Chapter Text
“Ow… the fuck..?” Zora groaned, stirring awake. As her memories of the night before came back to her, so did the conclusion that she thought it prudent to lock herself in the bathroom with the lights on and fall asleep in the bathtub, which she had just accidentally bashed her temple against.
Of course.
She reached over the rim weakly and grasped her phone, which she scarcely remembers grabbing off the floor along with a blanket the night before, to check the time.
1:04 PM
Below that, a text from the Boss. Somehow, seeing just the notification gave her the sensation of an oncoming hangover headache. The phone was stupid. The whole situation she had been forced into by him was stupid. She resisted the urge to throw the device again, fearful that if she broke it she would have to ask Yoomtah for a new one. She would never say it out loud but the girl gave her the creeps.
<3: Any progress to report, Zora?
After several more suppressed groans, a handful of curses, and an attempt to get out of the tub that definitely didn’t send Zora nearly spiraling to the floor, she brushed herself off and prepared a response.
Not yet
Im workin on it
<3: Good, Good. Please do keep in mind that I am expecting some sort of progress by the end of this week. Don’t disappoint me.
-
Still groggy, mildly annoyed, and with a crick in her neck from sleeping in a bathtub, Zora stopped by the cafeteria to pick up some coffee and a ham sandwich on her way back down to the prison.
It had only taken around 30 seconds of consideration for Zora to be confused by the integration of prison cells of all things into their headquarters. As she descended the stairwell that lead to the damp, rocky structure, she mentally listed off all of the potential hazards that came with it- what if there was a police raid on the building? It was certainly very incriminating, also a giant waste of budget funds, and probably a risk to the structural stability of the skyscraper because it took up the entire foundation, but whatever.
When she reached Percy’s holding cell, the woman appeared to be asleep, facing the wall and lying on her side. Zora struck the bars a few times to get her attention.
“Yoo-hoo? Sleepyhead? Ready to talk yet?”
It takes a few moments for the officer to fully wake up and turn to face her. The expression on her face is worn; she already has a pair of light purple eye bags and a defeated slouch to show for it.
Zora can’t help but feel kind of bad for her, awkwardly chewing her cheek and kicking at the floor aimlessly as she waited for the officer to say something, anything . That moment never came. Zora’s frustration grew.
“You know that you ain’t getting out of here until you give me some answers, right? Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
Percy said nothing but nodded slowly. Her stomach then growled so loudly that Zora could hear it a full 10 feet away from the prisoner.
“Breakfast here not good enough for you, eh?” She bit into her sandwich and took a sip of her coffee. “You cops wouldn’t last a day outside the city.”
“Apologies. I have not been fed anything since yesterday morning.”
Zora forgot to chew for a second, choking on the bread, deli meat, and coffee all at once. She thumped her fist against her chest and cleared her throat.
“Since yesterday mornin..?”
Shit. Shit. There was no way Yoomtah neglected to tell her the fact that she would be responsible for feeding the prisoner on top of everything else… right?
She must have been zoned out in thought again because she could feel the officer’s gaze on her cheek as she mentally scolded herself for being so neglectful.
“Uh… if it is not too much trouble, I would like something to eat.” Her voice was firm but ever so slightly wavering, one of the few remaining seemingly collected things about the woman. The entire facade reminded of a broken pot held together with a few pieces of packaging tape. She was toughing it out but clearly had never been in any situation that had required her to spend the night on a hard plywood bunk in a cold stony prison, and Zora could tell the lack of food sincerely wasn’t helping. The cracks were beginning to show.
“Fuck. I’m- I’ll be right back.” Zora put down her food and blew out of the prison as fast as she could manage. She had someone she needed to talk to.
-
Precisely .5 seconds after the thought of confronting Yoomtah crossed her mind, she decided against it. She could take some of Zora’s angry ranting out of context and rat her out to the boss and get her in trouble, though she was sure of all the things Yoomtah was capable of, that was at the very bottom of her convoluted and fucked up psychological torture pyramid. She wasn’t willing to go through all of that just to get some slight gratification that she was right.
So instead, she made another stop at the cafeteria and loaded her plate with every food and drink item she could fit. Ignoring the odd looks was a part of her job at that point, given the costume, reputation, et Cetra, so she found it easy to brush past all her raised eyebrow coworkers with unprecedented swiftness to reach the odd corner that the stairwell to the prison was.
-
“Sorry, I just kind of grabbed some of everything, because I figured you’d be hungry and I don’t know what you like. So, uh, here.”
She pushed the tray under the food slot of the bars, semi-awkwardly setting herself down on the floor in front of the officer who was now picking her way through the tray, eating with the poise and restraint you’d expect from perhaps a colleague at a fancy dinner party and not a starving prisoner in a mafia fortress. How she didn’t just completely obliterate the tray, Zora wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of what to say or do either.
Zora had never been the best people person. Sure, she had her magnificent speeches of glory, her diplomatic exchanges with coworkers, her… not so diplomatic exchanges with others(in her defense, Zora would hardly qualify it as a thing that had to do with being good with people and more of a thing that had to do with the fact that she was hot and knew how to use her tongue) and enough romantic themed scenarios in her head to satiate the hungriest diehard wild west movie fanatic, but she worked alone for a reason. When she was alone, she lived without the fear of being judged or hurt, or worse, hurting someone she had grown attached to. Alone was one of the only states she had felt comfortable in ever since her mother had…
She choked down the thought by stuffing her face with her ham sandwich. To an outside viewer, the scene must have looked quite silly. The notorious bounty hunter and Bliss Ocean corporate officer Zora Salazar, unable to conjure anything worthwhile to say, reduced to sitting cross-legged on the floor of a prison across from a police officer as they ate lunch together while neither would make eye contact with the other party.
Zora finished her sandwich and stared at her boots. By the sound of it, Percy was about done too. She looked up to see the officer dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
"Thank you." It was said with that similar firmness that made Zora feel like the officer could be speaking to a brick wall and it wouldn't change a thing.
"Mhm." She sort of twiddled her thumbs and stood back up. "So, you've been fed." The officer nodded slowly. "Now tell me where the necklace is."
She was silent for another few agonizing counts, staring up at Zora with that same blank slate sort of expression. It put her on edge. She didn't like to be analyzed, and the officer staring at her made her feel like she was stuck in an unwanted therapy appointment.
"You aren't so bad, you know. There is always a place for people willing to change their ways of crime on the side of justice."
Zora laughed. "You flatter me." Right as she began to say something akin to a scathing 'no, I'm like totally evil', she bit her tongue. Mera's words popped back into her head.
"But if you seriously are that insistent on being all… ‘hands off’ with the prisoner, I say try getting closer to her as a person, peeling away her layers."
That couldn't be too difficult, to at least try to be friendly, could it?
"Uhhhhh." was all that really came out as Zora tried to locate a single kind bone in her body.
"You have pretty hair..?"
Percy stared at her, mouth half open in confusion.
"...Thanks?"
Yep, Zora was going to kill herself. Without another word, she left in a hurry, cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment.
-
"Jesus Christ. When you said you were like, bad with people, I wasn't expecting parasocial sheltered homeschool baby levels of bad with people." Mera lamented after Zora had retold the interaction to her. "How did you even get into Bliss Ocean like this? Sounds like you would have shit yourself then passed out at the thought of an interview."
The bounty hunter threw up her hands in protest. "I'm not usually this bad! She's kind of weird and hard to talk to!"
Somebody behind them shushed her. In front of them, the Fast & Furious 4 was playing on the dining room movie screen(a floor below the cafeteria, used chiefly for group bonding/meetings, but it was always open for cafeteria seating) It was Friday, which meant it was company movie night during dinner, attendance required. Unfortunately, for some reason almost every week it was one of the Fast & Furious movies(at least, that’s what she had heard). A truly tragic fate for a perfectly good movie screen.
"So... she makes you nervous?" A little smirk crept onto Mera’s lips.
"Oh, you can it." Zora retorted snappily.
"Woah there, just an observation. No need to get your assless chaps in a bunch. If you want my help, drop the lone wolf act and listen."
Zora deflated. "Fine."
"Anyways. You like all of those old corny wild west films, right? Well- if it's so easy for you to monologue off of those and act out scenes in them for you, why don't you just try to do that in front of her? I'm sure you could be at least a little charming if you tried." Rubbing her temples with her index and middle finger and staring down at her plate, Mera sighed. "God, this is sounding more and more like dating advice each time I talk to you about this."
Though it was said quickly and under her breath, Zora heard. She felt her cheeks turn pink again.
"Uh… I guess that it's worth a shot."
"Worth a shot sounds a whole lot better than 'ten feet deep in shit with the boss' if you ask me." The woman shrugged and went back to eating her salad. "Go get some sleep before you do that though. Your eye bags are looking almost as bad as mine."
-
She hated how on the walk back up to her room all she could think about was the blonde, looking up at her with a half puzzled and half dumbfounded expression.
"...Thanks?"
God. Stupid Percy and her stupid ability to make Zora unable to have coherent conversations and her stupid pretty hair and pretty face and sparkly eyes were going to drive her crazy.
She closed the door to her room behind her with a soft click.
"It's just you and me right now, buddy." Zora patted the rim of the bathtub affectionately. Her blankets and pillows from the previous night were still in their places, and she tried to ignore how there was still a crick in her neck from sleeping in it as she crawled in and tried to settle herself.
Around 30 minutes later, Zora was dissatisfied with the fact that staring at the wall of the well-lit bathroom hadn’t lulled her to sleep yet. The paint was white, slightly duller in some patches. There was a small water damage stain on the ceiling that reminded her a little bit of how your skin looks days after receiving a third-degree burn.
She groaned, attempting to reorient herself in a way that was more comfortable. Despite stacking her neck on top of a pillow, the hard rim of the basin felt as though it were pressed directly against her cervical. She was also far too tall to fit fully extended within the tub. The basin at its longest was probably around 4 and a half feet, though in all fairness it was not constructed with sleeping accommodations in mind. It wasn’t like she had ever used it since she only ever showered, but man was it a sick joke to give one of the tallest people at corporate offices the tiny bathtub.
She briefly considered turning off the lights, but despite the brain fog that came with being uncomfortable and sleep-deprived, she felt that cold creep of the shadow on the back of her neck and shut the idea down instantaneously.
So there she sat, neck pressed against the lip of the bathtub, trying her best to let the day’s exhaustion settle into her bones.
…
“Fuck this.”
It didn't really matter if she would come to regret her actions later, that was a tomorrow Zora problem and right now her number one priority was sleep.
So maybe she took her blankets and a pillow under her arm, half aware of herself and groggy, and went back to the prison. And maybe she threw down the pillow and, knowing Percy was there, was able to immediately clock out on the floor the second her head hit the pillow.