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Rage Is a Great Motivator
The fire alarm goes off and Jessica lets out a muffled groan into her pillow, her face crumpling with annoyance and pain, the sharp screeching noise piercing through the fogginess of her sleep-deprived, hungover mind. She can vaguely hear the clatter of feet from her neighbours' surrounding flats, muffled voices shouting and crying out. Her eyes roll under her eyelids at their panic, her nose sniffing for smoke, and coming up blank.
She grabs at her pillow and pulls it over her head, clamping it around her ears. But then someone starts hammering on the door to her apartment.
"Everybody out!" a voice shouts through the boarded up window. "This is the NYPD, we are evacuating the building!"
Jessica cracks an eye open, scowling. The hammering continues, the police officer repeating himself. She throws the pillow off her head, rolling onto her back, hands reaching to rub at her face. There are some other muffled noises she suddenly picks up on, realising they're coming from outside the building, and her grumbling fades as curiosity takes over.
"NYPD! Everyone outta the apartment, we are evac-"
"Okay, alright, I get it!" she yells to her living room, untangling her legs from her sheets. "I'm coming, jesus."
Her bare feet touch the floor and she moves to change into fresh clothes, pulling on jeans, a tank top, and a zipped jumper. She shoves her feet into her boots, running her fingers through her limp hair, and stomps through to the living room/office, finding the outside noises louder in here.
"Ma'am, you need to evacuate the building now!" the officer shouts, slamming his fist into the door again.
"Two seconds!" she snaps, one hand reaching for her leather jacket on the arm of the couch, the other swiping the nearly-finished bottle of whiskey from her desk.
She tucks the bottle in her armpit so she can pull the jacket on, her forehead creasing in confusion, eyes squinting into the bright sunlight of the day outside her window, and tries to make sense of the dull thuds she can hear. She shrugs the jacket over her shoulders as she pulls closer, her hand slipping the bottle out from her armpit and unscrewing the lid.
"Ma'am, please hurry, or I'll be forced to come in there and drag you out!"
Jessica's boots scuff as she comes to stand at the window, her hand lifting her bottle to her lips. She pauses, rolling her eyes at the officer. "I'd like to see you try," she mutters, lips brushing the bottle as she tilts her head back and takes a gulp, swishing the alcohol around her teeth.
She's mid-swallow when something flies past her window, and she coughs in shock, the whiskey surging back up her throat and into the back of her nose. It burns her nostrils and she doubles over, spitting the alcohol out, another cough clawing up her throat that's dangerously close to a retch.
"Jesus," she chokes, face contorting in disgust and confusion, straightening up to peer out the window again.
Another thing flies past, and she manages to kind of make out what it is this time, but she must have not really made it out at all, because it looked like a very unhuman figure standing on a flying treadmill, and in what world does that make any sense?
"I'm coming in!" the officer shouts, and the door bursts open - it wasn't even locked, so he didn't need the theatrics, but Jessica is too confused and shocked to tell him that.
"You need to go now, ma'am," he says firmly, and he grabs a hold of her arm, hauling her backwards.
Jessica's gaze is pinned to the window still, eyes narrowed, forehead crumpled, mouth twisted, her hand holding firm to the neck of her whiskey bottle. Her feet nearly stumble over themselves as she lets this man drag her out of her apartment, and it's only then that she realises what's going on.
"Hey," she snaps, twisting in his hold, ripping her arm free.
He looks at her, not at all subtle in his exasperation. "Seriously, ma'am, this isn't a joke. Something's happening out there, I've never- I don't-" he stumbles, eyes glazing over with shock and fear.
Jessica stares at him. "What?" she demands.
He just opens and closes his mouth, and then clenches his jaw and grabs at her arm again. "We need to get everyone out of this area, right now," he snaps.
"Okay, fine," she hisses, pulling her arm free again. "Just let me get my-"
"You don't have time!" he shouts, and she can hear the crack in his voice, see the desperation in his eyes.
Her jaw clenches, teeth grinding, glaring eyes glancing back into her apartment where her camera and laptop remain on her desk - at least her phone is in her jacket pocket - and finally relents, stomping down the hallway behind the police officer. "Goddamnit," she mutters.
Most people have fled their apartments, doors left hanging open, clothes and other belongings dropped to the floor in their haste. She can hear them clattering down the stairwell, shouting and clammaring to get into the elevator on whichever floor managed to call it. The police officer chases some more stragglers down the hall, mostly people too high to realise the potential danger outside - not that Jessica has much of an idea, either.
She can hear the dull noises she noticed earlier, louder now, stronger, and when the doors rattle in their frames and the floor shoogles beneath her feet, she realises the noises are explosions. There's some sort of battle raging in the middle of New York city, and of course it had to be near her building.
Fury's words echo in her head as she marches towards the stairwell, shoving some overly panicked people out of her personal space, and she wonders if this is the kind of situation he meant, if he had known that something, if not this exact thing, was going to happen. He certainly seemed like someone with a lot of secrets, a lot of knowledge. Either way, it doesn't make a difference to her - she still isn't interested in his offer, and whatever's going on outside is not her problem, or her responsibility.
She'll just take herself and her whiskey away somewhere quieter until it settles down, and then she'll come back and get to work. Or maybe go back to bed.
She loses sight of the police officer when she gets into the lobby, scowling as the inhabitants of the building rush past her in their haste to get out into the open, knocking into her shoulder, nearly making her drop her whiskey. She tucks the bottle into her chest, gritting her teeth, shoving at anyone who tries to shove past her, and joins the crowd of people cramming out of the front doors.
Walking out onto the street is like coming out of a soundproofed bubble. Jessica squints against the sunlight, lips parting in further shock, eyes surging over the massive crowds of civilians sprinting in all directions, police officers trying and failing to orchestrate it all in an organised fashion. She can hear the explosions in the not-so-far distance for what they are now, deep and cracking rumbles that shake the ground she stands on. She can hear screaming and yelling and sirens and gunfire, smell smoke and fire and gunpowder, see big clouds of ash billowing into the air.
And, as her gaze lifts higher, face going slack in utter astonishment, whiskey bottle nearly slipping from her grip, she sees a bright pillar of blue energy surging up into the sky, where an immense, suffocating, bone-chilling, goddamn space portal is vomiting those bizarre, nonhuman - because they're fucking aliens - things riding treadmills, and a humongous, floating, space-whale with armour.
If there was ever a moment in Jessica Jones' life where she genuinely wondered if she should lay off the drink and the sleepless nights, it was this, here, now, watching slack-jawed as aliens invade New York.
If this is what Fury expects her to get involved with, he is the most moronic man she has ever come across.
The crowd at her back pushes at her, dragging her along with them as they follow the NYPD's instructions, letting the uniforms herd them like spooked cattle in a direction that doesn't yet seem away from the giant goddamn space portal.
There's a sudden change in tone of the shouts and screams at her back, and Jessica shoves a man aside so that she can move out of the way, feet finally in control of her direction again. She stops and turns, spotting the crowd a couple blocks down staring and pointing into the sky, and she lifts her gaze to follow their gestures.
A blur of red and gold soars by overhead, followed closely by three aliens on their flying treadmills. Jessica's eyes squint, her neck twisting to watch them fly past. The aliens' treadmills shoot at Iron Man, and they miss, but-
Jessica flinches, throwing her arm over her head, turning her face away from the blast. She hears the impact, the explosion, feels the rush of heat and air, feels the ground shake as she peeks over her forearm, eyes widening, watching as her apartment building shudders and groans and crumples into itself, the bricks collapsing into a mass of rubble and debris.
It takes a moment for her mind to catch up, remembering the DSLR and laptop on her desk, all the evidence and files from her active cases, her fucking whiskey shelf, and she works her jaw, struggling to contain the eruption of red-hot fury in her chest, her heart pulsing and pushing the searing heat through her veins.
And she spins on her toes, hair whipping against her cheek, hand clenched into a fist, and suddenly her feet are stomping towards the pillar of blue light, towards the middle of the battle, and she wants to destroy whatever blew up her goddamn building.
Her face is hot with anger, lips curled, eyes nearly bursting out their sockets, jaw pushing against the skin of her cheek. She shoves through the crowds, scowling at the people screaming and yelling in her face, ignoring the questioning eyes of the police officers as she comes to the intersection leading directly to the blue pillar, and she sees that it's coming from the top of Stark Tower.
Of course Tony Stark is connected so closely to this - he's connected to everything.
Jessica brings her eyes back to street level, glaring at the rows and rows of police cars between her and a barricade sectioning off the battlefield - a goddamn battlefield in the middle of goddamn New York. For a moment, she considers sticking to her original plan, and she lifts her whiskey bottle to her lips as if her mind is subconsciously trying to convince her that her original plan is the best one. She swallows the alcohol, finger tapping against the glass bottle as it lowers to her side again, and her feet almost turn her around.
But she sees another cluster of aliens soaring through the air a couple blocks down, and she remembers the sound of her building collapsing, imagines the sight of her DSLR and laptop getting crushed in the rubble as the floor above hers caved into her apartment, remembers all of the goddamn work she had stored that she'll take weeks to replace, and she snarls to herself, marching towards Stark Tower.
"Miss, what're you doing?" an officer calls out, turning towards her. "You can't go past this line, you need to follow-"
She tosses him a glare, fiery enough to cut off his sentence, and continues on, climbing up onto a car bonnet. The frame of the car creaks as she steps, lifting her foot to take her up onto the roof and then dipping again as she walks along the trunk, stepping over the gap onto the next car.
There are officers shouting at her from all directions, but her gaze is pinned to the sky, the fire inside her chest only blazing stronger each time she spots one of the aliens who blew up her goddamn office. She lifts the bottle of whiskey to her mouth again, taking a healthy swig, her wince turning into a satisfied grimace as she continues on, her footsteps thudding along the tops of the cars.
She's getting closer to the sound of the battle again, and she can even see explosions erupting up the street, aliens surging overhead and shooting down at the police on the ground. Up at the barrier she can see a cluster of officers, and a man in a ridiculously bizarre outfit kneeling above them on a car.
She watches as a car behind him explodes, and a couple of aliens drop on either side of him, moving to attack. Jessica watches them, making sure she pays attention to how they move and fight when she's storming in like this, equipped only with a hangover, a searing rage, and a bottle of whiskey. To be fair to the ridiculous man, he makes quick work of the aliens, and the officers quickly move to relay instructions into their radios.
Jessica kicks at a couple of officers' hands when they reach out to grab at her shins, scowling down at them from her position on top of their cars. She takes another gulp of whiskey, eyes moving to find a path into the battle through the rest of the police between her and the barrier. She moves left, away from the main cluster of officers, jumping lightly from the trunk of one car to the bonnet of the next, and on her next glance up the street, she sees that the ridiculous man has spotted her.
He stands up straight, dropping an alien's weapon from his hand, his other bearing a shield of red, white, and blue, and somewhere in the back of her mind she connects the image to old Captain America merch.
Jessica has no choice but to drop back down to the ground, only a few metres between her and the barrier, her eagerness to beat the shit out of some aliens quickening her step, strengthening her stride.
"Jesus, miss, stop, you can't-" an officer exclaims, rushing to grab at her.
Jessica throws her hand out to shove him away at his chest, using a little extra strength to send him stumbling back into his peers, knocking them down. "Back off," she snaps, scowling. She lifts her bottle to her mouth again, letting definitely more than one glass-worth pour over her tongue and into her throat. She swallows once, twice, three times, grimacing when she finally pulls the bottle away again.
She wants to waste as little as possible.
"Uh, ma'am, I really think you should turn back," the man in the Captain America get-up says sternly, though what she can see of his face reads confusion and uncertainty.
"What's your deal? Got a hard-on for Uncle Sam?" she asks, frowning up at him as she lifts her chin.
The man gawks at her, glancing at the police officers behind her. Jessica turns her glare back to the street, pushing a barrier aside to let her through. Just let her get her hands on the goddamn aliens who blew up her building.
Someone upstairs must be listening to her. One of the aliens soars around the corner of the building above her, the treadmill tilting down, and she knows it's about to start firing down at them.
Her mouth twists with anger and regret, her grip tightening on her bottle as she pulls her arm back, lining the shot up, and she tosses the bottle up at the alien. The man on the car at her side is shouting at her, moving to grab her as he jumps off the car, but he follows the path of the bottle, pausing in his movements, watching as the projectile surges into the air faster than he clearly expected. It slams into the alien's face and shatters, and the alien is thrown backwards off the flying treadmill, the machine spiralling and crashing into the sidewalk on the other side of the street.
Jessica moves to the side of the car the man stands on, wrapping her fingers around the door, grunting as she wrenches it free from the framework. She turns to face the fallen alien, its hands scrabbling at the shards of glass in its face, and she storms towards it, the car door lifted in the air beside her head. Its face is so unnervingly unhuman, the noises completely and utterly unfamiliar to her, and it lets her think nothing of it as she slams the edge of the door down under its chin, crushing its neck.
She can hear the aliens' machines above her and she looks up, face twisting in renewed anger at the cluster of them soaring towards her. She presses her foot into the chest of the dead alien below her, pulling the door free of its flesh, and secures her hands around its edge, fingers curling where the window should be. She clenches her jaw, taking a few steps towards the cluster of aliens, and turns a three-sixty, building momentum to launch the door into the air at them.
It slams into the front alien's machine, knocking it back and into the alien behind it, and their machines spark and explode, taking them and the other alien flying nearby with them. Jessica scowls and takes a step back as the machines come crashing down to the ground, her eyes flinching a little at the resulting explosion.
"Uh, guys," the man says behind her. "We've got a new player on the field. Looks like a civilian, but she's," he pauses, uncertain, and Jessica rolls her eyes, standing side-on to glare at him. "Something else," he finishes, staring back at her, fingers pressed to the side of his head. They stand there, her glaring, him wide-eyed and bewildered, until he frowns, head cocking. "Is she on our side?" he asks, as if repeating someone.
Jessica's face scrunches around her eyes at the question, at his doubt. "Obviously I'm against the goddamn aliens invading the city, moron," she calls out, arms spreading wide in her disbelief of his hesitation.
An explosion rocks the ground nearby and they both duck away from the rubble sent flying through the air. The man leaps off the car and jogs to Jessica, hovering a hand behind her back to encourage her to move with him out of the open.
"I can hear you laughing, Stark," the man mutters through gritted teeth.
He jogs over to the foot of the building, sticking to the wall until he can peer around the corner. Jess moves behind him, eyes aimed high to watch the groups of aliens fly overhead.
"What's your name?" the man asks, glancing over his shoulder at her.
"Does that matter right now?" she retorts, forehead creasing.
"I need to call you something if you're gonna fight with us," he persists.
"How about 'hey, you'," she deadpans, giving him an empty smile when he turns again to frown at her incredulously.
She hears him exhale sharply, his head tilting in compliance, as he peeks around the corner again. "Alright, what exactly are your abilities?" he asks.
Jessica's face slackens with disbelief, her eyes rolling at his insistence of familiarising himself. "Alcoholism and being an asshole," she snaps, and she runs out from their cover, ignoring his shout of alarm, vision tunneling on a cluster of aliens who have dropped down to the street round the corner.
She wrenches a stop sign out of the concrete of the sidewalk, pulls her hand back for an overhand toss, and hurls it towards the group, watching as it impales the two standing close to each other. The other two turn to face her, screeching, but the man's shield soars towards them from her right, hitting the first in the throat, bouncing into the others' face, before rebounding back towards the man. He catches it mid-leap off an overturned car, using it to protect his shoulder as he barrels into the first alien, planting his feet and twisting to throw his elbow into the others' chest, knocking it onto its back. He spins back to the first, throwing a punch that knocks it down too, and jumps to the second, jamming the shield down into its throat.
Jessica nods at him, allowing some respect to show on her face. "You look stupid, but at least you pack a punch."
The man sighs, shoulders slumping in exasperation. "You gonna fight with us?" he asks, jogging back to her.
Jessica winces. "Using the loosest possible definition of 'with'," she agrees. She might as well stick with this man and Stark if they're in charge of the defense against the invasion, just so she knows what's going on.
"Alright, come on," he says, waving her along with his shield as he starts running back towards Stark Tower. "I'm Steve Rogers, by the way," he adds over his shoulder.
Jessica frowns as she runs along behind him, wind blowing under the sides of her jacket. "Wait, was that not the original guy's name? The first Captain America?"
"There's only been one," he says. "It's a long story."
"I don't wanna know," she mutters, shaking her head.
This is all very different to her normal. She really shouldn't let her temper get the better of her like this; it leads her into all sorts of weird and awful situations.