"Matt, wake up."
The gentle voice pierced through the dream Matt was having, another dream about Jessica. This time they were lying together on a rooftop, her head resting on his shoulder, her leg curled over his own, an arm draped across his midsection. She was nuzzling into him, inhaling the sweet sweat that coated his skin.
The night was hot and sticky. She was wearing only a tank top and tight jeans. All her previous bruises and scars had faded, her healing powers forcing the porcelain skin into perfection. But for some reason, he didn't reach out for it, didn't allow his hand to run down the smoothness of her exposed arm.
Instead he kept his hands locked behind his head, his eyes staring unseeing into the dark sky. As Jessica leaned up on her elbow, moving her face towards his, as if to kiss him, Matt found himself softening to her advances, his mouth wanting what she had to give. Then suddenly she was pulled away from him, ripped from beside his form and across the roof. She opened her mouth to scream, but silence filled the space as her body lunged over the ledge and out of sight.
"Matt, wake up," Colleen said again, and this time Matt's eyes opened with fright.
"Colleen?" he questioned, reaching his hand out to the side, to the place on the comforter where Jessica had once been.
"Jessica left," Colleen told him.
Matt sat up straight, surprised. Just the night before she has asked him to be there when she awoke. He had thought that meant they were going into the next phase of their plan together. Since the plan hadn't been formulated, he was unsure where she'd go alone.
Matt stood, stretching, before heading back for the window.
"Matt, you can use the door," Colleen called after him, but he was already outside, moving down the edge of the building to the alleyway below.
As his feet hit the pavement, Matt realized he was still wearing Foggy's clothes. He had nothing else to change into, save his Devil suit. But it was barely noon and nothing could have been more obvious, more attention grabbing, than a man in red rubber walking through the streets of Hell's Kitchen.
"Here," Jessica Jones said as she walked up behind him. Matt cursed himself for yet again letting his guard down. There was a time a person couldn't sneak up on him, it was impossible. His senses were too heightened, he was always on. But being with Jessica, even in the direst of circumstances, allowed him to soften his vigil just a bit. Something about being with her made him feel normal - despite that fact that she was anything but.
"I thought you left," he said, reaching out for the disposable coffee cup she held in her hand.
"No. Just went on a coffee and liquor run," she told him honestly. Matt inhaled deep, smelling the whiskey that swirled within her own coffee cup and wafted from her lips. "I grabbed these, too."
Again, Matt reached out, but she was standing too close, readying herself to place a new pair of sunglasses on his face. Matt welcomed the intrusion.
"They're not the same, but they'll do," Jessica said, shifting the glassed on his nose, making them just right. "Are you going to come with me?" she asked as she backed away.
"Where are we going?"
"To figure out what the great city of New York did with Kilgrave's body."
Matt nodded in return. Of course we are.
XXXXXXXXXX
By 5PM they had been to all the regular spots a P.I. like Jessica knew to hit. The morgue, the records room at City Hall, a friendly chat with a police officer Jessica had once helped on a case, and a not so friendly talk with a journalist Jessica hated. It was always the ones she hated who wrote the best shit - besides, her regular contact worked for the Bulletin. She knew that was a building neither of them should step foot in.
Even still, Jessica was unable to locate Kilgrave's body. The usual procedure, so she learned, was to bury the unclaimed in a potter's field just off the highway. But he wasn't there. And he wasn't in any cremation record she could get her hands on. Her police source claimed ignorance and her journalist source claimed a conspiracy, but either way there was nothing to lead them to Kilgrave.
After fruitless hours spent traversing the city by taxi, rather than rooftop, Matt had had enough and Jessica could tell. He was slumped in the back booth of a 24 hour diner, his head hung low. It was dinnertime, yet the establishment was nearly empty save for an elderly couple near the door sipping on coffee and taking tentative bites of oatmeal.
Jessica slide into the booth beside him, using her own body as a shield against prying eyes, hoping it would put him at ease.
"I checked my messages," Jessica told him. "Three hang ups right after the other."
"So Trish is okay," Matt replied, happy to hear the relief in her voice.
"Yeah. Your friend must have kept his word and got her out of town."
"Foggy tends to do that."
Jessica let herself rest next to him, her shoulder rubbing against his own. Matt couldn't help but think of his dream, think of how distant he had been with her. What was holding him back on that fictional rooftop? He had dreamt of her before, held her in his arms both in dreams and in his shower. He had seen her in a way he was certain few really had, but this dream was tearing at him, gnawing at the corners of his mind.
Perhaps it was the guilt he hadn't yet resolved for not helping Jessica search for Trish. Despite Jessica's tepid assurance that she was no longer upset with him, he wondered if those lingering doubts had found their way into his sleep.
Or could it be his conflicted feelings about they quest they currently found themselves on? Even if they figured out what Wilson Fisk was really up to, could he stop him? Could he keep Jessica safe? He hadn't keep Electra safe and now she lay beneath a block of New York City? Could he lose someone else?
"I think our best bet is to shake down someone from the prison," Jessica said. Matt wondered if she had been talking the whole time.
"What?"
"Fisk got out somehow," Jessica reminded him.
"Foggy and I already went that root. No one at the D.A.'s office is talking."
Jessica chuckled. "Lawyers are worse than killers. They won't tell you a thing. I said someone at the prison. A guard or a janitor. Someone who know the inside track on how Fisk got out, or at the very least, why no one is talking about it."
"Okay," Matt said, his heart not in the mission, his head still in the meaning of his dream.
"Listen, I think I should go this one alone," she told him, taking a five dollar bill from her pocket and placing it on the table. Payment for the coffee Matt seemed too dejected to drink.
"No, we stick together," he replied.
Jessica stood up, then placed her foot on the booth to prevent his exit. "As much as I'd love to continue dragging you around the city, you're tired and frankly, you smell. Get some food or some sleep or a fucking shower, Murdock. We can meet back at the dojo later."
She removed her foot and began to walk away, but Matt quickly caught up with her and blocked her own exit from the dinner. The elderly couple silently watched.
"You asked me to come," Matt began.
"That was before I knew this was a fool's errand," she told him, moving to the right, trying to pass.
Matt slide to the side, his body creating a barrier between her and the door.
"You know if I wanted to I could toss you through that window, right?" she said, then smiled at the couple as if to relay she was only joking, but Jessica knew they weren't buying it.
"Please, let me come with you," Matt said.
"I'll be fine," Jessica replied, before pitching to the left then turning to the right yet again and slipping past Matt. As she reached for the door Matt caught up and grabbed her hand, but Jessica refused to relent and pulled away. "This isn't like your dream, Murdock. I'm more than capable of taking care of myself."
With that Jessica pushed ahead, exiting the diner, with Matt on her heels. He grabbed her elbow just outside. "How do you know about my dream?"
Jessica smiled. "You talk in your sleep."
"No, I don't," Matt said emphatically.
"Okay, you don't," she told him, not really caring if he believed her or not. "But someone was calling out my name in the middle of the night and I have a hard time believing Iron Boy was having erotic dreams about me."
"It wasn't erotic," Matt told her, foolishly playing his hand.
"Ah, I see," she said, "So it was one of those please don't die on me, Jessica dreams, huh?"
Matt shook his head, trying to figure out how to salvage his dignity in the face of defeat, but Jessica saved him the trouble. "Don't worry. I've had those dreams too."
With that she left him standing in the mid-afternoon sun in front of the diner, a spectacle for the elderly couple to gawk at as they slurped down the last of their oatmeal.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Look, we can do this the hard way or the fucking awful way. Your choice," Jessica Jones told the man she found firmly in her grasp. He was on both knees, his head nearing the cement sidewalk, his right arm pulled back further and further each time Jessica felt the urge to give him more encouragement to talk.
His name was Derek Smith, an alias for Derek Tucker, a convicted rapist who jumped bail in Arkansas and found his way to the big city just in time for his cousin to get him a janitorial job on Riker's Island. This was Jessica's in, her way to the information she so desperately sought. And if she had to break a rapist's arm to get at the truth, she wasn't about to feel bad about it.
Derek yelped under the weight of her strength as he muscles tore. "Please, I'm telling you. I don't know nothin'."
"See, that just doesn't sit well with me, Derek. Because I have friends who are bail bondsman, actually more like bounty hunters, and they told me you were high on their to-do list. Tell me what I want to know and maybe you won't find yourself on the other side of a jail cell tonight."
Malcolm Ducasse stood only five feet away, his eyes scanning the street for witnesses. But Derek Smith, aka Tucker, was known to be a letch. His new identity couldn't stop him from leering suggestively at the neighbourhood girls and so his cries for help went happily unanswered.
"Tell me," Jessica said once again, pulling on his arm so hard his shoulder popped out of place. Derek screamed and Jessica released him to the ground.
"Come on," Malcolm said, but not to Jessica. He knew there was no stopping her. He was talking to Derek. "Just tell her what she wants to know, man."
It had been Malcolm who had tracked Derek down. Jessica had called him the night before, the night she couldn't sleep on the dojo floor, the night Matt's dreams kept her too alert to focus on anything but stopping Fisk once and for all.
While Jessica had spent the day looking for Kilgrave's body, Malcolm had been looking for prison snitches. Her earlier revelation to Matt that they look for someone from the prison to talk to was a rouse. She had already been running that play, but was afraid Matt would stop her for fear she was getting too close.
Within 8 hours of her call, Malcolm had tracked down the cousin, a former guard at the prison. Unfortunately, he had quit just a month before Fisk's escape and knew nothing of it. Fortunately, Malcolm had discovered he once smuggled drugs into the prison, a little gift to those serving 5 to 10. With leverage like that, the cousin gave up Derek Tucker in an instant.
"Look, lady, I don't know what you're on about," Derek cried out as his shoulder throbbed in pain. "I wasn't even workin' when that fat bastard busted out."
"Well, if you don't know anything then I guess I can give my bounty hunter friends a call. I'm sure they'll patch up your arm before sending you back to Riker's - this time as an inmate."
"Fuck," Derek whispered. "Alright, alright. I might know something."
Jessica picked him back up, pulling on his dislocated shoulder, and the pain shot through him and out his mouth. "Yes, fuck. I know something!"
"Which is?" Jessica asked, a smirk on her face that only Malcolm could see.
"That guy, that Fisk guy, he had a visitor the day before he walked, man. Some old lady. I saw her in the common room and I remember because she had her bag. They don't let people have bags in there, you know? Not safe or whatever. But she had one."
"What was in it?" Jessica demanded, forcing his face closer to the sidewalk, forcing his arm to strain beyond breaking.
"I don't know. I swear. But when I went to clean the room that night I found some glasses in the trash."
"Glasses? Like sunglasses?" Jessica asked.
"No. No," Derek yelped, trying to push against her but finding it useless. "Like tiny glass cups. You know, for science or somethin'."
Jessica shook her head. This fucking idiot.
"Like vials?" Malcolm asked. Both Jessica and Derek looked up, staring at him, but Derek said nothing.
He doesn't know what vials are, Jessica thought. Jesus.
"Uh, the glass tubes that doctors put your blood in," Malcolm offered, trying to help Derek give Jessica the information she needed.
"Yeah, yeah. Those. They were in the trash."
"Had you ever see the old woman before that?" Jessica asked.
"No. Never."
"Okay," Jessica said, believing him. She finally released his arm and he fell flat on the cement, his chin smacking he sidewalk, creating a split in his skin.
"Fuck!" he cried out. Jessica ignored him, pulling her cell phone from her back pocket.
"Yeah. He's here. Two blocks East of West 43rd and 10th."
Derek, realizing what Jessica had done, began crawling away, but she stopped him with a boot to the back. "You bitch," he cried. "You said if I told you-"
"Well, I lied," Jessica said, before kicking him in the face. His unconscious body hit the pavement yet again, this time with a thud.
"Really?" Malcolm asked as he followed Jessica down the block.
"I'm not shedding a tear," she said.
"So, what's up with the vials. Were they taking Fisk's blood?" Malcolm wondered, stepping wide in order to keep up with her.
"If they were taking his blood they would have taken the vials with them. That old witch was giving him something."
"What?" Malcolm asked. Jessica stopped walking and Malcolm nearly bumped into her.
"I think Wilson Fisk used whatever was in those vials to help him break out of prison."
"How?"
"I don't know. Like a potion or something."
"A potion?" Malcolm choked out.
Jessica sighed and kept walking, but just as quickly stopped again.
"No, not a potion. Kilgrave," she said, more to herself than to Malcolm. The look on his face told her he had no idea what she talking about, but Jessica didn't care. She was sure she was working it out in her mind, she was sure she was onto something. "Kilgrave's power came from his voice. At first people had to be in the room with him, breathe in his presence for the mind control to work."
"And then he got more powerful," Malcolm interjected, remembering the rest of the story.
"So maybe whatever was in those vials was from Kilgrave's body, the body I can't find. Maybe The Hand or Fisk took Kilgrave to use after he was dead."
"And so, what? If Fisk injected or drank Kilgrave's blood he'd have his powers?" Malcolm questioned.
"Or inhaled his pheromones," Jessica added.
"But wouldn't that just put him under Kilgrave's spell? I mean, why would that give Fisk powers?"
"It wouldn't. But the fucking Hand brought a woman back from the dead. I think they could figure out what made Kilgrave tick; after it all, he wasn't born like that. His parents did all those awful experiments on him, the biopsies and spinal taps. Let's just say The Hand or that old woman or anyone working for Fisk probably has access to better equipment than a couple of British scientists in a basement lab."
Jessica turned again to leave. Derek Smith, aka Tucker, was still knocked out less than a block away, barely visible as the sun set over Hell's Kitchen.
Malcolm did not follow. Instead, he stood still, deep in thought. When Jessica finally noticed, she contemplated whether or not to go back the 25 yards or so for him, wondering if he would just catch up. But Malcolm looked somewhat lost and Jessica sighed in frustration.
"Hey!" she called out. "What gives?"
"Nothing," Malcolm told her, shaking his head as if shaking an errant thought loose.
"Spill," Jessica told him. "Or I'll leave your ass behind."
Malcolm chuckled. He knew how to get home without her. He knew a lot about the city, maybe more than Jessica cared to admit. Former drug users were good P.I. assistants, despite her continued protestations. And, for him, the work was good, fulfilling, distracting. But sometimes he wanted more. Maybe friendship. He wasn't sure. But there were times he wanted to speak his mind to Jessica Jones without getting threatened. This was one of those times.
He sighed. "It just- it almost sounded like you were feeling sorry for him just then."
"Sorry for Kilgrave? No. Never," she relayed, surprised by the statement.
"I guess, it'd be okay if you were," Malcolm said, not really sure if he meant it. Kilgrave had taken his sobriety from him, he had pushed his limits further than he thought possible, he had made him scared of his own reflection. Yet, Jessica and Malcolm never spoke of it - their mutual suffering, the scars that refused to heal. If she was feeling sorry for him, feeling anything for him, it turned his stomach, but Malcolm also knew that people were more complex than that. He knew feelings were never black and white. "If you want to talk about-"
"There's nothing to talk about," Jessica told Malcolm. "Kilgrave was a monster… and that's why I broke his fucking neck."