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It’s the dead of night when Luke wakes up to the tinny pop song coming from his phone that means the group chat. He’s conditioned now; he’s reaching for the bedside table before he’s even sitting upright. He has to blink twice as his blurry eyes focus on the screen, but the electric jolt that goes through him when he reads the text sends him all the way to wakefulness.
Jessica, (3:47): ‘help hes hre’
It’s winter, and windows with cracked seals have Luke sleeping in sweatpants and t-shirts. He pulls a hoodie on and is out the door in under a minute.
He gets another text as he blares down West Side Highway.
Danny, (13:53): ‘you there?’
Danny’s on the other side of the planet with Colleen, chasing down a lead on the Hand. The fact that he’s keeping in touch, that Luke’s not the only one getting that call, is nice, but it won’t protect Jess.
Both hands on the wheel, Luke doesn’t bother texting back. He concentrates on travelling exactly at the speed limit, no more, no less. Won’t do anyone any good if he gets pulled over.
It’s been 17 minutes since the text came in when Luke parks across the street from Jessica’s apartment. The door to the building is locked. Luke pushes hard and walks in.
The door to Alias Investigations is closed. Luke tests the handle, listening hard for any sounds inside. There’s nothing. This door is locked, too, and he breaks it quietly, swinging it open on silent hinges and stepping through.
Luckily, he knows this place in the dark.
He reaches the main room. It’s still, empty, orange light coming through the slats to crisscross the floor. The smell of tequila is everywhere even more than usual. Luke checks the kitchen first, then the bedroom, then the bathroom. He’s heading toward the other side of the apartment when he hears something and moves quickly.
Jessica is huddled in a ball with her back to the nightstand, protected from view by her bed. The bottle of tequila is on its side next to her, too empty to spill. When Luke kneels down in front of her, she whimpers, but when he tilts her head to check her airway her eyes flash open.
He catches the fist aimed at his face just in time. It’s a hard block, with Jessica’s strength behind it, and the next one connects with his cheekbone. He falls on his hip, but it’s enough to catch Jessica’s wrist when the next strike comes, to drag her onto the ground.
“Jessica! It’s me- stop hitting me!” he says when she wrenches her arm from his grasp and tries again. “It’s Luke!”
Her glassy eyes finally connect with his. “Luke,” she moans, slurring even the one word, and she shivers in his arms. “Luke, he’s here. He’s here.”
He’s never heard her sound so afraid. Instinctively, Luke checks his back. There’s no one else in the room, or in his sight in the rest of the apartment. “Who’s here? Where is he?”
“Kilgrave. He’s- he came back for me, I knew he would come back for me. Luke, he won’t leave, I can’t-” She clutches at his sweatshirt with her nails, super-strong fingers clawing at the fabric hard enough to tear.
“Kilgrave is dead. You killed him,” Luke says. There’s no way, Jessica told him that she was sure this time, that she broke his neck with her own two hands.
“He’ll never be dead,” she shouts, out of control and paler than the grave. She lets her head back to the floor. “He’s here, Luke, I- I see him, he’s here!”
She’s looking over his shoulder. Luke checks, but there’s no one there.
He lets go of her arms, sitting back against the bed and letting out a huge breath, feeling his pulse start to slow in his neck. Jessica sobs quietly on the floor beside him.
Luke pulls out his phone.
Me, (4:15): ‘I got it. We’re good.’
Danny, (14:15): ‘glad to hear it. Let me know if we need to come back’
Me, (4:15): ‘Will do.’
He looks up. Jessica has curled on her side with her back to the wall. Her body is rigid, eyes wide and unseeing, breath short.
Luke realizes this isn’t just the tequila.
“Hey, Jess,” he says gently, walking over on his knees. “You’re safe here, I promise. You’re safe with me.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him, but he knows better than to touch her. When the vets get like this, twitchy and remembering dead enemies, you don’t touch them. She told him something, once, brassy and unfiltered, like it didn’t matter, but looking away so she wouldn’t see how he reacted.
“Sometimes I hear a British accent, or walk by a restaurant and catch a whiff of something he liked, and it’s like I’m right back there, sitting across from him and smiling till my cheeks cramp.”
“Main Street,” Luke murmurs. “Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane.”
Jessica starts breathing deeper, and Luke says it again and again, untiring, until she closes her eyes.
He doesn’t think she’s asleep, but she doesn’t react when he picks her up, except to tuck her face into his neck. She told him once she liked the way he smelled.
He puts her in the bed and tucks up behind her, pulling the blankets over them both. She’s too cold, always was even when he knew her before, and it’s colder now. This apartment doesn’t have windows that let the cold in, but it’s big and empty anyway. And he thinks she didn’t turn the heater on.
Luke tells himself he’s only staying because she drank enough to throw up in her sleep and kill herself, but he’s left her like that before, when she screamed and threw things and he washed his hands of her for the night. He won’t admit that he can’t leave her in this place where Kilgrave walked, let her wake up alone and expecting to see him when she opens her eyes.
He couldn’t help her fight Kilgrave when he was alive, but tomorrow she’ll wake up with someone warm and unbreakable covering her back, and that’s better than nothing.