Chapter Text
There isn’t really much to say, as far as Jessica is concerned. She’s certain Trish would have plenty to say, most of it irrelevant or having way too many emotions for her to stomach.
At first, her mom assured her that she was just a late bloomer. Fifteen or sixteen is the most common age to begin presenting an Echo, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only time anyone has. After her family died, Dorothy insisted on taking her again, despite her protests – before she realized that Jessica wouldn’t play a part of her dog and pony show with Patsy.
Dorothy’s nagging be damned, the music still didn’t come for her.
The first therapist tried to suggest that maybe Jessica was just delayed – which was absurd, because even Dorothy Walker could see that Jessica was well settled into herself and not easily changed by any.
The second concluded that the trauma of losing her entire family has frozen Jessica – maybe even forever – into a childlike state.
Trish has a theory, too, later on. That her…enhancements have made Jessica more resistant to mental probing. After the Kilgrave disaster has concluded, good and bad, she supposes that Trish was a little bit right in the end. It was just too bad that ability kicked in too late to save Reva Connors, and it might be true, but she’s actually more inclined to believe the third shrink, as much as that pains her to say.
“Jessica is not delayed. If anything, I would consider her quite advanced. She’s clearly very intelligent and aware of others, physically and emotionally. I believe what’s happened to her is even rarer. The ESM is designed to study a person’s psychological make-up. Even a sociopath would produce a sound – maybe not a nice sound, but a sound nonetheless.”
“So…so she’s worse than a sociopath?” Dorothy asked, visibly recoiling.
“No, Mrs. Walker. I’m telling you that her mind – at a very basic, fundamental level – is too closed for even an advanced electro-soul machine to read. There is nothing to hear, because Jessica does not want to be heard.”
So. That’s that, then.
Jessica is well aware that Trish feels a bit sorry for her – being a fully grown adult without an Echo is like having no soul, no matter what culture you’re in. Most people can’t even comprehend the idea of it. But Trish always would give her a teasing smile and say, “You have a soul, Jess. It’s just…hiding, for now.”
Jess feels a bit of pity for Trish in turn.
Trish has four Echoes, herself and three soulmates, and the two of them have done their level best to hide that since she was nineteen, because Trish actually was a late bloomer.
Most children settled into themselves sometime around high school age, usually between fifteen and seventeen. Jess is certain that Trish took so long because of Dorothy – after all, how could she hold herself into her own skin and personality, when her mother was constantly dragging her along wherever she pleased?
Then, like a meadow at summertime bursting into full bloom, Trish’s soul rushed out four songs all at once.
That night, she laughed, she cried, she danced and sang.
Then she and Jessica immediately worked on trying to make sure no one ever, ever discovered this.
Having more than one Echo was something of a controversial topic anyway, and if they’d told her mother, Dorothy would’ve thrown a fucking shitfit. But Jessica was more concerned about other potential problems. Some of the Patsy fans were well-meaning but creepy, some were very sweet and thoughtful, and some were downright scary.
After getting out of rehab for the very last time, Trish took on a revolving door of boyfriends that left her perpetually dissatisfied, more bored of each one than the last, but telling the whole world she had three soulmates was an invitation into the colorful hellscape of stalking and potential fraud that Jessica wanted to keep as far from Trish as possible.
If Jess had a twinge now and then, just a pinch of feeling where she wished for a place in that four person line-up, well…that was nobody’s business anyway. She kept that little nugget to herself. She knew, better than ever, that her affection was something of a curse.
So, Trish’s soul lived in feast and Jess’s lived in famine and in both of their minds, that was just the natural order of things. The grass was green, the sky was blue, Trish Walker was extra-adored, and Jessica Jones wouldn’t let anyone in.
No surprises here.
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At twelve, Matt was considered very young to have developed his Echoes. He always suspected that was because of his extrasensory powers. He was forced to acknowledge more about the world around him than many adults, never mind children, were required to deal with on a daily basis.
Four was…four was a lot. To have any more than two was considered quite unusual in the first place, but four was a lot. And if that weren’t enough, he developed them all at once. Most people with multiple soulmates gain them gradually, over time, some not even appearing until after they’ve gone past full adulthood.
Stick told him that it wasn’t important, that they could be easily ignored. That anything outside of his own body was either a distraction or a hostile force.
But his dad had told him that meeting her – like most people, his Irish Catholic father had assumed that Matt’s soulmate would be just one person of the opposite gender – and Jack had told him that meeting her would be beautiful.
“When it happens to you, Matty, it won’t be like anything else. Everything in your life will be clearer, and it doesn’t matter who she is, she’s gonna be the most amazing person you’ve ever met, inside and out. And the greatest part of this is, she’s gonna feel the exact same way about you, Matty. You’ll be her one and only.”
But what happens when you have three separate one and onlys?
In college, he actually felt like he may have started understanding what his father meant, and the first time is when he meets Foggy.
Foggy was not like anyone he’d ever met before. He was joyful, and funny, and unapologetically awkward. But also charming and kind and he treated Matt like a real, whole human being instead of like a walking talking disability.
But there was a tiny little problem there. Foggy’s Echo was painfully normal. He had two, got them at sixteen. The most average number, the most average age. Nothing unusual there at all. Matt and Foggy’s numbers don’t match up, which either means that Foggy doesn’t belong to him or that one of Matt’s song is what people call a ‘dead match’ – when you have another person’s song in your Echo, but they don’t have yours. It’s a one-sided guarantee straight to the friendzone.
Then the second time, he’d been certain he was on the nose with Elektra – especially when she told him that her song type was really rare. “My Echo has no spoken words.” And his heart had lurch, aching with excitement. Oh god, I have her. She’s the cougar, my roaring wildcat. “Have you ever seen a music box, with one of those dancing ballerinas inside?”
Confused, Matt’s spirits began to fall nearly as quickly as they rose. “Uh-huh?”
He can hear the warmth of her smile in her voice, never realizing that she was about to disappoint him. “It sounds like that, at the beginning and the end.”
---
“Nelson and Murdock. Sounds better.”
“You think?” Foggy asked, pleased.
“Yeah. Can’t see worth shit, but my hearing’s spectacular,” Matt said with a gentle slur in his words, a big smile on his face that Foggy ached to taste on his own lips.
“Me and you, pal. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna be the best damn avocados this city’s ever seen,” he said, with mock gravity.
Matt gave an adorable little drunken giggle. “Best damn avocados!”
Foggy shook his head and smiled. “Let’s get the hell outta here, c’mon.”
“You’re strong!” Matt said.
“I work out,” Foggy chuckled, since Matt knew he was full of shit.
“You’ve already gotten your Echo, right?” Foggy said suddenly, recalling Matt’s words. My hearing’s spectacular. Matt would definitely be able to hear his own song and the song of his soulmate.
“Uh-huh,” Matt slurred and giggled again. “Guess what, Foggy?”
Foggy mouth curved up helplessly into a smile. “What, Matty?”
“I got four,” he said, grinning up at the winter sky. “Foggy-Foggy-Foggy…four.”
His stomach dropped. “Um…what?”
“Mm-hm,” Matt hummed, apparently unaware that he’d dropped a bomb onto all of Foggy’s fondest hopes and dreams. “I’m a weirdoooooo…”
Swallowing down the bitter disappointment welling into his heart, Foggy said “That’s actually pretty cool, you know. I’ve never met anyone else with more than two.”
Matt hummed again, head leaning on his shoulder. “Four happens to one in every twenty-five thousand people. Approximately.”
Foggy grinned despite himself. “God, you’re such a fucking nerd.” Stopping to stare at him a moment before he asked, “Have you met one of them yet?”
“Thought-thought it might be Elektra,” he admitted, now looking so pathetically sad it would be comical if Foggy weren’t so fucking gone on him.
“She wasn’t?” Foggy asked, genuinely surprised. He hated Elektra, personally he thought she did bad things to Matt’s emotional and mental health, but she really seemed serious about Matt, and no one ever said that the people you love had to be good for you. Like for instance my obsessive crush on my best friend, that kind of bad for you.
Matt was the first person Foggy had ever had that feeling about. He liked all his girlfriends, they were lovely. Marci for example was smart, ambitious, clever, and she was going to be killer in the courtroom someday. But he was never fooled into thinking she could be The One.
“I thought she was the wildcat,” Matt said nonsensically, miserably burying his face in Foggy’s coat and shivering slightly with the cold as they stumbled back to their apartment. “But she was a-she was a fucking ballerina.”
Matt almost never swore that vehemently, which was how Foggy knew he was really devastated by that. Patting his friend’s arm in sympathy, despite the victorious feeling swelling in his chest, Foggy said “I don’t know what any of that meant, but I’m really sorry she wasn’t a…cougar, buddy.”
Sleepily, Matt said “She’s-she’s a wildcat. A screamer. Roars…like a cougar.”
Laughing at him, he nudged him slightly. “Sounds sexy.” He meant to say it jokingly, but the vodka made it serious. “How do you know it’s a she?”
“Just-just a feeling,” he admitted. “…not as sure of the other two.”
And as devastated as he was, with that conversation, Foggy knew his wish was doomed to failure. He could be Matt’s friend, his business partner, his follow avocado, but not his love. Foggy wanted his soulmate to be Matt, with a desperation that bordered on mental instability. But the math between them just didn’t add up.
Two divided by four was always going to equal two, no matter what he did and while eighteen year old Franklin Nelson would never have known it, his feelings for him were dead on arrival.
And then one day, he met a wildcat.