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Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
"You are really bad at this.”
“Hey,” Jess says, slamming into the wall to get out of the way of the boy trying to hit her with his hovering skateboard. “He’s just a kid, I’m trying not to hurt him.” She does her best to knock him over with a venom blast without actually killing him, but he swerves and she swears under her breath.
"Sure,” the girl says, and Jess feels like she’s getting a headache already, and it’s not even time for lunch yet. But then the girl punches him, and he falls off his board.
“Come on,” Jess says. “What did I say. He’s a kid.”
“I’m eighteen,” he says, wounded. Apparently more by Jess’s assessment of his age than either the punch or the fall. The girl has one foot on his chest, and it seems to be stopping him from getting up.
“Join the club,” the girl says. She’s examining his board. “What’s this?” she asks, pulling at the mass of wires in its underbelly.
“Hey,” he says, “come on, I don’t want to have to solder it back in --” but it’s come off in her hands already. She’s turning it over.
“That’s a walkman,” Jess says. The board has stopped hovering now, and has clattered down next to its rider. “Your board was powered by a walkman?”
“They should put this thing in a museum,” the girl says.
“No,” Jess says, and takes it off her. “I still know people who use a walkman. But I’m confiscating this.”
“Ugh,” he says. “Do you know how many times I had to bid for one of those things on ebay.”
“Whatever,” Jess says. “Stop stealing stuff from local businesses, and then we’ll talk.”
She leaves him the board. The girl kicks at it, but not hard, and it rattles down the sidewalk as he chases after it.
***
She sounds nothing like Carol. It’s stupid, but when she’d said - “You’re really bad at this”... it had made her think of Carol. Until she’d looked over her shoulder, and seen. Curly dark hair, no costume. But she has the same snarl. A look in her eye.
***
Jess isn’t sure how she winds up having lunch with the girl, but she does.
“Aren’t you an avenger?” she asks. “Don’t you have...” and then she mimes Spider-Man’s web-shooting, pulling up her sleeve as she does to reveal a tattoo of a star on her wrist. She’s so young. Christ. She’s drinking a milkshake. Jess has black coffee and a plate of lackluster chicken fingers, and she contemplates ordering a second helping of fries.
“No,” Jess says. “Wrong Spider-Woman. What do you do, anyway? Besides punching kids.”
“He’s not a kid, he’s older than I am,” the girl says, then screws up her face like she’s eaten something bad. Which maybe she has. She’s got a burger and chili fries, and Jess is kind of jealous, but she had just really... felt like chicken today. “Or the same age. Whatever.”
Why does Jess keep getting stuck with the children. She doesn’t like children.
“Punching’s most of it,” she says, after a minute. She stamps a foot on the ground, not hard, and says, “kicking, too.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Jess says. She’d sort of known since she’d first turned up, but it’s the kicking that really seals it. “You’re friends with Clint’s ingenue.” The word feels bitter in her mouth, but so does the coffee. A furrow appears in the girl’s brow. “America,” she says, and points at her with a chicken finger. “I’m Jess.”
“You are an avenger,” she says.
“Was,” Jess says. “That’s the crucial part. Hey, could I have some more fries? Thank you.”
***
One of the things about not living in Avengers’ tower and trying to actively avoid any of that stuff is that -- it’s harder to get in touch with your best friend who’s travelling through space that way. Her shitty phone doesn’t have any kind of cosmic data plan.
She writes emails, sometimes, although god knows if Carol will be able to pick them up. She doesn’t reply, but Jess likes to think that she’ll read them at some point.
It’s hard to be the only one who remembers. It’s hard to think about, and so maybe it’s easier this way. It’s easier to think that the Carol who’s lost -- away -- in space is the same Carol that she’s actually lost. Because it feels selfish to cry about it, and to feel sad, when Carol decided to do it, and Carol decided that what she had to do was more important than keeping -- whatever she had. Whatever she remembered.
But maybe that’s why Jess doesn’t want to do it anymore. No matter what she does, she can’t help thinking -- I don’t think that’s a decision I would have made. Not with that outcome.
Easy for her to say, though. Nobody’s ever come to her and said hey, there’s a gaping hole in your brain that means if you fly, you’ll lose all of your memories. And then made it so that she -- has to fly.
So, yeah. She emails Carol. Stories about the shitty things they’ve done -- there was one time we made Wolverine think he’d woken up in 2099 by painting his room neon, but I think he was probably just humouring us -- and links to articles and stories and pictures of cats that she thinks she might like. That she would have liked. Jess hasn’t really spent enough time with her to know if she likes the same things, now. Or maybe she has, but she purposefully didn’t notice.
It had started at Christmas -- or, well, she’d emailed her before then but nothing so... personal. Nothing so much like a letter. But after the whole rat thing that Jess is never going to think about again, Kit and her parents had said, we’re going to send her something. And Jess had stared down at the yellow paper and chewed on the end of her bio, stopping just short of getting black ink in her mouth, and had said, sure.
Jess has superhuman agility, endurance, durability and strength, thank you, but her hand was cramping and she’d written less than a page. How did everyone used to do this? Did everyone just have hand cramps all the time? Or maybe she was gripping the pen too hard. There were cracks in the plastic. Maybe she just wasn’t -- used to it. But then, she’d never been much of a writer. She’d never gone to school, unless you count the whole thing Hydra training thing, which Jess doesn’t. But she’s made it okay. She can speak like six languages -- although some days it feels like she can barely find the words she wants in English -- and, and.
Hurry home. You’re a pain in the butt, but I miss you.
It’s easier to write an email. But she did write the letter like they asked her to, and waited for the ink to dry before she ran her hand over the page.
***
Carol was here for when Jess quit. For the end of -- that whole mess with all the other Spider-Men and the Spider-Women and Jess wants to never see any other, happier or better or even just different versions of herself or her friends ever again if she can help it. She’s still not sure why -- she’s gone again, now.
It was like she knew when she was needed most. Or like she knew -- that Jess was about to make a big, stupid, rash decision and she felt like she had to be there for it. Because what else are friends for, other than witnessing the -- big moments?
It stings. Jess eats the last of her second plate of fries, and thinks, I probably don’t need another.
The best part of friendship is -- not when the big, rash decisions are being made. That would have happened with, or without her. But it’s easier to do that than the rest. It’s easier to do that than slot into somebody’s life, take up space you hadn’t really known was there until they let you in, or you burrowed in.
She wonders if Carol likes all the same foods as she did before and doesn’t know why. She wonders if she ever gets songs in her head and doesn’t know how she knows them. She smiles to herself, and then thinks, she’s not here, and you’re not having lunch with a friend.
“You hop between universes,” Jess says to America, who’s texting someone on her phone.
“I thought you’d been doing that,” America says. She’s got a denim jacket on and Jess thinks, why doesn’t my jacket look as cool as that, and then thinks, you’re a grown-up, remember? Her new yellow glasses are perched on the top of her head, held in place by her hair. She needs to dye her hair soon, she thinks. It’s easier to do when Carol’s here to help, but maybe -- well, maybe if Natasha’s in town she can help and they can drink and not talk about anything.
“I did,” Jess says. She’s on her third coffee. “So - you ever seen another version of yourself, and thought...”
“There aren’t any other versions of me,” America says, bluntly. “I’m the only one.”
Jess blinks. How can she know that? But she seems pretty sure. “Lucky,” she says.
“Well,” America says. “Means I’ve got to make this count.” Her plate is empty, mostly scraped of all the chilli, and her glass is empty too, with the last milkshake residue slowly slipping from the sides. It’s starting to feel like summer outside, and Jess had kind of forgotten what that was... Like.
Summer in New York is gross, she remembers, like waking from a dream. Maybe Carol had the right idea after all, getting away from this.
“We’ve all got to do that,” Jess says, and she foots the bill, because she’s a grown-up.
“Don’t get beat up by any more kids,” America says.
“Don’t beat up any more kids,” Jess says.
***
America can kick through the walls between universes. Clint told her that, back when they were... talking. Okay, they’re talking again now, but back that other time that they were... more than just talking.
When Jess was jumping between universes, trying not to get killed, she had wondered - was there a version of her and Carol who had... made it work? Made something work?
She hardly ever writes anything that personal in the emails. Well, the stories are personal -- but she doesn’t write about her feelings, or her emotions. She wonders if it’s a burden, having this person who you barely remember writing to you so much. Like you mean so much to them, and they don’t mean anything much to you. Why were they friends, anyway? Was it something immutable, to do with their personalities? Or was it...
They’d started out with Jess saving her life. There’d always been some -- lack of balance. She didn’t want Carol to owe her anything. But she didn’t want to be left with nothing.
Jess runs a hand through her hair, and sighs. Without thinking about it too much, she writes an email on her phone with just her thumb and then sends it without reading it over and double-guessing herself.
I know you don’t need to hear it, and I know you’re probably still off having fun with Lila Cheney, but I miss you, and you’d better not be doing anything too stupid.
***
She gets to her apartment that evening -- she spends her afternoon trying to help more strangers, to limited success -- and collapses onto the sofa. “I’m ordering take out,” she says, loudly, to the empty room. “Yeah,” she says. But then she thinks about lunch, and she just decides to make some pasta instead. She boils the water on the stove, and stares into the pot as it bubbles. She can do this, she thinks. She can live like this.
***
Another few weeks like this, and Jess isn’t sure, so much, why she wanted so much to help ordinary people. Ordinary people are the worst.
Well, no. But they’re as terrible as everyone else she knows. She’s still emailing Carol, but as time passes, they’re less about Carol and more about her. She’s pretty sure that Carol’s not reading them, and when she comes home she can just tell her to delete them. “I was working some stuff out, and it made it easier to think that I was writing to you and not just myself.” She laughs as she thinks about this, and dries her hands on a half-damp tea-towel in her kitchen.
She thinks -- maybe I should move somewhere else. Well, she’s been thinking it for a while. What is there for her in New York? She’s not an Avenger. Carol isn’t here anymore. She thinks about London, as she sometimes does. She wonders how quickly her accent would settle back down and lose the transatlantic thing she’s been nursing for a while, like a 1930s film-star.
But -- she looks around. She’s starting to like this apartment. She’s fixing it up. How can you fix anything if you keep running. But, is London this disgusting in summer? Her windows are thrown open, and the aircon’s whirring, and she still feels flushed. There’s a knock at the door, and she yells, “it’s unlocked!” and gets a glass of water before she walks over.
It’s Carol. She’s pretty sure it’s Carol. She doesn’t have her skrull detector watch on, but she’s pretty sure only Carol could make that expression with her face.
“Aw, I was hoping you’d be in your new costume,” Carol says.
“It’s like, a hundred degrees outside,” Jess says. As soon as she got in she changed into what is... basically underwear. Well, no. A vest top and some shorts. She wasn’t planning on seeing anyone. And it’s all black. It’s perfectly appropriate. “What, you want me to go around wearing something that makes me want to pass out on the off-chance that you’ll stop by on your way from Mercury to Venus?”
“Mercury is way too hot, nobody goes there,” Carol says. She’s got a pair of sunglasses on her head which she’s fiddling with. “I got your emails,” she says, finally.
Jess feels herself flush even more, which she wasn’t sure was possible. She takes a big gulp of water. “Sorry,” she says, once she’s swallowed. “It was kind of -- I was working some stuff out. You didn’t need to read them.”
Carol’s face falls, slightly, which makes Jess feel worse. “I liked them,” Carol says. She has her hands at her side, and she’s kind of opening them and then curling them back into fists. She walks to the window, and laughs, because Jess knows from experience that it’s like being hit in the face by a radiator.
“That sea air, huh,” Carol says.
“Sure,” Jess says, and she goes to stand next to her. “Wow, it’s particularly strong today. And can you smell that?”
“No,” Carol says, turning her back to it. Jess follows suit. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Ah, admit it,” Jess says. “You missed New York.”
A look passes over Carol’s face, and is gone. “Yeah,” she says. “You know, New York’s a weird place to forget. It doesn’t want you to forget. It’s made to be so -- easy to remember. You’re on one block, you can work out how to get to another.” They’re standing very close. Carol’s breath is warm. Jess leans back, slightly, but doesn’t step away.
“Yeah,” Jess says. “Took me a while to get used to it. It’s all so...” she throws a hand out. “London has all these tiny little streets,” she says. “It feels easier to get lost there.”
“Right,” Carol says. She rubs at her forehead with the knuckle of her thumb. “You got any food in?”
Jess rolls her eyes. “Sure,” she says, and goes to the fridge. She sighs happily at the cool air when she opens it. “Some cold sesame noodles from last night... some apples, a peach... cold pizza?”
Carol takes the cold pizza, and Jess takes the noodles, and they sit on the couch.
“So,” Jess says, as she wipes at her chin. “Back for good?”
“Just stopping by,” Carol says, and looks at her with her head tilted to one side. “So I was walking here from uptown,” she says, “and I wasn’t really -- it wasn’t like I was counting the blocks, but then suddenly I was here.”
“You’ve never really been here before,” Jess says. Her mouth feels dry. It’s not what -- maybe it’s not what Carol’s thinking.
Carol shakes her head. “I know it here,” she says. “The city. This apartment’s nicer than Avengers’ Tower, by the way.”
Jess’s stomach is tumbling through the air in front of her. Right. New York. “You didn’t forget everything,” she says.
“No,” Carol agrees. “I just don’t always know what I remember until I see it. Smell it.” She’s finished the pizza, and she wipes her hand on her shorts. “It...” she trails off. She’s looking out of the window again.
“Hey,” Jess says. “Those emails -- I wasn’t trying to guilt you into visiting. I understand why you need to --”
Carol sighs and looks back at her. Really looks at her. “It hurts,” she says. “Not remembering. But also...” She touches Jess’s wrist, and Jess flinches, but then she grabs Carol’s wrist before she draws away. Carol closes her eyes. Jess runs her thumb across the inside of Carol’s wrist, softly. She missed Carol. She missed this. Whatever this is.
“It’s not just New York,” Jess says.
“It’s not just New York,” Carol says, and she cracks one eye open, and smiles. “I was reading your emails, and... even when I didn’t remember what had happened, I remembered the feeling.”
“Yeah?” Jess says. She takes a deep breath. She feels something inside her expand. She’s found it so hard to -- to wrap her head around. When she thinks of it, she thinks of it as -- like, a hole. But it’s not a hole. Her body healed the hole, it just couldn’t restore it as it had been. It’s -- new tissue. But Carol had seemed -- she had seemed somehow the same, although she was totally different. And -- she’d known some of it was left. Jess doesn’t mind being a feeling. The way New York is a feeling. The way she can do maths in her head without knowing all of the steps. The way sometimes, if she’s had a particular type of dream, she can spend most of the morning thinking in Russian or German and not realise until she tries to speak to someone and it comes out in the wrong language. “That’s most of it, for me.”
Carol twists her wrist until she’s holding Jess’s wrist again instead, and she returns the gesture. Gentle strokes. Jess isn’t used to it, and she tries her best not to react. She tries her best not to shake, or to sigh, or to hold Carol closer.
“I like space,” Carol says. “I like that -- I never look up at it and think, have I been here before? I always know. I know where my feet have been. I know what I’ve done.”
Jess smiles, because she understands, even if she doesn’t like it. She thinks, I’m not going to leave New York. She thinks, I want to have that here. I want to know everything, here.
“But,” Carol says, and she sweeps her hair all back over one shoulder with her free hand, and leans in. She looks at Jess. She’s very, very close now. Her eyes are wide. Jess smiles, shakily, and Carol kisses her.
“I read your emails,” Carol says, they’re hugging now, and she’s kind of saying it over Jess’s shoulder. “And I just thought --” she pauses and makes a frustrated noise, like she just can’t get the words, and Jess draws back and touches her face with one hand. Carol growls and responds by pushing her face away with both her hands, but gently, and Jess laughs into them and then kisses her fingers.
“I don’t know,” Carol says, finally. “But I felt -- I had -- feelings. And I thought -- I thought there was something here that I’d missed, before.” Jess doesn’t say anything, but she closes her eyes.
“I wasn’t -- I wasn’t wrong,” Carol says. It’s not a question, because Jess kissing her back had already been the answer.
“You weren’t wrong,” Jess says. She opens her eyes. She thinks, Carol won’t be here forever. Neither will I. “Which will be a shock to everyone, let me tell you.”
Carol’s face cracks into a smile, and Jess thinks, for a split second, about that weird, almost-silent lunch with America Chavez, and the way she’d said, I’ve got to make this count. Because, the thing is, most of the time Jess does have to just live in this universe. She’s doing her best at it, even if the best job she can do involves demolishing an office she never really used and putting in a new kitchen. There are still big holes in the walls that need replastering, and it all needs a new coat of paint, but she’s got time. Probably.
Carol kisses her again, and says, “you know I’m going back.”
And Jess says, “you know if you let any aliens hurt you I’ll come and kill you both.”
Carol laughs, and says, “keep writing to me?” and Jess smiles.
“You’re my diary,” she says, and then scrunches up her forehead. “I thought that’d sound less weird than it did.”
“Hey,” Carol says, and kisses her forehead. Jess smiles and it smooths back out. “You’ll be here?”
“I can’t promise you that,” Jess says, and Carol knows that, knows her, even if she doesn’t always... remember everything. “But I’ll let you know where I go.”
“Deal,” Carol says, and they fist-bump and Carol says pow, and Jess laughs because she’s such a giant dork, because only giant dorks would want to go and live in space, and then she laughs and laughs and holds onto her, and she thinks, don’t cry, don’t cry, and she’s successful, and Carol is successful, and they're both successful, mostly and the night gets cooler as it gets later, and Jess kisses Carol again, and she tries her best not to think about the emails, because she has Carol right here, and it's so much easier to think, when Carol's here -- I understand. She understands why they're friends, why they're -- everything. The balance is not -- it's not what she thought it was. It's about something that she can't write down in an email, although it's in the stupid stories she likes to tell. It's a feeling. It's more than that. It's a swell in her head and it's her mouth feeling dry. And it's her kissing Carol again, and saying, "I hope you're not going to leave before the morning," and Carol smiling, and Carol taking up way too much of the bed on the hottest night of the year, and not caring, and caring so much.