I finally plucked up the courage to dive into episode one and start writing! Thanks to everyone who left feedback to my question last chapter - I've decided to go with the general consensus and only cover the parts I think are most important in each episode. It's also likely that the episodes will be split into more than one chapter, like this one is!
Hope you guys enjoy - let me know what you think!
Ladies' Night
Things have been getting worse. She can pretend they haven't, but she's only lying to herself and Jessica Jones' bullshit radar is one of the best. So, yeah, things have been getting worse. And by 'things', she means her own mental state - her grasp of reality, her ability to sleep at night, her social skills, her paranoia, her self-worth, her memories. Every day she becomes more blunt, more cynical and bitter, more volatile, and every night it gets harder and harder to stop refilling her glass and actually confront the bed that waits for her. She eyes civilians in the street if they're too hunched in on themselves, too hidden by hoods and scarves and hats, if their destinations have them walking the same way as her for too long. Every conversation is an agitation, every lingering glance an intrusion. Her skin is crawling with a tension that writhes its way under her flesh into her muscles and bones, burrowing so deep she can barely remember a life without it, and that really is the worst part - the fact that this is her normal now, and has been for so long.
In other news, Hogarth had offered her a job as the firm's full-time investigator. Jessica had been drunk at the time, of course, at one in the afternoon, but her rejection of the offer was still valid. Even if it manifested in a variety of particularly-colourful insults that, to be honest, she's actually kind of proud of. But when she'd rejected it, Hogarth had been confused, to say the least. She had told Jessica not to be stupid and to think of the consistent paychecks she'd be bringing in, the likes of which she'd be hard-pressed to find on her own as a freelancer. While it was a good point, and Jessica did consider how easily she could keep her whiskey stocked up on that kind of salary, she knows it just wouldn't have been worth it. Working for a firm like that, for people like Hogarth, is something she isn't interested in - she knows she belongs in the shitty darkness with the other shitty people already festering there; but working for Hogarth full-time somehow feels worse. At least being freelance and visiting every so often to sniff out a decent, one-off paycheck maintains some agency on Jessica's part - if she took the job, she'd lose the ability to turn a case down altogether. Losing her agency is something she refuses to endure ever again. Sometimes it feels like the only thing she's got left, and even then it's tainted.
Besides, it's hard to regret saying 'no' when Hogarth still gave her a job, despite having found a replacement for the position Jessica rejected.
Trish would probably count the job offer as a win, a positive, an indication that Jessica is doing well and is creating this new life for herself. That her talents are recognised and appreciated and sought out. She'd have agreed that working for Hogarth wouldn't exactly have equalled righteous work, but she'd still have found a way to spin it into something positive and complimentary to Jessica. Reason fifty-nine for not telling her.
Reason sixty is because Trish would ask Jessica what she'd been doing instead, and she'd do that thing where she made it impossible not to admit shit to her, and Jessica would end up coming clean about what she does when she can't sleep, when she won't sleep, and Trish would give her that look and use that voice and say some shit like, "You have to let it go, Jess. It's not healthy."
As if anything Jessica does is healthy.
So she's started checking in again on the widowed husband she'd created - so what? She wants to catch up with the guy whose life she decimated with a single punch. She wants to find some piece of evidence, some tiny sliver of proof that he's doing alright, despite the fact that he lost his wife and doesn't even know the truth about how. She wants to catch a fleeting glimpse of genuine happiness in him, a tiny peek at contentment in his life as it stands - evidence that he has moved on with his life and can find happiness beyond the grief and anguish she watched him suffer for the first few months, that she inflicted upon him.
And maybe every time Jessica goes to watch him, all she sees is a broken man donning a casual, charming, alluringly-indifferent mask to bag himself a distraction for the night - and maybe that's what she deserves. It's not like she'd ever forgive herself if she saw a glimpse of that sincere joy she so desperately wants for him; but it'd at least make the guilt a hell of a lot easier to bear. Seeing him still so burdened with grief and sorrow, it just reminds her why she belongs in the darkness. Because she did that to him. The blood was on her hands - it still is. She ruined his life.
Jessica knows it's not healthy to keep going back. She knows it wasn't her - not really. But it still was her. It was her body that delivered the blow, even if her body was listening to someone else's commands. Trish tried for so long to put her off that line of thinking, but it's hard to let go of the guilt when those commands were made to feel like her desires. It wasn't just puppetry, it was manipulation. It was full-blown theft and violation of someone's most private and vulnerable self to suit a foreign master. It was an all-consuming infestation and invasion that ripped away every ounce of control Jessica had and left her a compliant, submissive husk of a person.
And it haunts her. Sometimes it hits her harder than the whispers do. She hears them uttering commands like a breath against the shell of her ear; but it's the lingering echo of obedient movement in her limbs that makes her stomach twist and clench. The phantom desperation to fulfill and please. It makes her hate him, yes, but it makes her hate herself, too. She wishes she'd been stronger - mentally, not physically, of course, since that was one of the main reasons she was taken. She wishes she never got her powers.
Did the good outweigh the bad? Jessica can hardly remember the good, so probably not.
She'd likely remember it better if she did something healthy like meditation or therapy when her PTSD keeps flaring up so frequently; but that'd be wildly out of character. And just not enjoyable. She can almost hear Trish's voice in her head, pointing out that "I don't think spying on this guy as a form of self-inflicted punishment is enjoyable either, Jess." Imaginary-Trish is right, of course, because Jessica feels sick whenever she sees his mask slip, exposing the endless grief that he's only suffering because she's strong enough to kill someone with a single punch to the chest, but Imaginary-Trish doesn't need to know that.
And it doesn't stop Jessica from coming back again.
She pauses beneath her usual fire escape, staring up at the cool, uncomfortable metal glinting in the street lights. The last time she was up there, she almost dozed off and was hit with a flash of PTSD. The lights from the bar are much warmer and livelier, the muffled sound of the music drifting across the street. It'll be open for another while yet. It's also very difficult to catch a glimpse of the guy through the windows from the height she usually hides at.
Maybe she'll be able to see some of that genuine happiness in him when he's in his element. She's never tried it before. Maybe all she needs to do is take a look through the window, and there he'll be, laughing bright and carefree with his friends. Maybe there will even be someone who cares for him, someone he's been scared to let himself get close to, but will encourage him to trust and love again.
Jessica crosses the street. Inside the bar there are a variety of patrons, all bathed in a warm glow and wearing happy, sociable expressions. It seems as if a lot of them know each other, likely through frequenting the bar, and it lends the place a familiar, welcoming vibe. Jessica peers in through the windows, searching the faces from one side of the building to the next. Her flask is clutched tightly in her hand, almost as if to persuade herself that she doesn't need to go inside and have a drink, despite the appeal of the good-quality whiskey she can see on the shelves.
She just needs to get a look at the guy, then she'll go.
But it seems like there's only an older gentleman working the bar. Maybe tonight's the one night he's taken off. Figures.
"You could drink that out of a glass."
Jessica knows the speaker before she even turns around. Her heart seizes for a moment, her mind rushing with sudden panic, but she endeavours to push it aside and act normal.
Luke Cage, the widowed husband by her doing, sends her a quick glance as he drops a bag of garbage into the trash can. She hadn't realised the side door here belonged to the bar - her vantage point on the fire escape doesn't allow her to see past the corner of the building to see him come out.
"This whiskey's not good enough to put in a glass," Jessica responds, forcing humour through the shock and discomfort.
"Yeah? I've got better stuff in there," he says. Jessica shifts uneasily while he lifts the other garbage bag over the trash can. "I've seen you around here, but you never come inside."
Shit. Clearly, she's not as inconspicuous as she thought; but she supposes the borderline-obsession with seeing something to make the guilt more bearable can kind of get in the way.
"I buy in bulk," she tells him.
If it was anyone else not taking the hint, she'd have tossed a couple insults their way and stalked off. But this isn't anyone. It's the man whose life she ruined, whose marriage she prematurely ended, whose wife she killed. The part of her that still concerns itself with morals - the part that often manifests as Imaginary-Trish - figures she should probably be admitting the truth and begging for forgiveness, at this point. But she can't exactly just come out with it on the sidewalk at this time of night with a flask of whiskey in her hand and him brushing the dirt of the trash can from his fingers. She can't just drop it on him without warning.
The tension burrowed in her flesh buzzes disconcertingly when he starts to walk towards her, glancing into his bar.
"It's ladies' night. New promotion I'm running," he says.
Jessica scoffs quietly, following his gaze and taking stock of his customers. "No, it's not."
Luke comes to a stop, leaving about a metre of distance between them. His hands slip into his pockets and he looks down at her, his mouth curling into a small smirk. "It is now."
He's persistent. And flirtatious. And the man whose wife she killed. "Why?" she asks.
Luke doesn't miss a beat. "You're local, you're hot, drinking alone. Tends to attract customers." He brushes by her on his way back to the front door. "But hey, don't do me any favours."
He mustn't recognise her from the news of the Incident. To be fair, not many people have - she kind of wonders if Stark has anything to do with that. Even so, she should walk away now before she makes the situation any more complicated than it already is.
But she'd wanted to see if there was any happiness in his job, in his bar. She'd wanted to catch a glimpse of it so that she could put this all to rest, if that was even possible. Now that she's interacted with him, brief as it was, the part of her still caught up on morals is insisting she has to tell him the truth. If she walks away now and doesn't tell him, it'll follow her, because there's no excuse not to do it. She has her moment of opportunity, and it'll make her some kind of coward to walk away and never look back.
So she sighs, steels herself, and follows him into the bar. He has a glass of whiskey waiting at an empty stool for her. The smug, amused smirk he throws her when she catches his eye makes the tension under her skin buzz again, for a multitude of reasons.
There's another hour or so until the bar closes, and the patrons are all lively enough and eager enough to keep Luke busy, so Jessica is able to mostly keep to herself at the end of the bar with her whiskey glass, and she tries not to watch his every move.
Between the whiskey, the instinctual urge to suppress all the guilt and shame and nausea she's feeling, the way he smirks at her when he fills up her glass, and the casual flirting he drops on her when he walks past, Jessica finds it hard to stay focused. She was going to have used all this time sitting here, observing him, to figure out how the hell she could explain what she'd done. It's all well and good coming clean to Trish, or talking things over with a therapist as vaguely as possible, but it's another thing entirely to tell the person left standing in the ashes and rubble of her mistake that it wasn't a freak accident, that she was the one who detonated the bomb in their perfect life.
Even if there's still that grief clinging to his skin like the stench of smoke, she can see that he enjoys the flirting. Even if he looks like he might regret things after his distraction leaves at night, he gets some kind of positive feeling from the back-and-forth. It's far too easy to fall into it with him. The banter is well-matched and full of implication, and Jessica tries to justify it as an attempt to get to know him better so that she can determine the best way to break the news; but she's not deluded enough to attempt to claim that for all it is.
She's flirting back because it's hard not to - there's no denying the mutual attraction between them. He's tall, broader than most men she comes across, with a dangerous smirk and warmth behind the playfulness in his eyes. He's observant and witty, clearly inspires a lot of respect and loyalty in his customers, and he hasn't said a single flirty line that's made her cringe. She thinks they probably could have been something, in another life.
Cluster by cluster, the other patrons in the bar buy their last rounds, down the rest of their drinks, and head out for the night. She'd figured waiting until it was just the two of them in the bar would be the perfect time to perform her speech of apologies and explanations. She'd imagined herself with it all worked out in her head, the words ready to fall off her tongue in as sincere and compassionate a tone as Jessica can manage. It would allow them privacy, allow Luke the freedom to react however he wanted without an audience. She could even leave a big tip, because what the hell else could she do?
"Headin' out, boss," the older man calls.
"Be good, Roy," Luke responds, cleaning glasses.
"Why start now, huh?"
Jessica smirks to herself, listening to his laughter dissolve into the cough of an aged smoker, and downs her shot of whiskey.
"Last call," Luke warns her amicably.
Jessica doesn't have an eloquent speech planned out. The words aren't there. She doesn't know how to find a way to articulate the explanation that won't come off as insensitive or selfish.
"Still ladies' night?" she asks, and the whiskey coats her words with more flirtation than she meant.
Luke just nods, watching her. The tension under her skin is thrumming against it, trying to push through.
She slides the shot glass over the bar. "Make it a double."
Luke complies, bringing over the near-finished bottle. "Lot of booze for such a small woman," he comments.
"I don't get asked on a lot of second dates," she responds wryly.
Luke's amusement seems genuine. It reminds Jessica why she's here, why she decided to stay to this point.
"How long you been doing this?"
"A while," Luke answers, wiping down more glasses.
"You from around here? You got family here? Friends?" Are you happy?
Luke shrugs, nonchalant and disinterested in the topic - enough to discourage further probing. "I got regulars."
Jessica observes him, the practiced way he dismisses the questions, the patient ease as he no-doubt searches through his repertoire of casual small talk to redirect the conversation. She knew she wasn't going to find anything she hadn't seen, coming in here. She knew it would be as much of a dead-end as it is watching him distract himself with casual flings. But she came in anyway. Maybe she was that desperate for a way to relieve herself of some guilt; maybe she was tired of feeling sick seeing his mask slip when his chosen paramour isn't looking; maybe she wanted to see him the way they see him - the way he wants to be seen.
She can't pretend her intentions were all righteous and honourable. She fought alongside heroes, but that doesn't make her one of them. She knows from experience that she isn't strong enough to face trauma and come out the other side of it vowing to devote herself to good deeds and an unbreakable moral compass. She let her trauma twist and taint her, warping her into something not-quite evil, but not good either.
She knew she'd never be able to think of a way to explain to Luke what she'd done.
Jessica downs the shot.
"Hard day at the office?" Luke asks.
"They're all hard," Jessica replies.
"Pops always said, if you don't feel good going to work, you should find new work."
"I did that. I'm working the new work," she retorts.
"Yeah? What kinda business you in?"
Jessica leans back, a tight smile of reluctance pulling at her lips. She doesn't want him to get to know her. She doesn't want him to get a glimpse under the surface, to work out that there's something hidden underneath, something she's hiding from him. This isn't her usual aversion to letting people in, because there's something horrible at risk here. She wants to control the way she tells him, if she ever figures out how; she doesn't want him to sniff it out prematurely.
Luke clicks his tongue. "Right. You only ask questions."
"I'm still waiting on answers," she tells him. She's flirting again, but the alcohol has softened her self-restraint, loosened her tongue, and it's hard to force herself to focus on how she'll tell him the truth when he's this attractive and flirting so easily with her, and when she knows she's not going to come up with some great speech tonight anyway.
"Ladies first," Luke's voice rumbles.
If he gets some enjoyment from flirting, especially when they seem to be quite efficient at it, putting a stop to it now and breaking the mood with a sudden and awful truth-bomb would hurt his feelings, she figures.
She reaches into her satchel and pulls out a business card, sliding it across the bar to him and ignoring the voice in her head that yells at her for doing something as stupid as giving him her details.
Luke picks it up. "You're a PI?" he frowns.
"I'm just trying to make a living. You know, booze costs money. Usually."
"There's better ways to hustle than digging in people's business."
"It's the only thing I'm good at."
The longer she sits here, not coming clean about what she did, the worse the fall-out will be when she finally does. Is she buying herself more time to come up with something, or is she purposefully wasting more time until it reaches a point that coming clean would do more harm than good?
Or is she simply just fuzzy in the head from whiskey and having a flirtatious conversation with a hot guy who openly finds her attractive and is known for casual entanglements? Is she simply tired of enduring the tension writhing under her skin, and has seen a way to relieve some of it? The longer they make eye-contact and the more he sends her smirks and speaks to her in that baritone voice, the more the tension is transforming into the kind that dances across her skin, making her fingers twitch and crave to reach out. She wants to feel bad - or maybe it's that she doesn't want to feel bad and it's a little disconcerting how easy it is not to - but they're both getting something out of this.
And she's tired.
"How good?" Luke challenges.
"A natural."
"Yeah?" he asks, stepping closer. "So, what have you detected?"
"Well, I can tell by the residue on this bar that four years ago, a man named Horace had buffalo wings."
"His name was Melvin," Luke replies, feigning a wince.
Jessica tries not to feel so amused. "I stand in dark alleys and wait to take pictures of people boning."
Luke takes a breath. "Except you been watching me like a hawk since you walked in."
"Force of habit," she lies.
"Or it's your way of flirting," he counters.
Something about him calling her out for watching him, for the wrong reasons, but for calling out the fact that she is still flirting, makes her defensive. "I don't flirt. But you do. Not for sport. It's got purpose." This is instinctual, reading him defensively after he tried to read her. "Like getting customers to drink more. Tip more."
Luke eyes her curiously and leans against the bar, bringing his face closer. "So what else you got, Sherlock?"
"All right," Jessica concedes - even though she really shouldn't. But she's getting caught up in it all, in the way his presence is leaning into her space. "A drunk spills on your shirt, pukes on your shoe, and you roll with it. But break or scratch something? He's toast. I've never seen a dive bar this clean."
Luke lowers his head, as if she's making him uncomfortable, but then it lifts again and there's something more to his gaze, something deeper.
"Because you care about it. More than anything. Maybe anyone. There's history here." She knows there is. "Memories. Something personal, but private. So no photos or memorabilia." She's touching a nerve, pushing too hard, overstepping a line beyond a line. "But you also like women," she adds, trying to sound more playful, trying to lighten the mood. "Temporarily, at least. And they like you."
Luke eyes her appreciatively. "See, now, that sounded like flirting to me," he comments quietly.
The tension dancing across her skin is crackling. "Again, I don't flirt. I just say what I want."
"And what do you want?"
Jessica looks at him, considering the question.
"Yeah, Jess. What do you want?" Imaginary-Trish asks in the back of her head, beyond the fuzzy warmth of inebriation.
She wants Luke to find happiness past his grief. She wants him to find closure and move on. She wants one less person to be trapped by what she did. He could be entertaining temporary flings for fun and the enjoyment of meeting new people, not as a way to make him forget for a while, and she wants that for him. He could be finding a new way to live rather than simply existing, and she wants that for him, too.
But there's a reason Jessica belongs in the darkness. She's not selfless. Because she wants to escape the guilt that keeps her shackled in the shadows. She wants to stop seeing a broken man with his defenses built high and impenetrable and knowing that it's all because of her. She wants some kind of absolvement, some forgiveness, but she doesn't want to get it by revealing who she is at her core and what she's done. She doesn't want him to see her for who - for what - she truly is.
She wants to forget about how paranoid and wired she's been for months. She wants to forget about how amplified it's been recently, how it feels like she's walking towards an unseeable, unknowable crescendo to the apprehension and fear she's been suffering.
She wants to forget about Thomas King. She wants to forget about the person or people behind Thomas King that she's been pretending no longer exist. She wants to forget about the Shlottmans and their concern for the daughter who's been whisked away by some fairytale romance. She wants to forget about Trish imagining a goodness in Jessica. She wants to forget Hogarth seeing and banking on the darkness inside Jessica. She wants to forget the way Stark looks at her and sees something raw and familiar, something he can relate to and therefore truly see.
She wants to forget what she did, who she is. She wants to be someone who doesn't see past the mask Luke wears. She wants to forget, and to help him forget.
"I wanna see what all the fuss is about," she answers finally, her lips curving into a smirk that conceals everything she's forgetting about for the next hour or so. "For research purposes, of course."
And it works, for a time. But then she's looking at him and he's looking at her and she's so struck by a panic that he's going to see, she has to turn herself over and sever the eye-contact. The tension crackling over her skin is alight and searing, and she chases the feeling, lets it consume her, loses herself to it, and she forgets.
They lay there on their backs, side by side, and Jessica feels a fleeting, light relief. The tension is no longer igniting her skin. She thinks for a moment that it worked, she's been distracted, she got what she wanted.
But the longer she lays there, their sweat intermingled on her body, the smell of them in the air, the sound of Luke's breathing so close, the more aware she becomes of herself. And, no, she didn't relieve the tension that's been plaguing her for weeks. It burst from her skin, transforming into something different while she flirted and engaged with Luke and melted away when pleasure overtook all else; but it's settling back in again, worming its way under her skin to thrum agitatedly in her bones. She was distracted, and she forgot, but it hasn't fixed anything.
Luke's apartment is sparsely furnished, but she knew there'd be something here connected to Reva. One of the few logical places is the mirrored cabinet in his bathroom. She's completely aware that she might find it when she opens the door, so it doesn't surprise her when Reva's smiling face peers out at her from the shelf. It's hidden behind his toiletries, waiting for a day when he feels strong enough to look, she supposes.
It doesn't surprise her, but it spurs a fresh, overwhelming wave of self-loathing.
She tidies herself and redresses herself quickly, not even managing to glance in Luke's direction. She can feel him watching her, the gaze burning into her back and making her want to squirm and run. She settles for a brisk walk, faltering only to offer him a weak, underwhelming, insufficient, "Sorry."
So much for an explanation.
Her stomach has twisted before, making her feel sick when she sat on the fire escape and saw Luke's mask slip. But this.. this is different.
She's ashamed of herself. So completely and utterly disgusted by her selfishness. The cool air does nothing to ease the nausea when she makes it outside. She touched Luke with the same hand she killed his wife with. She pretended she didn't know him, his story, his grief, and she took advantage of his desire to distract himself. There's no redemption for this, no forgiveness, no salvation. Just repulsion and unbridled loathing.
Jessica vomits on the sidewalk. It doesn't make her feel better either. The corruption is too ingrained in her to be dispelled so easily.
xXx
Jessica regrets setting her ringtone so loud. She also regrets renting an apartment under the noisiest pricks she's ever had the misfortune of living near.
She doesn't check the number of the caller when she answers her phone. "Alias Investigations," she mumbles.
"Stark Industries," a voice chirps from the other end.
Jessica grunts. "Cute."
"What? I'm the 'sunshine' to your 'grumpy one'."
"I don't know what that means," Jessica frowns as she rubs the heel of her palm into her forehead aggressively, willing away the headache her hangover's attacked her with. She doesn't even want to acknowledge the tension still thrumming under her skin or the repulsed twist in her stomach. Or the fact that she slept on her couch because she couldn't face her bed.
"Get with the times, Jones, or the times will leave you behind."
"The times can go fuck themselves."
Stark snorts down the phone. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
Jessica falters, wincing to herself as she shuffles into a more upright position. "Something like that," she mutters. "Did you call for a reason?"
Stark is quiet for a beat, and her face twists into a scowl, waiting for him to voice the fact that he can tell something's wrong. How did it become so easy for them to read each other? How can he read her, even through the phone, better than anyone, save Trish? Is it literally just the fact that they both suffer from PTSD, or is there something else?
Maybe they're both better off not knowing.
"I've been doing some investigating," he says, and there's a carefulness under the nonchalance in his tone.
Jessica feels anger flare in her chest and she focuses on it to avoid thinking about the nausea still churning her stomach. "What the hell, man? I told you to drop it," she snaps, twisting on the couch to plant her feet on the floor.
"Oh, you know me. I'm too much of a free spirit to be bogged down by other people's wishes. I also don't like it when people tell me what to do - it's a whole thing. Problems with authority, likely due to issues with my dad."
"This isn't a joke, Stark."
"Yeah, I know, Jones. That's why I couldn't drop it."
Jessica sighs harshly and rubs at her face, her annoyance with the billionaire only proving to aggravate the tension coiling through her body. "I take it you found something," she mutters reluctantly.
Stark clears his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. I don't want you to worry that I'm a better PI or anything like that - you gotta take into consideration the fact that I've got more resources than you."
"Stark," she bites out warningly, her fingers slipping up her face and into her hair as her eyes fall shut.
"Just don't wanna damage your self-esteem," he quips. "I had JARVIS scour the city's CCTV footage to track King from the first day he came to see you until the day he died. I thought you might find it interesting to know that both days he visited your place, someone spoke to him on the street about twenty minutes beforehand."
Jessica's eyes open and she stares out into the empty, stale air of her apartment. A whisper crawls up the nape of her neck, leaving uncomfortable goosebumps in its wake. "The same person both times?" she asks in a voice that sounds quiet and hollow.
"Yeah, I think so. Still working on getting a view of the guy's face - he's pretty efficient at keeping it outta the camera's reach. But I feel like this could be the puppeteer, y'know?"
Jessica swallows, wincing at the tightening of her ribs around her lungs. Her fingers shake a little, so she curls them into her palm and clenches. "What does he look like?" she asks, forcing the words out through the nauseous shrinking of her throat.
"Tall. Slim. Brown hair. One of those well-dressed criminals, if he's got a record, which I'm willing to bet he does."
Jessica's head twists away from the whisper of her name in her ear. She clamps her hand over the back of her neck to ward off the echoing touches of someone else's fingertips.
"I could send you pictures, if you want?"
"No," she says quickly, her voice nearly breaking. The tension buzzing under her skin is so insistent she wonders if someone could see her whole body vibrating if they looked at her closely enough.
"Jones," Stark says, the careful tone pushing to the surface of his voice, "What's goin' on?"
"I told you to drop the case," she bites out. "I want you to drop the case. Let it go. Leave it alone."
"If you could tell me why-"
Jessica's face twists into an expression she's sure looks pathetic. "Please, Tony," she says quietly, brokenly. "I need you to let it go."
It's silent for a long moment, stretching on and on and doing nothing to calm the nerves she is slowly losing control of. She feels terrifyingly exposed, like she has cracked open her skull and her chest for him to peer into.
And then he answers her, and his voice is as quiet as hers, as open and readable as she was forced to be. "You know I can't, Jessica."
She squeezes her eyes shut and exhales shakily. She knows there's nothing else she can say, nothing she can do to dissuade him, short of telling him everything - but he already sees her more than she can bear. He's going to keep investigating, and with his resources he's likely to get further than she wants to go.
She tells herself there's no reason to fear that, because it's not going to happen again. He's dead. She saw him die. It's over.
But her gut is writhing and screaming, urging her to run and hide and escape, agitating the tension under her skin into a deafening frenzy that feels like it'll erupt into flames at any moment.
And it is begging to be listened to.
xXx
So, there we have it - Jessica and Luke have officially met, and shit's about to hit the fan with a certain someone! By the way, I'm not a person who enjoys, like, love triangle sort of situations, and it's really important to me that Tony and Jessica learn to be friends first before they dive into anything serious, so we're not really going to have any drama with the whole Luke/Jessica thing that's anything more than what we saw in the show.
Onto review replies!
kenriot1214: Glad to be back! Thank you for sticking with the fic and leaving a review, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Ashes2Dust18: I'm so glad you like their interactions! Thanks so much for the feedback, it really helped to hear from you guys, and I realised you're totally right! I'd hate to get bogged down by describing everything most people have already seen shot-for-shot instead of focusing on the reason I'm writing the fic! Thanks again and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
seraphina987: Thanks for reviewing, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
Odie.18: Thanks so much for leaving the feedback! It seriously helped. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
Hearteyesmf: You are too kind, thank you so much for coming back to the fic after the wait, even if you thought it was worth it! It means a lot that you stuck with it. I'm really glad you enjoyed that scene with them both suffering panic attacks - I agree that it sums them up! Having Tony there and him being so inexperienced dealing with this stuff is definitely why Jessica was able to so quickly get over her own panic. And I may or may not have a very vague idea of a scene that'll come god knows when, where Tony adds Jessica to that list and she finds out... you'll have to stick around and find out (as will I) when it's coming! Thank you so much for your input on how to cover the episodes, it helped so much to hear from you guys! It was very tempting to do, like, a character study almost of Jessica throughout every scene in the show, but it would take me forever and I was worried I'd get lost in the canon stuff instead of exploring the differences I plan to make. I will do a wee summary sort of thing though like I did at the start of this chapter, just mentioning other events that happened in the show, rather than just jumping around the plot without giving an indication of where we are. Thanks again for leaving such a lovely review and giving me that feedback, it's honestly wonderful to hear from you! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!
EmyEnna: I'm so glad you're appreciating the tension and Tony's willingness to come rescue her with an alibi! There are definitely some interesting and frustrating conversations (arguments?) coming up between Jessica and Tony throughout the episodes as they try to navigate this strained friendship between them and what that means about helping/not helping with the Kilgrave situation, so I hope you'll enjoy that! As for Tony finding out about Jessica being brought in for questioning, I definitely see him being linked up with the NYPD database just in general so that JARVIS can keep an eye out for anything in his wheelhouse that's being underestimated by the police. Tony has JARVIS monitoring a CCTV camera on Jessica's street, so her going with the cops would have been picked up by JARVIS, and then if there's a record made of her being brought in for questioning (I don't know how police processes like that work, never mind American police processes) then JARVIS would have flagged that as well. Stands to reason that he'd have found out that Thomas King was found dead, too, and was able to deduce that that was what Jessica was being brought in for. Thank you so much for the feedback on how I should cover the episodes, that was really helpful! I hope the way I wrote the scene with Luke in this chapter was interesting for you to read. I think it'd be easy to get sucked into doing a kind of character study of Jessica in every scene, but I don't want to slow myself down with that or get myself trapped in the canon mindset by delving into it so much. But I also want to make sure I cover parts of the show that are really important, like her conversations with Trish and some stuff with Hogarth and Malcolm. What you said about Kilgrave is really interesting, actually. I guess I kind of forgot to take a moment and appreciate what that would have been like for an actual child to go through, because it's likely his parents wouldn't have explained things in a way that he could understand and consent to. Oh, I am definitely torn between spilling the beans about the plot and keeping it all close to my chest! I'm plagued by insecurity and worry that the story isn't going to end up satisfying expectations, and yet I'm too insecure to share the plot with someone and get feedback? It doesn't really make sense.. but maybe one day I'll come to you for some feedback, you never know! (Although I'd only do that if you were okay with having things spoiled!) Thanks so much for leaving such in-depth reviews, they really, truly make my day. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!