’t notice Marco’s increased rocking, but she did look at him when his breath caught. He kept repeating that they were okay and she wasn’t going to challenge that notion. Even if she wasn’t so sure. She nodded when he put his hand on her arm, thinking maybe he needed the comfort more than she did.
“It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” she didn’t sound very convincing.