Once they hit Australia soil, Jessica refused to stay in a hotel room, no matter how nice Trish assured her it would be. The nicer it was, the more expensive, the more luxurious services offered, the more it would remind her of Kilgrave and all the places he had taken her, of all the rooms that had not been home and all the beds he had commanded her into. Instead, she had planted herself in a bar for the day, more than happy to let Trish take over the task of searching for apartment and condo rentals that would suit both her and Jessica's standards and preferences.
She let Trish take care of the selection of groceries and toiletries, furniture and décor, hygienic items and enough clothing to get them through several weeks. It wasn't as though Jessica cared about "pretty" or any kind of style for her surroundings, and her only criteria for clothes was not uncomfortable, not overly girly, and not flashy. Trish had told her more than a few times that she basically had two outfits she wore over and over again, and she wasn't wrong. Why knock a look that worked?
Trish ended up finding them a two bedroom condo not far from Sydney's shore, with a view that even Jessica had to admit to herself was impressive. She had yet to research anything at all about Australian laws or customs to figure out how it was that Trish had bought things without having Australian money, or even if Australia had a monetary system that was different from America's, but Trish had evidently managed to accomplish everything she had set out to do in an impressively brief span of time.
"Did you really think this was a spur of the moment decision of mine?" Trish had leveled at her, both eyebrows raised, when Jessica had muttered a sarcastic comment about blondes with cash to spend. "I've been waiting for you to come to your senses from the moment you escaped him, Jessica. I've been ready for a year now to drop everything and go- for you. I figured out how to do it and what we'd need three days after you came back last year. The only thing that held me back was waiting for you to finally go through every last thing you had to try before you could figure out you'd done everything you could. I was waiting for you to be ready to go."
Jessica had looked away from Trish's level gaze, unable to take the force of caring and commitment in her words, even as she knew that this was exactly what Trish wanted her to hear. She did hear- but inside, she had her own mental protests against them.
Trish didn't stop her when Jessica deflected any sort of answer, instead reaching for a bottle of whiskey and drinking straight from the bottle. It was nowhere near 5 pm in Australia time, but that didn't mean it wasn't back in New York. Not that Jessica had given a damn about proper drink time protocol in the past few years.
If Trish had always been ready to run, that had to mean that a part of her had always expected that Jessica would fail, that she would screw up so badly or be so over her head in what she was up against that she wouldn't be able to survive without fleeing. That had to mean that no matter what she said to Jessica about being a hero, the truth was that Trish expected to be disappointed. Trish expected that in the end, instead of Jessica saving Trish, it was Trish and her money, Trish and her plans, who would save Jessica.
The thing was, Trish thought she'd saved them from danger, when the worst danger of all was just being a part of Jessica's life. And she never seemed to see that at all.
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Jessica got both herself and Trish fake IDs, once they had settled in over the first few weeks. Now, according to documentation, Trish was Hannah Johansen, and Jessica was Whitney Baldwin. It wasn't that they truly needed them, she had reasoned, when Trish questioned her, but that they might, one day. It was better to be prepared than caught off guard.
She didn't know what might be going on, back in the United States. Jessica had never been one to watch the news on TV or to click on news links on the Internet, and she had definitely never had an interest in joining social media. She kept herself as in the dark about current events as she could, because knowledge of perilous events or dangerous people, she had long ago determined, compelled her into the need to take action.
She didn't want to see anything about a man being found in a sealed bunker, whether dead or alive. She didn't want to know if any other super villains had cropped up back home, or whether Malcolm had gone back into drugs or Luke had ever moved on from her betrayal. She didn't want to read the speculation about the vanished status of Patricia Walker and what she might be up to. For all she knew, both she and Trish could be on the FBI's most wanted list, or someone could be hired to try to track them down. She didn't know, didn't want to know, and because Trish never seemed to be checking and never brought it up, she suspected Trish didn't want to know either.
Instead, they began to build new lives for themselves in Sydney. Trish decided to go back to school as her Hannah Johansen identity, studying psychology- an ironic move, Jessica had made sure to point out to her, given that Trish herself likely qualified for at least a few mental health diagnoses. Jessica suspected that Trish was trying to understand herself, her abusive mother, and Jessica too, maybe even to figure out how to "fix" herself and Jessica. Well, she might fix herself, but Jessica had long ago dismissed her damaged psyche as beyond repair.
Jessica found work as a security guard. Boring, a waste of her actual abilities and brain power, but she couldn't have let Trish take care of all the expenses alone. Especially with the amount of money she still spent on booze.
Trish had tried to encourage Jessica to get into college too, to figure out what she wanted in life.
"Your future is yours, Jess," she had said, falling back on the sort of pep talk that she should know by now was not something Jessica found inspiring. "You're free to build your life how you want it. Take this opportunity and run with it. Don't worry about money, I have that covered. Just tell me what you want to do, and we'll make it happen."
But what if all Jessica wanted to do was survive, one day at a time? What if sometimes, she wasn't even sure if she wanted that?
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Sometimes, Jessica felt almost right, almost normal. Right when she came home for work, right as dawn began to stretch over the horizon, and she passed by Trish in the hallway, getting up tousled and sleepy to prepare for an early class. No matter what mood Jessica was in, or how busy Trish was, she would take the time to smile and tell her good morning, ignoring Jessica's grunts or eye rolls as she leaned in to hug her quickly. And each time, just as Trish pulled back and continued on the way, Jessica would feel her body relax just a little, her mouth sometimes softening into something resembling a smile. Each afternoon when she woke from the early morning drinking binge that had finally allowed her to sleep, she would find painkillers beside her, a blanket pulled over her, and fresh coffee waiting in the pot. All Trish, of course.
Trish still nagged her, gently, but consistently, on Jessica's drinking. She worried aloud about Jessica's liver and heart, her brain, even her physical safety. That was a laugh, given Jessica's abilities; how exactly did she think Jessica would end up in a situation where she was drunk enough to lose her strength and speed?
"It could happen, Jessica," Trish had insisted when Jessica shrugged this off, her blue eyes serious. "You could black out and you don't know what someone could do to you. You could stumble off a building or into traffic-"
"Been there, done that," Jessica had interrupted, spreading out her arms in dramatic gesture. "Still alive, no lasting scars to show for it."
"You could make decisions you'll regret later," Trish had persisted, ignoring her comments. "People could use you. People could hurt you, and not just physically. But mostly, Jess, I'm worried because of what your drinking says about your emotional and mental state."
She had hesitated, checking just how far Jessica would allow her to go with this, how close she was to shutting down and cutting her off. But even as Jessica had tensed, her brow furrowing deeply, Trish had taken the plunge to finish what she had set out to say.
"It's a crutch, Jessica. Drinking is hiding, not helping. Like drugs were for me."
The damned thing about it was that sometimes Jessica knew she was right. Some nights, she felt guilty even before she touched the evening's first bottle, and by the time she drained her last, she hated herself and the anxious, fearful mess of her own uncontrollable thoughts. She felt in those moments just how weak she considered herself, how much of a failure, a person without anything to offer anyone, with no reason to exist in the world.
Trish might understand addiction, and how hard it was to stop. But what she didn't get was that she had succeeded because she was the better person than Jessica was, because she was stronger, powers or not.
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