AN: This is part of the Daredevil Exchange, for BeaArthurPendragon (on AO3 and Tumblr). Prompt is Girl In the War by Josh Ritter
"Have you seen her?" he asked before Trish's voice had time to replace the dial tone.
"Hel – Matt?"
"Have you seen Jessica?"
There was a pause, shaped by a defeated sigh that ghosted from Matt's phone like a dying breath.
"Matt, I told you. You're not gonna find her. Not today."
He pulled the phone away as he swore under his breath, bringing it back to his ear almost at once.
"Trish, please. You must have some idea. She left me a voicemail and – please."
Trish sighed again. "Matt, honestly, I'd tell you if I knew but I don't. She just disappeared. It's okay, though. She'll be back. Happens every year," she added, as though that made it better and immeasurably worse.
Matt shifted his weight, his fingers drumming a frustrated rhythm into his belt.
"She shouldn't be alone."
"I agree," Trish sighed. "But what can we do? It's her choice, Matt. And it's not like we can track her down. If she doesn't want to be found, she won't be."
Matt straightened. Smiled. They may not be able to track Jessica down, but he could. He was the only one who could.
"Thanks Trish. I gotta go."
"Matt?" He hesitated, holding the phone to his ear. "I'll call you when she comes back. And ... thanks. It's nice not being the only one, you know, worrying. About her."
"Yeah. You too, Trish. Bye."
He spun the phone onto the coffee table and turned to the closet embedded in the back wall. It was too warm to be fully dark out yet, but the evening was starting to fade into the cool stillness of night. He donned his older suit – he wouldn't need armour tonight – pulled the mask over his head, and bolted up the stairs.
He perched himself on the water tower, crouched to keep his balance, and listened. The city hummed and roared and screeched in a discordant melody no one else got to enjoy, but tonight he couldn't give himself over to its melody. He needed to find something specific. One voice in the choir of millions. A single heartbeat from his own private orchestra. Closing his eyes and slowing his breathing to a deep, even rhythm, he let the walls insulating his mind down, and let Hell's Kitchen flood his mind.
A tsunami of information broke over him without mercy and he gave his head a tight shake, dropping his breath and focusing for a moment on the rush of air past his lips, carrying with it all the tastes of his city. Slowly, he began to filter through the onslaught of details. Discounted everything on his own block, then moved to the next, and then the next, his awareness sifting through the world in ever-growing circles of concentration. He kept his hands fisted between his feet, pushing into the resolute steel of the water tower whenever the devil lashed inside him. He couldn't afford to let it out tonight. He had something more important to do.
There.
The haggard voice of Jessica Jones rose from the swell of the city, right on the edge of Hell's Kitchen. Alcohol clung to her like an aura, her boot skidded along the concrete as her balance wavered. Matt tilted his head, honing in on her and catching the slurred curse she hurled at the silhouette of a man drawn in the wash of air from a slamming door. Matt concentrated harder, grounding himself in Jessica's scent, tethering himself to the unsteady beat of her heart. Then he flew.
The rooftops of Hell's Kitchen rose and fell like a sea around him, ebbing away from his touch every time he flung himself from one roof to another, always returning with reliable force as he rolled and ran and leapt and swung. Worried though he was he could not deny the thrill of it, the intoxicated joy that coursed through his every fibre, the blistering freedom setting his world alight in an explosion of sound and movement and life. The entire city pulsed around him, through him. He was a part of it in a way he couldn't even explain, a single spark darting wildly through a roaring bonfire. It was bliss.
He slowed himself to spare his lungs as he neared her. She had stumbled into an alley near the liquor store she'd been kicked out of, each hand gripping a glass bottle that sung with the spice of whiskey as she took a long gulp from one, then the other.
Matt descended the fire escape silently, not wanting to give her a chance to bolt, then dropped lightly onto the dumpster against which she was slumped. Her jacket squeaked as she started, and whiskey slopped onto her hand.
"Jesus, Murdock," she groaned, the words only slightly slurred, which, considering the amount of space Matt heard in the bottles alone was impressive, never mind however much she'd already drunk.
He hopped down onto the pavement, one foot landing in a shallow puddle that plopped sweetly, harmonising with the thump of his boots.
"Jessica."
"The fuck are you doing here, Devil Boy?" she near-growled up at him. He stepped forward and crouched in front of her before speaking, taking a moment to assure himself she really was okay. She stank of drink, great puffs of it gusting aggressively from her lips with every breath like bellows intent on keeping the burning haze surrounding her alight. But there was no hint of blood, no tell-tale flare of heat marking a bruise. She wasn't sitting gingerly – if you could call her semi-upright posture sitting – and, heavy though it was, her breathing was clear of any pained tightness.
Tension rolled off Matt's shoulders, down his back to fall to the ground behind him. She was okay. Thank God.
"You're surprised?" he asked, a slight bite to his tone. "You can't just leave a message like that and not expect me to show up."
She snorted. "Piss off, Daredevil. I don't need saving tonight." Her heart beat steadily through the lie and the fact that she believed it nearly broke his. "And I was jus' letting you know you wouldn't see me today," she added grouchily. "Or, hear me. Whatever."
She lifted one of the bottles to her lips but Matt reached out and held it, gently, inviting her to stop. There was a pause Matt assumed contained a glare he was probably lucky he couldn't see.
"Jess. Talk to me."
"Just go away, Matt," she sighed, jerking the bottle out of his delicate grasp and taking a long, long pull.
"Do you really want me to?"
"Yes." Her heart warbled through the lie he might not have heard otherwise.
"No you don't."
"What, you can read minds now? Just fuck off, Murdock, I don't need you."
That lie made him smile despite himself. He shifted around to sit beside her, his boots grinding momentarily into the gravel canyons of the concrete beneath them.
He let the silence grow and settle between them as she drank. Anger rolled off her in waves of boiling heat, beating into him with every beat of a heart only he could hear calling for help.
"Jess," he said again, more gently this time, when he was sure she wouldn't punch him. "Please. You can't just ... say those things and then disappear. It's not fair."
She choked on her drink. "You're one to talk," she shot back a second later. "You run first chance you get when things get too real. Don't preach at me, altar boy."
"I'm not preaching," he said patiently. "And yeah, I do do that, you're right. But this is different. C'mon," he nudged her arm with his. "It's me, Jess. Talk to me."
Glass clinked on concrete as she set one of the bottles down, her hair sliding along her jacket a heartbeat later as she turned to him.
"Just because I'm fucking you doesn't mean you know me, Murdock," she said, ice dripping from every syllable. "And it sure as hell doesn't give you a right to ambush me."
The sting of the words burnt his air away and he took a slow breath, pressing his ungloved fist into the ground where she couldn't see, focusing for a moment on the cold biting into his skin.
"Ouch."
She took another pull.
"Is that all I am to you?" he challenged, hoping with all his heart this was a bluff. "Somebody to fuck?"
She grunted against the neck of the bottle but her heart beat out a quiet denial. At least, Matt hoped that's what it was.
"You don't get to pick and choose what parts of me you want, Jessica," he continued, keeping his voice steady. "No more than I do of you."
There. That almost silent hiss of pain as she inhaled. The merest hint of salt in the air, almost drowned out by the booze.
"You shouldn't want any of me," she said flatly.
"Well I also shouldn't beat people up every night in a devil costume, but that's never stopped me." He shrugged and smiled at her. "Besides, I want all of you."
The tang of salt intensified. He risked edging a little closer, until his arm was pressed gently into hers.
"You're not a piece of shit, Jess," he whispered, leaning close to her. "Don't ever say you are. Not ... not like that."
The ghost of her furious voice echoed in his mind, the unsaid threat in her voicemail louder than a shout.
She didn't say anything, but leaned into his shoulder. Her breath hitched and she left the bottle held in her lap.
"Come home with me," he pleaded. "You don't have to be alone, Jess. Today of all days."
With a great sniff, she pulled away from him. "I am alone."
He pulled her back, wrapping one hand tightly around her upper arm and drawing her to him until his forehead rested against her hair, his lips inches from her ear.
"You forget I can hear your heart, Jessica," he breathed. "And if you want that to be true you're gonna have to make me leave."
It took over an hour to get her back to his loft. She barely spoke on the way, but by the time they arrived both her bottles were empty. She went straight for his liquor shelf when they arrived, grabbed his scotch, and collapsed onto the couch with a pained sigh. Matt kicked off his boots, pulled his mask free and dumped it on the coffee table. He sat down beside her, not too close, and waited for her to break the silence. After a few fingers of scotch left the bottle, she did.
"What was your dad like?"
He blinked. A flood of memories rose behind their stormwalls and his heart quavered in their shadow. He swallowed them down and hoped his features were more composed then they felt.
"My dad? He, um ..." He licked his lips, frowning. "He was the last thing I ever saw." Matt tilted his head down, hiding his face. "After the accident, he, uh, he stayed with me all night. Let me feel his face over and over so I knew he was there. That I wasn't alone. That was the first thing my hands memorised. His face. It was before ... before my senses developed enough to use. Before I realised they were anything special."
His voice trailed off into the quiet of the apartment and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Threw her a faltering smile, knowing he'd said too much.
"But," Jessica said slowly, "do you remember him?"
Matt heaved a sigh and fought the desire to bolt. The billboard outside was humming like hornets, suddenly far less soothing than it usually was. Jessica was looking at him, her breath rolling over his shoulder, still laced with enough alcohol to knock ordinary people unconscious. He swallowed again and forced himself to be honest.
"I ... I can't remember what his face felt like. What he looked like – all I can remember is light, fading away. But I remember things about him. How he was with me, words he said, stitching him up, that kind of thing. But I don't remember his voice, not ... not really. It's just ... fainter than an echo. Sometimes there's no sound at all, just ... the memory of the shape of his words."
"Must be shit," Jessica said quietly, her voice open now in a way Matt had never heard before, not even when she spoke of Kilgrave. It was a new octave in the melody of her voice and Matt kept himself perfectly still, mesmerised by its soft beauty. "Not having anything to remember him by."
"I have his robe," Matt muttered, wanting her to speak again. "A couple of photos Foggy describes to me when I ... want to remember."
"But no home movies," she said, the words lilting in that new, captivating key. "No way to ... I dunno, smell him again." She hesitated for a long moment. Then, "I've got a couple home movies of ... of my family. In a box, with their ashes. And I haven't even ... I mean they're VHS, I didn't even bother converting them 'cause I never ... And you don't even have that."
Her voice quavered through the confession and Matt risked slipping an arm around her shoulders. She didn't pull away.
"But I'm glad you do," he said softly. "Just knowing they're there, even if you don't watch them, must be ... comforting."
Salt crept into the air, shimmering in matching droplets above Jessica's shaking breath. If he concentrated, Matt could see how they clung to her eyelashes. He could almost see her eyes.
"Do you ever get scared?" she whispered, tears shaking through the words now. "Of remembering them? Of – of forgetting?"
He tightened his grip on her shoulders and nodded. "Some days I miss my dad so much I can barely breathe, but thinking of him ... hurts." Jessica shifted her weight, moving closer to him and laying her head on his shoulder. He found her hand in her lap and held it tightly.
"Hard to say which hurts worse," he continued, his voice barely louder than the billboard outside. "Those moments when you'd give anything for another second with them, or ... those moments when you know the stories you remember used to be a lot more detailed. And there's no one else who remembers and it's been too long and now they're just ... gone. It's like losing them all over again."
She nodded against him, a tear tracing a silently sizzling line along her cheek. He rested his chin on her head, wishing ... Just wishing.
"Philip was such a pain," she said suddenly. "He kept steeling my camera and hiding it in his room. I'd pound on him every time I saw it was missing, but he'd just giggle and take it again a couple days later."
The smile in Jessica's voice rose an echo of itself from Matt's lips. He didn't move as she took another drink, wanting to hear more.
"We were still close, though, y'know? When it counted. I mean," she added darkly, "except for that – most of the time, when it counted." She cleared her throat and took another swig, her hand twitching in his. "There was this bully in his grade. Real piece of shit, honestly. Kid was a total cliché, he even stole lunch money. But Phil got on his bad side one day 'cause he didn't laugh at some shitty joke about some other kid – I can't remember what it was about. But the bully – Dayton, maybe? – he really started making Phil's life hell and he wouldn't talk to me about it for almost a month." She took another, smaller drink. "Heard him crying one night I was meant to be babysitting. He'd locked the door but breaking into his room was how I learned to pick locks. He was so pissed. Expected me to give him shit about it, make fun of him, you know? Normally I would've.
"But he was properly crying. I just sat down beside him and didn't leave 'til he told me about the kid at school. We talked so late Mom and Dad got home and shouted at me for ignoring bedtime. But next day I found that little shit," she continued, a note of pride accenting the words, "and I cornered him. Didn't have any special powers then but he never bothered Philip again after that." She sniffed. "Probably the only decent thing I ever did for him."
Matt pressed a kiss into her hair as she knocked back another mouthful.
"I doubt that."
"My mom and dad? They were honestly so lame sometimes. I remember, when I was real little, Philip was only a baby, they used to dance. Like, in the living room. With no music. Like some shitty sitcom, it was ..." she trailed off, the derision in her tone thoroughly undercut by the smile shaping the words. Matt could almost feel them. Unseen angels surrounding them. Their loving dead, just out of reach.
Jessica shifted again, pulling her legs up over his so she was curled against his chest. Matt wrapped both his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. When she spoke again, the words stumbled over tears which were falling freely over her cheeks.
"I was such a bitch to them. All the time. Such a fucking idiot. Some stupid, piece of shit kid who didn't have any idea how good she had it, how – how much she'd – miss – if they –"
Matt pulled her close, pressing his cheek against her head, rocking her gently as she fought for breath. He had never seen her like this before. He doubted anyone had, except Trish. This was ... He would be scared if he didn't understand it so well.
Jessica made a few more jagged attempts at words but the memories silenced her with quiet, wracking sobs that shook through Matt's chest and God, all he could do was hold onto her and know it was not enough.
With a broken cry Jessica dropped the bottle, the sound of it bouncing off the floorboards interrupted by her fist thumping into his chest. He winced, surprised, but made no sound. She punched him again, harder, her breath still skipping over sorrow. She hit him again, her fist staying pressed against his breast this time and he held her tighter, his heart aching to reach out of his chest and wrap her in all the love he didn't know how to express. Her mouth was open against him in a long cry that would've been silent to anyone else, but he could hear the exact frequency of her grief and it matched the great ocean of his own and, God, how did she do it? How did she get up every morning and not buckle under the weight of all she had lost? He had lost one person he loved and there were still days, over two decades later, when that aching absence threatened to crush him to dust. She had lost three. And she still smiled and laughed at his jokes, still helped people. Still cared.
Super strength had nothing to do with that.
Her hitching breath brought him back to her. Her hand had curled into a fist around his shirt and she was pressing her head into his chest with enough force to bruise but he responded in kind, tightening his hold on her until his arms almost shook. Rain began to patter the confines of their little haven, the sound harmonising with all she could not say as though the heavens themselves wanted to weep for her.
"I don't want to be alone anymore," she breathed, sounding nothing like herself. Matt nodded against her.
"I know, sweetheart. I know." He hesitated. "But if it helps, i-if you want ..." He needed more air to break through his fear. "I can be your family, Jess."
She burrowed deeper into him, a great breath shuddering through her and he wasn't sure if she was nodding or not. Her ribs pressed into his palms through her jacket and he was struck by how small she suddenly felt. Yet how strong.
Her quiet cries raked over his heart, gouging great furrows into him. Energy thrummed through his every muscle, a zinging need to move, to act, to help, but what could he do but hold her? The discordant shocks of her suffocating sorrow crescendoed through the apartment until Matt was sure they would both be crushed under its power.
So he added his own voice to the quiet. Offering a paltry defence against this unfightable foe. He hummed.
He couldn't remember the lyrics to the song that came to his aid. Something about a girl at war and a man helpless to save her. Jessica stilled for a moment, listening to the melody and for one wonderful moment, Matt was sure she was about to call him a dork or lame. But she didn't. Instead, she let out a long, heavy breath and relaxed minutely against him. Listening.
The song wove itself into a shelter around them, keeping the great, burning beast momentarily at bay. Some of the lower notes escaped his quiet rendition, but with every phrase Jessica settled a little more beside him. Her breathing eased. The sapor of salt began to fade slowly from the air. He rocked her in his arms, so gently they were barely moving, and her hand relaxed against his chest.
Twenty years was a long time for that fire to rage. It was like all that love that had been lost coiled and coalesced into a creature born of flame and fang that roared at every touch. Matt could almost hear it bellowing its misery from the depths of Jessica's chest, but as she melted into him as he hummed he imagined it diminishing – just for now. Shrinking and softening into something she could breathe around, the space it left behind resonating with a note of long-awaited peace.
Jessica's hand slipped from his chest with a soft sigh. Her heart had slipped into the tranquil rhythm of sleep and Matt pressed a long kiss into her hair. He smiled against her, breathing her in and relishing the fact that, somehow, he had managed to help her. Offer her some respite from this war she didn't know how not to wage.
If only for now.