The verdict was out on whether or not it was a good idea to tell the team about Matt's double play inside Wilson Fisk's ranks. The more people who knew the more likely it was that the secret would leak out, and with it any chance of Matt's survival.

But Jessica Jones knew that holding onto the information could potentially lead to a rift in their faction once the truth was revealed. Everyone wants to be in the know, especially her. A secret of this magnitude kept from her would definitely stir resentments, but since she was the one doing the secret keeping it didn't seem so bad.

She wouldn't tell them about finding Matt, tending to him and his broken face. She wouldn't tell them about his - and now her - plan to infiltrate Fisk's operation and bring it down from the inside.

Potential resentment from the others would have to remain at the bottom of her list of worries.

What if Fisk ordered Matt to attack again? Both he and Danny had been pulling their punches. Matt, because he wasn't really being controlled. Danny, because he wasn't quite sure what was going on. The next time Danny wouldn't be confused. He would know to fight and to win.

That stupid glowing fist could be the end of Matt Murdock.

Jessica sighed. She felt as if that was all she did lately, frustration seething just under the surface of her smooth skin.

But as she rolled over, her own bed creaking as her hips dug into the old mattress, she took small comfort in being home.

With Fisk focused on Matt, she knew her apartment was safe again. Whatever his thugs had been looking for there they must have found. She still didn't know what it had been, but she'd used up all her energy for the day, she couldn't think anymore. So she pressed her eyes shut against the sun piercing her window and desperately begged for sleep.

"Jessica?" Malcolm called from the other side of her front door.

She could have said nothing, or perhaps yelled at him to fuck off. But it had been days since she'd seen him. In that time he'd finished cleaning her apartment. He'd even neatly piled the splintered wood of her furniture in a corner, like a campfire waiting to be lit. She owed it to him to be nice.

I can muster nice, can't I?

Jessica trudged from her bed, still clad in her jeans and button up.

"What?" she croaked, the door between them still closed.

"Wow. I thought I heard you were home. Where have you been?"

He sounded genuinely concerned and Jessica couldn't help but smirk. She quickly let her face fall flat again, back to her nearly permanent state of disinterest as she allowed Malcolm to step inside.

For a second she thought he would hug her, relief colouring his eyes. But he knew better of it and went straight for the kitchen.

A second later he came out of the room with a water bottle and a beer.

She chuckled. "You bought me beer?"

She hadn't checked the fridge. After leaving Matt she'd come straight there, straight to her bed.

Malcolm shrugged. "Don't tell my sponsor."

She nodded and then leaned back against the wall. The can of beer cracked open under her steady hands.

How was she so steady after nights of so little sleep and days filled with confusion and chaos?

It was a question with no reasonable answer. Jessica didn't want to think of herself as being so cold, so distant, that those things barely touched her. But looking at Malcolm ringing his hands around the water bottle, waiting for some sign from her that everything was alright, she knew she wouldn't give it. Her hands were steady because she willed them so.

"Are you hurt?" Malcolm suddenly asked her.

Jessica followed his eye line and looked down at her own faded blue jeans. There on the thighs were bright streaks of blood.

It was Matt's. She had wiped her hands off again and again and his spilled blood had made a mess of her pants. She thought it might come out in the wash, if she pre-cleaned them with stain remover. But even the thought of taking such care exhausted her. She knew they were garbage.

"It's not mine."

Mercifully, Malcolm did not ask whose blood it was.

"You got a lot of calls," he told her, after finally opening the water and taking a gulp. "I've been telling prospective clients you're on a case."

Jessica raised an eyebrow.

"Well, saying you were sick... I don't know. That feels like admitting you're too weak to do your job."

"Depends on how sick."

"No, I mean-"

"I know what you mean," she replied, cutting him off.

They'd barely started talking and her beer was nearly gone.

"And what do I care what prospective clients think?" she scoffed.

"Well, when all this is done don't you want things to go back to normal?"

She smiled. "What's normal?"

Malcolm smiled in return. "I don't know. Something other than this."

Jessica took the last sip, the aftertaste sitting heavy on her tongue. "Seems to me this is the normal part. That other shit is just filler."

They stood for like that for far too long. She wanted another beer, but didn't want to ask or order it from him. Yet, her body was too worn to make the short charge to the fridge herself. She was tired.

"You look rough," Malcolm told her when she let out a monstrous yawn.

"Fuck you," she crowed.

"Seriously, Jess. Maybe you should lie down."

"I was," she said flatly. "Then some asshole knocked on my door."

Malcolm scrunched his face, wrinkles of disdain etching his forehead. She couldn't tell who he was mad at: her for being so callous, or himself for always allowing it.

"I'm sorry," she said lightly. The words seemed so foreign that as they echoed back to her ears they almost sounded like a different language.

Malcolm could tell sincerity didn't suit her. He was prepared to let her off the hook.

"No. Don't worry. It's early," he stammered. "Go to bed. I shouldn't have woke you."

As Malcolm made his way to the front door, Jessica blocked his path.

"You didn't wake me," she said. "I can't sleep. I feel like I never sleep."

He nodded. "Me neither."

Twenty minutes later, a new beer finally in her hands, she and Malcolm sat on the floor, backs against opposite walls.

She tells him about Fisk. She tells him Trish is in hiding. She tells him about the team reassembling. And because she needs to tell someone, she lets him in on Matt's plan. Suddenly, the secret felt less heavy as she allowed someone else to shoulder a bit of the load.

"What if Fisk figures it out?" Malcolm asked. "What will your friend do?"

Jessica had been referring to Matt as "a friend of mine." She hadn't uttered the names Matt Murdock or the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. But she knows Malcolm, like Trish before him, has an investigator's nose.

In another life, one free of Kilgrave and drugs, Malcolm could have been a detective or a lawyer, rather than the guy who answers her phone and patches the holes in her drywall.

Malcolm had been there during their fight with The Hand. He had seen Matt at the police station before his supposed death. And Jessica knew that after his resurrection the two had talked, shared, in this very apartment.

Malcolm was smart. Jessica knew what he was asking. It wasn't, what will your friend do? But rather will Matt Murdock kill Wilson Fisk?

Jessica wanted to answer no. She hated the thought of Matt having to feel what she felt as a neck cracked beneath her weight or a car flung from her fingers.

She wanted to answer no, but she couldn't.

"He'll kill him. He'll have to."

Malcolm didn't reply. Jessica read his silence as approval, begrudging approval.

Death was something that never left them and if Malcolm wanted to pretend it had she knew he would need something stronger than water.

"Just promise me something," Jessica began.

"I won't tell anyone," he said, but Jessica didn't need reassurance of that.

"I know," she nodded. "Promise me you won't go anywhere near Wilson Fisk."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The thought of history repeating itself plagued Jessica after Malcolm had left. Mind control and its consequences was a deja vu she couldn't shake.

She stayed in her spot on the floor, letting her body slide to the old, dirty hardwood. The coolness felt good on her cheek as she pressed into the hardness like a stiff mattress.

She knew she wouldn't sleep there, or anywhere, but she couldn't bring herself to get up.

Before Malcolm had closed her door behind himself he'd said, "Thanks for the talk."

She'd only nodded, but she knew what he meant. It felt good to talk about things, even awful things. It felt good to purge.

Jessica stretched out on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She stayed that way for hours, watching the day's sun stream across the room, replaced by dark shadow and then finally the stillness of night.

She hadn't eaten or showered. She hadn't called anyone - not Luke or Colleen or Claire or Danny. She laughed as she thought of Danny. She just couldn't imagine ever needing to call him. But he had been there in the fight with Matt; he had been hurt. And she hadn't checked on him, hadn't inquired about his healing. Instead she lay covered in Matt's blood, eyes wide and body stiff.

Even as she heard the noise just outside her window she didn't move. She knew it wasn't an animal or a particularly strong wind. It was a person slowly but surely climbing up the exterior drainpipe. Or at least that's what she wanted it to be. In her sleep deprived state, she wondered if she was imagining Matt scaling the outside of her apartment to see her. It wouldn't be the first time. But he wouldn't - couldn't - be that stupid.

As Jessica rolled onto her side, the hardwood refusing to hug her hip bone, which jutted sharply and painfully into the parquet, she spied a figure climbing into her window. She sighed.

Yep. He's that fucking stupid.

"Hey," Matt offered once his feet hit the ground just behind her desk.

Jessica smiled. "Hey."

Slowly she pulled herself from the floor, her hair matted with sweat to the back of her head. She shook it loose with her fingers.

"Is this visit business or pleasure?" she asked more seductively than either of them were expecting. She couldn't help it. Just seeing him pushed the kiss to the forefront of her mind. And by the way he shifted before her, his weight resting back on his heels as he swayed away from her nervously, she knew it was on his mind as well.

"Good to know I wasn't dreaming," he said, a lazy joke he was hoping would cut the tension.

When Jessica failed to take the bait, failed to laugh along with him, he closed his eyes and pictured his bruised and bloody lips pressed firmly against the pink of her own. Without realizing it, he reached out to steady himself on the desk.

Jessica's voice pierced the sanctity of his memories. "Too bad I'm not dreaming now."

Matt's eyes snapped open. He was confused. He cocked his head to the left inquisitively. It was a habit he'd developed years ago, a way to show people he couldn't see them even when he could. It's was an act, Jessica thought, and it angered her.

"Please tell me you didn't risk our operation for a roll in-"

Matt briskly cut her off. "Of course not." His words had come out shakier than he would have liked, but he hoped that righting himself, standing straight and tall without the aid of her desk, would somehow prove to her that he meant it.

Jessica struggled to her feet. She was tired, not drunk. She wondered if Matt could tell the difference.

"Okay, Spiderman," she cracked while walking to the kitchen. "Why are you climbing up the side of my apartment building?"

She fished another beer can from the fridge. "What if Fisk discovers you're gone? Or maybe he already has." She pulled the can open, a crisp crack echoing off the sparse walls. "There could be a guy on the corner right now, a guy who followed you from the condo and who now knows we're working together."

Jessica tilted her head back and let the cold liquid shoot down her throat. Gulp after gulp, she swallowed the contents whole before crushing the can in her hand and then tossing it in the sink.

"No one followed me," he told her.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she shouted.

"Jessica-" he began, but she cut him off.

"You said you had a plan. A plan to infiltrate Fisk's operation. And, what, a day later you're already fucking it up?"

"It's been more than a day," he reminded her.

She rushed him then, her hands reaching out for the lapels of his blazer. As her fingers roughly snaked around the fabric, she pulled him close, staring straight into the dark red of his sunglasses. But when she caught sight of herself in the reflection, she let her head fall, her vision now locked on her own hands, the knuckles turning white against the grey of his suit.

It's after midnight and he's wearing a suit. Of course, she thought to herself. The ridiculousness of everything that was happening, everything passing between them, forced her to let go and step back. The ridiculousness of it all had ended her anger almost as quickly as it had arisen.

Matt exhaled loudly.

"Nice suit," Jessica said, just as his sigh subsided.

Matt shook his head. "A gift from Wilson Fisk. For the past three days there's been a suit waiting in the closet for me. Perfectly tailored."

"Well, that's not creepy at all," Jessica replied.

Matt adjusted the fabric, pressing it smooth over the muscles of his chest. Then he leaned against the desk, no longer shaky, but rather tired - just like her. When he shifted to the edge, Jessica could tell he was inviting her to join him, and so she pressed her form against his own to sit by his side.

"I woke up and all I could think about was last night," Matt said. He brought his hand to his forehead, letting his fingers play across the wound. "And not just because of what happened… but what didn't happen."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I should have told you about Fisk."

"We've covered that. You made a split second decision to follow him and-"

Matt interrupted her. "No, not that. I should have told you he knew you and Danny were following him the other day."

"Of course," she groaned. "The great Iron Ass strikes again."

Matt smiled. "Well, if it's any consolation, I think Fisk would have found you sooner or later. He's been giving me tests. First, he wanted me to bring Foggy to him. Then Karen."

"Trish?" Jessica asked, her eyes suddenly wide with fear.

Matt shook his head no. "I told Fisk that Foggy wasn't there, wasn't at Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz. I don't know if he investigated any further on his own. I think he just wanted to see if I would do it."

"To see if the mind control was working," Jessica offered, finishing Matt's train of thought.

"If anything, Danny being terrible at surveillance actually helped me. We were on our way to the New York Bulletin when he was spotted by Fisk's men."

"And since Karen doesn't know you're alive…"

"I can't ask her to get out of town."

Matt could smell his own blood in the air. He knew it would be faint to most, but his heightened senses made the odour overwhelming. Looking down at Jessica's jeans he could make out the dark rust coloured stains against the faded denim. It was over 24 hours later, and she was still covered in the remains of their fight. He wondered why.

"I can tell her," Jessica said softly. "If you want."

Matt had been distracted by her disheveled state, by the thought that she'd spent the night on the floor drinking beer and absentmindedly playing with the stained front of her jeans. It took him a moment to register that she was speaking again.

"What?" he asked, his eyes still trained on her pants.

Jessica followed his gaze. She wanted to be embarrassed by the fact that she hadn't changed, haven't even showered since she'd seen him last, but that simply wasn't her. She wasn't like other girls, other people.

"Is this bothering you?" she questioned, her pale hand running along the dark, hard stain.

Matt swallowed hard. He couldn't explain to her why he was entranced by everything she was. Finally, he sighed. "I don't think you should tell her. I appreciate the offer, but it's probably time I face her, face my mistakes."

They were talking about Karen again. Fuck, Jessica thought. Why did I offer? What am I doing?

"They're numerous," Matt said quietly.

Jessica knew he meant his mistakes - his mistakes were numerous. She had no reply. She knew he was right. They both had made a mess of things and, in Matt's case, a woman like Karen Page would be quick to point out all the ways he could or should have done things.

Maybe that's why he had been putting off contacting her. Maybe it wasn't about keeping her safe, but rather keeping the heroic image of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen intact.

For a moment, Jessica wondered if she should tell him about the last time she saw Karen, the night at the police station when word of his "death" made its way through the halls. Did he need to know how she grieved him, how she cried? Would that change things? Did she want it to change things?

"Anyway, that's not why I came here," Matt said, snapping Jessica back to reality. "Vanessa's back with Fisk."

"Vanessa?" Jessica asked. "The middle-aged model who makes his deliveries."

Matt nodded. "She's an art dealer. At least she was. Last I heard, he'd ushered her out of the country. Now she's back and I think she's about to get more involved in this."

"A partner?" Jessica mused.

"Someone has been dosing Fisk, someone gave him Kilgrave's power while he was still in prison."

"Well, I think we already figured that part out, right?" Jessica cracked. "Unless New York's finest just let crime syndicate bosses walk in and out as they please."

"Okay, but who had the ability to get in and out of prison, no questions asked?"

"Anyone can visit."

Matt shook his head no. "Fisk had no contact visits. They were all done through bulletproof glass. But I heard Fisk tell Vanessa that it was a lawyer. His lawyer would be allowed unfettered access in a special visitor room. A room guards wouldn't be allowed to monitor due to attorney client privilege. Only they would be able to get close enough to give him a shot of-"

"Kilgrave blood?" Jessica questioned. The thought was disturbing, but she couldn't stop her mind from going there. After seeing the hand in the Scientist's makeshift lab she knew whatever experiments Fisk was involved in had taken pieces of her enemy, of the man she had killed.

For a split second, Jessica wondered if it was worth it. Had his death actually brought more harm? But as quickly as that line of thinking began Jessica shut it down, clasping her mental doubt within the steel safe she kept tucked in the back her mind. She had resolved long ago that Kilgrave's death was the best choice; his murder at her hands the best thing she'd ever done.

Suddenly, she caught Matt looking at her sideways, his eyebrow arched above the rim of his red glasses. "Let's say concoction or mind control juice or anything but blood, okay?"

Jessica smiled. "Okay."

"The lawyer wasn't his lawyer," Matt continued.

"Yeah, I figured," she told him. "So, some strange man comes to him, gives him the… concoction and then Fisk walks out of prison. And now Vanessa is delivering packages all over Manhattan. So he's trying to make his own juice. He's trying to get out from under his new masters."

Matt let his mouth fall open, just a touch, but Jessica couldn't help but reel in the victory. She pushed off the desk and walked to the opposite wall to face him.

"Oh, come on. It's not that big a leap. And it explains the shitty warehouse set up. They couldn't spend money on a lab that might have to move at a moment's notice. It also explains the Scientist's death. Fisk would have programmed his lackeys to kill themselves without hesitation. They're expendable if he has more just like him all over town."

"Huh," Matt said.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just I came here to tell you…"

"You wanted to be the one to figure it out," Jessica replied. "Don't worry. We still have a slew of crazed doctors and scientists experimenting on Kilgrave's body parts. Not to mention we need the identity of the man who originally dosed Fisk."

"That's not it," Matt chuckled. "I came her to tell you that things are about to get serious."

"Because before it was simple."

"No, but everything I know I heard in one conversation tonight. That's all it took to figure out at least 50% of what's going on," Matt said. "I can't leave yet. In fact, I'll probably have to go deeper. I just didn't want you to worry if you don't hear from me after this, at least not for a while."

Jessica stepped toward him. "First, of course you're not done after two nights. What kind of undercover job ends just as it starts? Second, I applaud your optimism, but 50% is laughable. And third, I'm not worried about you, Murdock. So, go deep. I give you permission to get right up Fisk's ass to figure this thing out."

Matt cringed at her choice of words.

"I'll stay on Vanessa," she told him. "Me and the super friends can start looking into the places she makes her deliveries."

"And I'll figure out the origins of the…"

"Concoction, remember?"

Matt nodded in the affirmative. "And the others? What do we tell them?"

Jessica stepped forward again, her face taking over the whole of his view.

"Strange. I was just thinking about that," she told him. "Would you be offended if I let them continue to believe you're a mindless stooge?" She smiled, "Oh, and that you're also under Fisk's control?"

"Cute," he replied, his mouth slowly mirroring the curve of her own. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Make even the worst situation seem bearable."

Jessica felt her chest tighten, her breath stuck inside her throat, caught on a sense of nervousness she didn't know she possessed.

Matt could hear her heartbeat quicken. He couldn't help but lean forward, closing the small space between them until it felt almost nonexistent.

He reached out and touched her dark hair, his fingers wrapping softly around the strands that lay over her shoulder. They were still slightly sticky, a sheen of light sweat covering everything. For the first time since arriving, Matt allowed himself to take in the scent of her. A mixture of that sweet sweat, cheap beer, and the remnants of men's deodorant. He wondered who's deodorant it was, who had been there before him, left something of themself behind for her to wear day in and day out.

As he ran the strand of her hair between his finger, rolling it back and forth, Jessica suddenly pulled away. The hair slipped out of his grasp. She came to rest again on the wall.

"I think you should leave," she told him softly, even though she didn't really want him to go.

Matt sighed. "But I haven't told you the worst part."

Jessica raised an eyebrow.

"Fisk told Vanessa that once he makes his new mind control ability permanent, well, then there will be no one he can't manipulate… including her. So, in order to ensure that doesn't happen they need a cure, an immunity."

"They need me."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? We knew this was going to happen. It's why he took Trish, it's why the Scientist took a sample of my blood, it's probably why his goons broke in here, and I'd wager it's one of the main reasons he's controlling you right now."

Jessica walked back to the fridge, even though she knew she'd already consumed the last beer. She rummaged through the half empty condiment bottles and leftover Chinese containers until her fingers settled on a nearly empty bottle of Cutty Sark.

"There you are," she whispered.

"It's okay to be scared," Matt told her, walking steadily to the tiny kitchen, his hands resting on the still open door of the fridge.

Jessica laughed, before turning the top off the bottle and taking a swig.

"I'm not scared. You are," she replied. "You're worried about my safety, and you want me to be worried about yours. But I can't do my job that way."

"Your job?"

"Yeah, you know, investigate people, find clues, put bad guys away. I can't do that and worry about anyone, least of all myself."

"You worry about Trish," he told her, as she let the last swish of scotch coat her throat.

"Well, when you've been there for me like she has, maybe you'll make the list, too."

Matt nodded, closing the fridge door to allow her escape from the room. As she brushed past him, the smell of blended booze wafted in the air.

"You really know how to ruin a moment, don't you?"

Jessica whipped around to face him. "This wasn't a moment. You don't get to crawl through my window, stroke my hair, and then tell me I might die. That's not how this works."

"It is in my world," he told her. The tone of his voice was serious, but the thought broke through her resolve.

"Yeah, I know it is," she told him playfully.

They stood staring at each other for far too long, bathing in the silence of her small, scarred apartment. Matt reached out once again, but not for her hair - instead her took her hand gently in his own.

"Well, I'm the worrying kind," he whispered. "So, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to care about what happens to the tough, determined Jessica Jones."

Jessica squeezed his hand, just once, before pulling her fingers from his own. But she knew he'd felt it, felt her silent permission for him to worry about her. She was letting him in inch by inch, day by day.

Matt walked past her to the window, ducking under the opened upper pane and making his way back into the night sky.

As he was preparing to leap over to the drainpipe and out of sight, Jessica called after him.

"You said only a lawyer could get in to see Fisk."

Matt peered back into the apartment. She was standing in the centre of the room, still covered in his blood, her speech drenched in alcohol, her eyes glistening with the bright light of an epiphany coming into form.

"It just so happens I know one of the most well-connected lawyers in town. And she knows all about Kilgrave."