Jessica Jones knew New York City; really knew it. Most nights she could feel it breathing. The concrete buildings inhaled deeply in the darkness, contracting around her like a cold, hard blanket. Nothing made her feel better than being out on it's streets.
She paced a three block radius, her boots scraping angrily on the sidewalk as her mind reeled. Jessica was sober - frustratingly sober. She sighed heavily, kicking herself for not having checked the fridge of the safehouse before she'd stormed out, but the USB drive had been the final straw. She had to get out, breathe in deep like the city around her and hope the night air would allow her to piece the puzzle together.
But it's too much, she thought.
Six men had succumbed to experiments meant to imbue them with Kilgrave's mind control powers. Six men had died gruesome deaths, their bodies collapsing in on themselves. Six shells remained, catalogued on that USB.
Jessica flung herself against the nearest brick wall, the side entrance to a boarded up corner store, and let her head fall into her hands. Black hair cascaded around her face, a veil that hid her tears. They were fast tears, angry tears, and they accompanied a deep, guttural groan.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Using the back of her left hand to roughly rub at her eyes, Jessica righted herself against the wall and scanned the block. She was alone. Thankfully, no one had seen her cry, regardless of how brief it had been.
Every time she felt herself getting close to answers - the scientist's apartment, Kilgrave's hand, Matt's infiltration of Fisk's operation - they were replaced by new, more complex questions. Jeri Hogarth and the contents of the USB were just another layer in a case Jessica couldn't seem to crack.
"I thought you'd be at the bar."
Jessica looked to her right. Danny Rand was walking up the street clad in a dark green matching sweatsuit, his broken wrist wrapped tightly and tucked partially within his sleeve.
"They sent you?" Jessica scoffed.
Danny smiled at her criticism. He always did that, always gave lightness back in the face of dark. It usually irritated her, yet she couldn't help but soften this time, despite herself.
"I came to get food," he replied. "Like I said, I thought you'd be at the bar." Danny motioned with a flick of his head, and Jessica peered down the block to a small building, marked by a distinctive red door. Had she not been so overcome with confusion and anger, she might have stumbled upon it sooner.
Jessica smiled wide. "Buy me a drink."
Danny chuckled. "Oh, no, no. I'm getting Chinese food for the group," he told her, gesturing further down the street in the opposite direction. "I'll buy you some chow mein instead."
"It wasn't a request, Danny," she replied. "I don't have any cash on me."
She pushed off the wall and briskly walked toward the bar. When she couldn't feel him behind her, Jessica turned back, her eyes narrowing until Danny acquiesced.
"You called me Danny," he said sheepishly.
Jessica knew the two had shared a moment before she'd left the safehouse, a remnant of the moment they had shared on the roof. And even though she now knew Matt was pretending to be controlled by Wilson Fisk, both she and Danny had experienced the same visceral fear when the trio fought for their lives on that rooftop. Danny was an important part of the team, maybe he was becoming important to her… maybe?
Jessica shook off the shackles of friendship and shot Danny a sly smile.
"Come on, Iron Idiot," she called over her shoulder. "This whiskey isn't going to drink itself."
Danny shook his head, a long, exaggerated sigh escaping his lips. "Whiskey?"
"Don't worry. In a place like this," she replied, motioning to the bar just a few yards ahead, "The whiskey won't be too rich for your blood."
"Nothing is too rich for my blood," he told her, and Jessica chuckled. It wasn't often Danny made a joke, even a shitty one.
Only a few steps from that red door, a man and woman crashed out onto the sidewalk, their arms linked around one another. Jessica stumbled backward so as not to get hit.
The man laughed at his companion, his hands moving down from her shoulders to the curve of her ass. The woman smiled, but pulled his hand away. "Oh, no," she said. "You have to work for it."
"I told you, I work for everything," he replied, then pulled her hurriedly into him for a passionate kiss.
Jessica stood on the sidewalk, only a few feet from them, transfixed. The couple hadn't noticed her yet, they were too drunk, too consumed with one another, but as the man looked up, close to catching Jessica's eye, she grabbed Danny by the arm and wrenched him toward the alleyway to their left.
Danny groaned, his wrist straining, even though Jessica's hand was firmly on his upper arm. As he opened his mouth to protest, Jessica pushed him against the brick wall and brought her left hand, the hand furthest from the street and the amorous couple, up to Danny's mouth. She pressed her hand into the flesh of his lips, preventing him from speaking. Then, in one swift, aggressive move, she pushed her own mouth against her hand.
She could feel Danny stiffen beneath her weight. Using her strength against him, she forced his head back, his neck craning as Jessica's raven locks fell in front of them like a protective curtain. Together the two of them stood still, Jessica's mouth glued to her own hand, both their eyes open - his wide, hers narrowed.
She could tell the man was looking at them. Through the veil of hair she peered to her right and caught a glimpse of his shoes. Her breath hitched and her heart thumped quicker as she tried to will him away. And while it felt like an eternity locked into a faux kiss with Danny Rand, the man laughed just seconds after seeing them and walked away, the woman tight on his hip.
As their laughter faded, Jessica peeled herself off Danny and peered out onto the street. When she couldn't see them, she rushed out onto the sidewalk and then up to the corner. But it was too late - the couple was getting into a yellow cab. Jessica cursed under her breath as she watched the vehicle pull away from the curb and drive out of sight.
"Um…" Danny croaked, once he made his way to join her at the corner, his eyes still wide.
Jessica sighed.
"What was that?"
We told you it might not work. Jessica had heard a man say that - the man working with Wilson Fisk - the man she'd just seen stumble out of the bar and tumble into a cab.
"Didn't you recognize his voice?" she asked Danny, turning on her heels and heading back to the bar. Danny quickened his steps just to keep up.
"Who's voice? That man?"
Perhaps it had been the word "work" that made it click; the same word spoken by the same man and something just snapped into place inside her. Perhaps she had spent too much time with Matt Murdock, learning from him how to rely on her senses. Or perhaps she had just let the city do the work - she walked its streets, feeling its power, letting it take her into the lap of coincidence.
Jessica turned to face Danny. "That night on the roof, he was the man working with Fisk."
Danny shook his head. "We never saw that man, Jessica. I mean, you can't know for sure that he-"
Jessica cut him off. "His voice!"
"Yeah, but there's no way you can recognize that… can you?"
"Murdock can," she scoffed.
"Matt has special powers," Danny replied. Jessica could tell that talking about Matt made him uncomfortable; the team still thought the Devil of Hell's Kitchen was under Fisk's control.
"Well, maybe I have special powers, too - the powers of a P.I. And I'm telling you, that was the same man."
Before Jessica could storm into the bar, Danny caught her shoulder. "Okay, but what was that hand kissing thing?"
Jessica rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Have you never seen a movie, Rand? Like, any movie? That's how it's done."
"How what's done?"
"That's how you make sure the person you've spotted doesn't spot you."
Danny chuckled. "But, Jessica, like I said, we never saw him… so he never saw us. You just jumped me for no reason."
Jessica stepped forward, her mouth almost as close as it had been when she pressed her lips into her own hand. "He's working for or with Wilson Fisk, the same Wilson Fisk who wants to experiment on me. I think it's a safe bet that he knows who I am, and if he weren't so drunk he might have seen through our ruse and called Fisk or The Hand-" Danny winced when she mentioned his arch rivals "-or anyone else who might be interested in our whereabouts."
"Oh," was all Danny could muster.
Jessica spun away once again, her hand finally resting on the door to the bar. "And just so you know, if I wanted to jump you… well, you would have been jumped."
Danny gulped, the sound so heavy Jessica didn't need any of Matt's special powers to hear it. She laughed. "You still owe me a drink."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Danny Rand pushed a folded $50 bill toward the bartender, who quickly palmed the money and slid it into his pocket.
"Yeah, he comes here all the time," the bartender confirmed.
"Really?" Jessica questioned, her hand wrapped tightly around her third glass of whiskey, all on Danny's tab. "Because he doesn't seem like the type to be a regular here."
The bar was called Harm's Tavern, but there was no sign outside above the door. Jessica only knew it from reading the decades old cardboard coasters, stained and curling at the corners. It was a small place, only five tables and a single row of stools at the bar. The back was home to a pair of pool tables that were practically sitting atop one another. Jessica tried imagining anyone playing without bumping the back of their sticks into the green felt behind them, but couldn't. No one was playing now. In fact, all six patrons were sitting at the tables drinking from pitchers of beer, some chomping sunflower seeds between their teeth and spitting the remnants on the floor.
The man and his female companion had been smartly dressed - him more so than her. He was wearing a black on black on black suit/shirt combo accessorized with a large gold watch. She had been wearing a light pink dress that was far too tight for her, but Jessica was sure that's how they both liked it. She couldn't picture them being regulars of a place where the Soundtrack of the '70s blared over the sound-system on repeat.
"I've never seen the woman," the bartender replied. "But Mr. Miller is here every week."
"Mr. Miller," Danny repeated.
The bartender nodded in reply, but said no more. Jessica nudged Danny with her right shoulder and he lightly groaned in response before fishing another $50 bill out his pocket. Before he could pass it to the bartender, Jessica snatched it from his hand.
"Listen, I'm sure you'd be happy to do this all night, but my friend…" the word oozed from her throat like oil, thick and heavy. Jessica swallowed the urge to laugh at herself and let this stranger know Danny Rand was no friend; not really, not yet.. "...my friend and I have more pressing business."
The bartender smiled. "Fine. If you've got places to be, then maybe I don't have to tell you what I know."
Jessica pushed back, her stool scraping on the ground. She took her whiskey glass in one hand and roughly downed the contents before bringing it heavy against the bar. The glass shattered against the wood, translucent shards flying in every direction.
Some of the bar patrons stirred slightly from their alcoholic haze, but Danny turned on them, his eyes willing them not to try anything. It worked.
"I think you misunderstood me," Jessica told the bartender. "The pressing business we have is destroying this bar, and I will burn it to the fucking ground if you don't tell me what I want to know."
The bartender opened his mouth to laugh, the shock of her words forcing an awkward chuckle, but the coldness in her eyes told him better.
"Mr. Miller, is that his real name?" Jessica asked.
"I wouldn't know," the bartender told her. When she arched her eyebrow, he added, "Honestly, I don't know. But he comes in at least once a week, always dressed up and always with a different woman."
Jessica waved the $50 bill in the air before his face.
"I think he works in the neighbourhood, okay? I've seen him on my way to work."
"Where?" Danny asked.
"I don't know. Around."
Jessica smiled before taking the 50 and stuffing it down her shirt, tucking it tightly into the cup of her bra. She then pushed herself up on the bar with one hand, the hand that had been holding the glass, and pulled a bottle of whiskey from just out of sight into her lap. As she sat back on the stool, Danny and the bartender spied the blood she left behind. Jessica looked down at her hand and noticed a large cut running horizontally along her left palm. She wasn't concerned; she knew it would heal.
"Around where?" Jessica asked as she pulled the spout from the whiskey bottle and brought the sweet liquid to her lips.
"Maybe the halfway house on 137th. I think I've seen him there before, hanging around out front. But that's all I know."
Jessica stared at him for a moment, but she suspected he was telling the truth. "Okay," she said, stepping from the stool, sunflower shells crunching beneath her boots. She strode to the exit, the whiskey bottle still in hand.
"What about my 50?" the bartender shouted.
"You mean my 50," Jessica said as the door swung closed behind her.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Danny found Jessica sitting on a stoop across the street from the halfway house on West 137th. The whiskey bottle was empty, but her hand was still bleeding.
"Is that okay?" he asked, finding a spot one step above her.
Jessica looked at her wounded flesh, the blood escaping her skin in a trickle. It was already healing. "Yeah, I'm fine."
Danny leaned back on his elbows and immediately grimaced as his broken wrist grazed the concrete. Jessica couldn't help but feel sorry for him - his identity was wrapped up in his stupid chi and she wasn't sure it worked without a working hand. Her healing abilities allowed her to take risks, maybe too many risks, but it helped her get the job done.
"What are we looking for?" Danny questioned.
"Nothing. I just had to see it; had to make sure he wasn't lying," she replied.
Jessica left the empty bottle on the bottom step and stood up. Turning back to Danny, she reached out her good hand to take his. Helping him to his feet, she motioned for them to go.
"That's it?"
"The Chinese place closes in less than an hour."
"Jessica?"
"Hmm?"
Danny's lip quivered slightly, and she could tell he was afraid to ask his question - afraid of how she would reply. "Is this something we have to keep from the team?"
Jessica scoffed. "No."
Danny cautiously and suspiciously raised an eyebrow and Jessica let herself smile. She knew she was difficult to handle, sometimes difficult to trust, but without Matt and Trish she was going to need people, more people than she ever had before.
Dammit, she thought. I miss working alone.
Her smile quickly snapped into a scowl as she realized the bigger the team the greater the risk taken… and the more like Midland Circle it all began to feel.
"We'll tell them everything. We have to," she reluctantly acknowledged. "Rand?"
"Hmm?"
"You paid the bartender anyway, didn't you?"
Danny uncomfortably shifted away from her. "And I paid for the whiskey bottle, too."
"Of course you did."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Who wanted the stir-fried tofu?" Jessica asked, her nose crinkled in disgust. She was pulling takeout containers from a Jade Dragon bag and placing them on the kitchen table of the safehouse.
"Mine," Colleen called from across the room, and Jessica passed the dish off to Danny for delivery.
"Where are the itty-bitty spareribs?" Luke Cage asked as he rummaged through the boxes.
Jessica gestured to a white carton on the far edge of the table and Luke hungrily took it in his large hands before finding his place against the bare kitchen counter.
"What took you guys so long?" he questioned, taking a piece of meat from the container with his bare fingers and jamming it into his mouth.
Danny turned to Jessica, silently asking permission to speak. She nodded before taking a seat at the table, a box of General Tso's chicken in her now healed hand.
"We got sidetracked," he began.
"At a distillery?" Claire Temple scoffed. Jessica wondered if "drunk" was the first word people associated with her - long before strong or loyal or super-powered did people think: Jessica Jones is a drunk.
She groaned in response. "No, but I've never heard that one before... hilarious."
"We did go to a bar, yes, but it was to get information. Jessica recognized the man Wilson Fisk was meeting the night we fought Matt on the rooftop," Danny told them. Jessica was thankful he left out a few details - like the fact that she had recognized the man through his voice or that in order to distract him from their presence she had pretended to kiss the far too fragile Danny Rand.
"That's amazing," Claire exclaimed. She pushed up from her place on the sofa and joined the group in the kitchen. "What did he tell you?"
"We didn't talk to him," Jessica mumbled, her mouth stuffed with chicken.
"What?" Claire asked, the shock dripping from her voice.
"Well, we weren't exactly in a position to interrogate the man."
"Jessica, Matt is out there somewhere, being forced to do God knows what, and you had someone who might know something and you let him get away!"
Jessica knew Matt's absence had been weighing on them all, but she hadn't yet recognized how hard it was hitting Claire. Claire had played healer, friend, supporter and confidant to Matt. She was the second person Matt had come calling on after his resurrection and she was the first he asked to leave town - for her own safety. Now Claire was standing in the safehouse, powerless to effect change, powerless to bring Matt home.
Jessica put the Chinese takeout container down on the table and turned to look directly at Claire. She inhaled deeply. "First, Matt isn't somewhere; he's at Wilson Fisk's condo. Second, I'm sure if he was being forced to do something terrible we would have heard talk of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen beating or killing innocent people. Third, we have no idea what this man may or may not know-"
"All the more reason to question him," Claire interjected.
"But these guys are after Jessica," Danny offered. "They've already forced her to give up her blood. What more are they going to take if she reveals herself to them?"
Thankfully, Danny had remembered what she'd told him only an hour before, but Jessica wished she didn't have to keep reminding them all that she was Fisk's real target.
Claire put her hand to her forehead and pressed tightly on her temples. "I just want to feel like we're getting somewhere."
"We are!" Danny excitedly cried out. As the group found their spots around the table, Danny regaled them with the tale of their mini-adventure inside the bar. He revealed what they knew: the man's name, the man's substantial style, the man's penchant for beautiful women, the man's drinking habits, and the man's visits to a halfway house.
"So, basically, his name is Mr. Miller - maybe - and he likes mid-range escorts," Luke said, his container of spareribs empty.
Jessica nodded.
"How do you know the women are escorts?" Danny asked.
Luke smiled. "Danny, come on. Luxury Lace is only one block from the bar."
"Luxury Lace?"
The group began to laugh - it was soft and slow, but Danny's naivete had provided them with a much needed release of tension.
"So, what are you thinking?" Colleen asked Jessica. She seemed to be the only one prepared to let Jessica take the lead.
"We could stake out those places - the bar or the escort agency - but I think the halfway house is the key," Jessica replied. "We have six men on that USB and I'd bet my last egg roll on them being former residents."
"That makes sense," Claire said.
"But what about the photographs?" Colleen asked. "I don't want to sound callous, but most men living in halfway houses don't have perfectly coiffed hair or golden tans. Some of those men looked like models. I mean, I just don't see them coming from a halfway house in Harlem."
"Well, did the bartender tell you when he last saw this Mr. Miller standing outside the halfway house?" Claire questioned. Both Jessica and Danny shook their heads no in unison. "Then maybe there's more than six. You said it yourself, that scientist guy told you there were other doctors working for Fisk, so maybe there were other groups like the ones on the USB."
Jessica stood from the table. "Is there anything to drink in here?" she asked, and Danny motioned to the cabinet in the other room. Jessica wondered why someone as chaste and sober as Danny would have alcohol, but then she remembered the safehouse was owned by Rand Enterprises. She could only imagine it had been used as some sort of executives-only love nest for all the men making over a million a year who were cheating on their wives.
She opened the cabinet door and grabbed the first bottle she saw. It was vodka - not even in her top five favourites - but she didn't care. Jessica had information the team needed, information she swore she wouldn't share.
The vodka warmed her insides, but it did nothing to quell the war raging in her mind. Matt had come to her the night after he survived her pummeling on that rooftop. He'd climbed her fire escape and shared pieces of the puzzle the group now had to know.
"I think maybe Miller doesn't work for Fisk," Jessica said. "Thinking back on that night, he said 'We told you it might not work.' It wasn't as if he felt sorry he couldn't do more, and he certainly wasn't afraid of Fisk…" she let the words fade away, not quite sure how to continue.
"Damn," she whispered. "Fisk told Vanessa that a man came to him in prison. That man offered him something - I can only assume it was an injection of Kilgrave," the turn of phrase made her pulse quicken and she took another swallow of vodka to calm herself. "And while it worked, it didn't last - it never does - and so when he wants more he's dependent on those people. So, he started his own network of doctors and smugglers and con men to create a new, longer-lasting concoction. That way he controls it."
Jessica turned to face the team. They were all standing around the kitchen table, the remnants of Chinese leftovers scattered before them.
"What are you talking about?" Luke asked. "How could you know what Fisk told his girlfriend?"
As she opened her mouth to tell them, to release the truth about Matt, Jessica thought better of it. Yes, she wanted to be honest - surprisingly so - but thinking of Matt and his safety, so couldn't bring herself to compromise his position. "I've been investigating on my own," she finally told them.
"But you just said these people were looking for you," Claire reminded her. "And yet you're out there kicking down doors?"
"Some doors are safer to kick down than others," Jessica replied, thinking about her battle inside the offices of Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz. "And I've had help."
"You brought Malcolm in on this," Luke said.
Jessica had been lying about who she'd received her information from, but it wasn't a lie that Malcolm had helped her a great deal. "Yeah, I did. And before you question his loyalty or wonder if more people should know, I'd remind you that these people kidnapped my best friend and forced me to send her away, they've hunted me down, beat me, pushed me out a fucking window and then brainwashed the man I-" Jessica stopped herself. She exhaled loudly and took another long, slow swig of vodka.
"Just trust me when I tell you that Fisk wants this power for himself, without relying on anyone else," she said, after the liquor had finished swirling down her throat.
"No one is questioning why Malcolm is involved, Jess," Luke told her. "But I think, now more than ever, we have to put all our cards on the table."
"Says the guy who stakes out warehouses for Murdock but doesn't tell me," Jessica scoffed. She didn't know why she said it - being defensive was just her default.
"You're right," Luke admitted. "So, from now on, we tell each other everything."
"And we work as a team," Danny added. "Agreed?"
Everyone nodded, even Jessica. She was thankful no one had asked her how Malcolm had supposedly come into his information on private dealings between Fisk and Vanessa. Maybe they thought he had interviewed a former, non-mind controlled employee or maybe they didn't actually care. Each of them was starved for any morsel of new information and this one had been huge.
"So let's assume the men on the USB are part of the experiments done by…" Claire let the sentence hang, not knowing who they were meant to be blaming.
"The Hand," Danny finally said. "Let's assume it's The Hand."
"Are you sure?" Colleen asked, concern colouring her voice.
"Yeah. You guys were right. There's no one else in New York City who would think of using a dead man's mind control abilities on a living person - no other group would even suspect it's possible."
"Okay," Claire continued. "The prison escape, the building you guys fought on, and the USB are all The Hand."
"Not to mention Hogarth and her firm's involvement," Jessica added.
"Right. And the warehouse, and whatever Vanessa was doing that day you followed her are Fisk-backed efforts," Claire finished. Jessica could see the sparkle returning to her once blank eyes - Claire was getting her fight back, they all were.
"That just leaves the halfway house," Luke reminded them. "If this Miller guy is tied to The Hand, then why would he scrounge for test subjects?"
"Well, who's to say the six on the USB weren't the first batch," Colleen offered.
"Fuck, yes!" Jessica exclaimed. "Find a bunch of guys like Fisk: leaders of industry, entrepreneurs, politicians - anyone who can effect change. Those are the people you want to have Kilgrave's powers!"
"But when they die-" Claire began.
"You need to find a test pool of people whose deaths won't be noticed in order to continue the experiments," Luke finished.
"Danny, Colleen. In the morning, you two need to go back to the place we fought Matt," Jessica told them.
"What are we looking for?" Danny asked.
"I don't know, but if we don't at least check I feel like we might miss something," she replied. "Claire, Luke. You need to go to the halfway house and find out if they're missing any residents and, if so, who."
"What will you do?" Luke questioned.
"Those six men, if they were important, someone is missing them. So, I'm gonna rattle my police contacts and see what shakes loose."
It felt amazing to have a plan; a solid plan with objectives that seemed obtainable. It felt amazing to lead the team, and to actually have them follow. It felt amazing to finally start to solve the puzzle that had become her life - so much so that Jessica fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow Colleen had laid out for her on the couch.
But as the sun crested over New York City, Jessica awoke with a start as she realized it couldn't truly feel amazing… because I don't have Matt.