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Jessica couldn’t really remember her family, her real one, that is. Sure she remembers snippets; her mother’s wisdom, her father’s eyes, her little brother’s smile. She tries to remember the way her brother’s cheeks glowed when he laughed, how his fingers tapped eccentrically at his Gameboy screen as he worked to complete a level, brows furrowed, tongue poking out.
She tries to remember the good.
The alternative is guilt, and she’s tried endlessly to shove that down with a flippant attitude and an unorthodox amount of alcohol.
Of course at the mention of family there’s also the memories of the one that came after. She never really considered them her family, she never loved them, not at first, and they didn’t love her. She was a campaign ploy, a pretty picture of a broken child and a concept of kindness that had to be faked in the absence of anything but selfishness.
Never once after she was taken in did Jessica consider Trish her sister, not even after they grew close, Dorothy Walker never loved Jessica enough for her and Trish to be considered sisters.
Then again, Dorothy walker never really loved Trish either, not in the way a woman should love her daughter, not in the way Jessica’s mom used to tuck her into bed, brushing her dark hair out of her face so that she could place a soft kiss to her forehead before she went to sleep.
Dorothy Walker loved Trish in bruises, in torn skin and fake smiles. She loved her in the way that children pretend to like coffee so they can seem more grown up.
Ultimately, it was the worst circumstances that brought Jessica and Trish together. Although back then she was Patsy, not Trish, it was complicated.
Patsy and Trish, Jessica came to learn, were very different people. Patsy was the child star, the forced smile and the covered up bruises. Patsy was red hair and stuck up behaviour and mean just like her mother.
Trish was different. Trish was the girl who used to sneak into Jessica’s room at one in the morning, shaking with makeup running down her cheeks in an elaborate painting of fear. Trish was blonde hair and kind eyes, whispers in the dark and soft lips.
Patsy was the stage name, Trish was the person. Jessica came to love them both anyway.
They’re fifteen when Jessica saves Trish for the first time. Fifteen but so much more mature then any fifteen year olds should ever have to be. Ms Walker lies unconscious on the cream rug, her blonde hair shimmering under the yellow hall light, and Jessica shuts the door to the bathroom, cutting off the view from Trish.
The floor is cold, light blue tiles shock Jessica’s hand as she crouches down to look at Trish. “Are you okay?” It’s the first sentence she’s spoken since her family died that isn’t woven with bitterness or sarcasm.
Sniffling, Trish looks up and tear tracks fall down her cheeks. “My mom…”
“I’m-” Jessica sighs as she looks towards the doorway that she through Mrs Walker though. “Sorry.”
“No.” Smiling softly, Trish shakes her head. “It’s just, no one’s ever saved me before.”
“Well,” Jessica smiles, for the first time in her long time, feeling as if the frowning cast of her face will break as she finally lets herself lift her lips. Gently, she wipes away Trish’s tears. “I’ll always be here to save you.”
Hesitantly, Trish leans forward and places a warm kiss on Jessica’s forehead, leaving a sense of melancholic nostalgia behind.
Something begins.
*
They’re sixteen when Trish dyes her hair blonde. Jessica stands guard at the door, watching Trish expertly run her fingers through her dampened hair and trying not to focus on the water droplets that creep down the side of her neck. Flexing her biceps with every hand movement as she works the dye into her hair, Trish catches Jessica’s eye and smirks, her perfect lips curling upwards into a tease.
Jessica is unable to look away, enraptured in her best friend as she stands with her back pressed to the bathroom door, letting her eyes wander across tanned skin. It doesn’t help that Trish opted not to wear a shirt, figuring that it would get ruined in the dyeing process. Jessica thinks now it was perhaps for a different reason, as Trish eyes her with that stupid playful grin still pasted on her face.
So Jessica indulges herself, trailing her eyes down Trish’s cleavage, where water runs from her shoulders under the lace of her bra. Trish has filled out a little now that her mom doesn’t watch her weight like a hawk anymore and Jessica thinks that healthiness looks good on her.
“Hey Jess?” Trish drops her hair, giving Jessica the sweetest smile. “My arms are cramping, could you come and help me out?”
Swallowing, Jessica nods, removing her back from the door and quietly moving behind Trish, rolling up her sleeves and massaging her head. They stand, in silence, for a few minutes, the air thick with tension as Jessica slowly runs her hands through Trish’s damp hair. After a while, Jessica speaks and it feels funny in her throat. “I think you’re done.”
Neither of them move, Jessica’s hands still resting, tangled, in Trish’s hair.
Brave has never been something Jessica Jones would describe herself as; stubborn, perhaps, or determined, but never brave. However, as she moves Trish’s hair to one side, and leans down to kiss the side of her neck where the water droplets dance so perfectly, brave is the only thing she can be.
Trish leans back, humming and Jessica realises that this had probably been the intention the whole time. Not that she’s complaining. Turning around, Trish connects their lips and it’s soft and sweet, as all first kisses are supposed to be, and Jessica falls into it completely.
Later, when Ms Walker is screaming on and on about how the cameras won’t make the hair colour look good, all Jessica can think about is how her lips are still tingling.
*
They kiss whenever they can after that, sometimes soft like the first one and sometimes harder and more desperate for something that neither of them can quite place. Sex probably, Jessica thinks bluntly, or love.
But Jessica Jones doesn’t crave love, so she pushes that back and lets the answer just be sex. It’s not a bad answer, not when they’re clawing at each other’s clothes behind locked doors and giggling any time they hear Ms Walker walk past. Trish with flushed cheeks and messed hair, mischief shining in her eyes, holding one hand over her mouth so that her mother won’t hear her.
It’s pretty good.
They discuss moving out together, trailing fingers across hipbones, seventeen and eyes wide with dreams and hopes that they once thought could never be anything.
Instead of covering up bruises now, Trish covers up hickies that run from her jaw to in between her breasts whilst Jessica smiles sheepishly in the background. Trish always gets her back though.
The blankets on Jessica’s bed aren’t as silky or expensive as the ones on Trish’s, but they’re warm and smell like them. The expensive bookshelf is filled with Trish’s books, as Jessica doesn’t read that much. But the posters are Jessica’s and the closet has mostly Trish’s clothes in and the room is so wholly theirs that Trish barely goes into her room anymore. Ms Walker doesn’t care enough to notice that Trish and Jessica don’t sleep separately anymore, or at least doesn’t care enough to ask. It’s peaceful.
They talk about what colour curtains their future apartment will have, what kind of lights, money isn’t an issue, some of Trish’s Patsy fame still clung to her like the smell of smoke and she may as well do something with it. They talk about getting a cat, suggesting names. “How about mushypie?” Trish smirks, knowing Jessica will hate it.
“How about no.” Shifting to face Trish, Jessica smiles softly, her bare leg brushing against Trish’s. “How about Lucifer?”
“What?” Trish grins mockingly. “Like the cat in Cinderella?”
Rolling her eyes, Jessica huffs, knowing that she’s being made fun of. “No, like the demon possessing my body.”
“Oh shut up.” Planting a kiss on Jessica’s cheek, Trish smiles. “Just because you don’t want everyone to know you’re a big softie.”
Grumbling, Jessica kisses Trish back, short and sweet. “Only for you.”
*
They move out earlier than expected, due to Ms Walker coming home early and finding her daughter more or less naked with Jessica in between her legs. There’s a lot of shouting and Jessica throws a chair through a wall, but after an hour or so they agree to leave and Ms Walker sits down with a headache and an acceptance that she can’t control her daughter anymore. She stopped being able to do that since the incident in the bathroom all those years ago. She’s the only one to blame.
Jessica and Trish get their apartment, it’s grand and fancy and all Trish’s design but Jessica doesn’t care because her one criteria for an apartment is that it has Trish in it.
The windows are large and it feels like Jessica can see the entire world through them. Concrete buildings stretch up to the sky like fingers and the lights illuminate the streets at night, creating artificial stars out of the beating heart of the city. It’s very beautiful.
Not as beautiful as Trish.
Here’s the thing, Jessica Jones loves Trish Walker. She’s never said it, but she does, and she’s walking back from a grocery store when it hits her: she has to tell Trish.
She has to tell her about how she’s prettier than the entire city, how she’s the best person Jessica’s ever met. It occurs to Jessica, on that slightly cold night returning from a grocery store, that she needs to say that Trish saved her as much as she ever saved Trish, and that she’s thankful, and that she loves her.
There’s a sound from behind her and she whips around to see a guy being mugged, and all the thoughts of heroism that Trish installed come rushing back in. She saves him, fists bruised, and, for a second, everything is great.
Then Killgrave starts clapping.
*
Being mind controlled is like being paralysed in a bathtub and watching the water slowly rise.
Jessica doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
*
When she pulls away from Killgrave, she’s broken in every sense of the word. Actually, she was broken at the age of fourteen, when her parents died, now she’s shattered. She physically can’t breathe when she tries to think about what she did, her throat swells and her chest hurts and she almost wants to die.
She deserves it, there’s no doubt about that, but Trish is the only thing in her life that hasn’t been poisoned by the putridity of Killgrave so really she should say goodbye before she goes.
For closure and all that.
(Not because she wants to feel her warmth one last time, not because she’s hoping for anything, not because she never got to say I love you. She doesn’t deserve any of that anymore.)
*
Jessica is so tired. Her eyes hurt from being open and her limbs feel as if they may fall off from fatigue. She staggers into the elevator of her old apartment building, only noticing her bloody hands when she goes to press the button. Now that she thinks about it, it stings, along with every other thing in her body.
She’s crumbling like Pompeii, turning to ashes, burning, dying. Whatever she used to be is gone and she is left, an empty shell.
All she wants to do is go to sleep and never have to wake up.
Jessica wonders if Trish has changed much, if she looks older perhaps. Jessica missed her birthday and the thought of Trish sitting alone in the dark when she should be celebrating makes her vomit in a plant pot just outside the front door.
When she finally musters up the courage to knock, Jessica wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans, feeling her heart send earthquakes through her chest. Trish answers, and she looks wretched, her face drawn and worried and just exhausted. It all fades away as soon as she looks up, recognition bringing back colour to her features. “Jess?”
Jessica collapses to the floor.
*
When she wakes, she’s lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around her and her hands bandaged. Trish is watching her, nervously tapping her fingers on her coffee table like the way she does when she’s waiting for something, or when her mother comes to visit.
“Hey there.” Jessica croaks out, meaning it to sound smooth but it just comes out cracked.
“Jess…” Trish looks like she’s about to cry, and Jessica really hopes she doesn’t because then they’ll both be crying.
“I’m fine.” Jessica lies, through gritted teeth as she sits up.
“What happened?” It’s barely a whisper, a quiet breeze of nothing, as if Trish doesn’t really want to know the answer.
But she deserves it. Just like Jessica deserves to die.
So Jessica explains, about Killgrave, about the mind reading. She chokes on the word rape and suffocates on the phrase “I killed her”.
Trish squeezes her eyes shut, face contorted with pain. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Jessica shakes her head. “It was all my fault.”
Climbing over Jessica, Trish lies against her back, wrapping an arm around her comfortingly. “I’ll always be here to save you.” She whispers, but Jessica is already asleep.
*
In the morning, Jessica is gone. It was to be predicted.
She gets her own apartment, a dingy place downtown which comes with loneliness and a drinking problem. Trish’s absence creates a void so big that it’s almost impossible to ignore. She feels empty all the time, emotionless and apathetic, running out of money and in need of a job.
So she starts up a job as a P.I, at least then she can earn money on her own terms, help as many people as she can.
Be the hero Trish always believed she could be.
No, don’t think of Trish.
Anything but that.
A month passes, then another. Jessica is healing, it’s taking its time but it’s happening. Her mother, her real one, used to say that time heals all and Jessica thinks that’s probably right. Her mother was always very perceptive. Too bad she didn’t see that truck coming.
Jessica grabs a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Too bad Reva didn’t see her fist coming.
Jessica unscrews the cap.
Too bad Trish isn’t here.
Jessica chugs.
Healing is a slow process.
*
Hope was an ironic name for Hope Shlottman to have. It had been six months, Jessica was better, in a way. There was still a Trish shaped hole in her life, but that was probably to be expected. Hope Shlottman was Killgrave’s message to Jessica, to show he wasn’t dead, that wasn’t as expected.
Then again, Killgrave wasn’t the easiest man to kill.
Jessica thumbs her phone, picking at the silver edges and wiping the greasy screen as she debates dialling the number she knows off by heart. Her heart is frayed, ropy and knotted, worn away by fear. She needs Trish.
Throwing her phone into her pocket, Jessica stands up. If she’s going to do this, she’ll do it in person.
Like a hero.
*
“I was never the hero you wanted me to be.” Is what ends up floating out of Jessica’s mouth into the dead air between them. She doesn’t really remember how she got there, just the cold of the night and the city illuminated like it always used to be. Trish is different now, more reserved, and Jessica can’t help but feel bad for where they left off.
The night sky is dark and heavy around them as they stand on their old concrete balcony and Jessica catches herself staring at the blue curtains on the window and remembering that day when they were seventeen, lying naked in bed and discussing the world together.
It hurts, to look at Trish now and think of maybes and someday, because in the end, Jessica probably messed her up more than her mother did. All that she’d been working towards, all of the “I’ll always be here to save you”, it never came in the end.
Trish looks cold in the darkness, her eyes stinging and nose red as she tries to talk to Jessica about therapists and help. Jessica doesn’t want that, she’s perfectly happy finding help at the bottom of cheap vodka bottles then being patronised by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. She tells Trish as much.
In the end, Trish sighs and gives in, and Jessica, like the coward she truly is, runs.
*
She thinks about leaving Trish and decides she’d rather face Killgrave. Surprisingly, it’s not a difficult decision, not even after six months.
Trish decides she wants in, and it’s nice working with her, if Jess wasn’t so worried about her all the time.
But she enjoys Trish in her working state, her blonde hair draping over paperwork and her collared shirts unbuttoned slightly, revealing the tanned skin underneath. She likes how sometimes Trish falls asleep, ever so innocently drooling as her head rests on its side, button nose peeping out from her mess of hair.
Trish sticks out her tongue when she concentrates, like Jessica’s brother used to.
It’s mesmerizing.
But the situations keep on getting more and more dangerous and eventually it’s Trish, taking drugs to enhance her strength, in order to project Jessica.
It would be flattering if Trish didn’t almost die.
The ambulance walls close in on Jessica as she leans over the still body of her best friend – girlfriend - whatever they are. There’s a constant flat line making white noise and Jessica gets shoved out of the way so that the doctors can work toward saving Trish’s life. For the first time in seven months, Jessica Jones lets her heart break.
*
It’s understandable that Jessica doesn’t want Trish near danger after she’s recovered, but then again, Trish is a grown woman who’s always been stubborn, so it’s not like Jessica could stop her.
They agree on headphones to block out Killgrave’s commands, it’s Trish’s idea and it’s so genius that Jessica could kiss her. She doesn’t.
The plan is solid, smart, again mainly Trish’s but no one needs to know that. There’s a few issues and possible flaws in it and a small voice in Jessica’s brain nags her that as a failsafe solution tell Trish you love her before you die.
She ignores it. Obviously.
But it all comes out when Trish asks for something Jessica would never say and Jessica looks her dead in the eye and says “I love you”. The deflation on Trish’s face is evident, she looks as if she has been crushed by Jessica’s words. Something Jessica would never say, because Jessica is a coward.
“That works.” Trish replies, tightly.
*
In the end, it’s Killgrave kissing Trish, or rather, making Trish kiss him, on the cold docks, with people bruised and beaten all around them and Jessica desperately praying to some form of god that he falls for her bluff.
He does, he walks right into her trap like a lamb to the slaughter, except nowhere near as innocent as a lamb. More like he walks into her trap like a rabid dog gets taken to the vets. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
“Smile for me.” He commands, and Jessica pushes past the disgust and draws her lips into a smile. The wind blows gently, scattering across the tarmacked docks and creating gentle ripples in the black, night time water.
Killgrave grins and Jessica’s stomach churns. “Tell me you love me.” He commands.
This is it, the end of it all. Jessica looks over Killgrave’s shoulder at Trish, making sure she’s listening. “I love you.” She says, clearly and truthfully, watching Trish’s blue eyes change softly at the words.
Then Jessica grabs Killgrave’s head and breaks his neck. It’s as simple as that.
Any mind control left is halted at the death of the puppeteer, and the people on the docks begin to wake from their zombified trances, but Jessica isn’t paying attention to them.
She’s looking at Trish, who is looking back at her with wonder and shock. As Jessica moves towards her, she takes in the city lights illumining across the water and thinks that maybe it’s time for a little rest. Trish is looking down, counting the cracks in the tiny paved wall at the edge of the water, her eyes darting and fingers tapping on her jeans. Reaching out, Jessica takes her hand, stopping the tapping.
“I’m sorry.” Trish chokes. “The headphones fell off and I couldn’t reach them and-”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Jessica repeats the words that Trish had told her seven months ago.
“I-” Trish deflates. “It’s awful, to feel so helpless. Thank you for saving me.”
Jessica smiles, already feeling the familiar words in her mouth. “I’ll always be here to save you.”
Trish chuckles tiredly, before hesitating. “Did you mean what you said?”
“What?” Jessica fakes innocence and begins to walk back in the direction of home, still holding Trish’s hand.
Punching Jessica in the arm, Trish accuses. “You know!”
“Nope.” Jessica pops the ‘p’ sound, deliberately being annoying.
“Fine.” Trish sighs and they fall into an uncertain silence. The sound of the water lapping at the wall is the only sound for a few minutes before Trish speaks again. “I love you too, you know?”
Elated, Jessica allows her heart to open and her smile to break the mould of her face yet again. She feels Trish’s hand, warm and fitting perfectly in hers. The city ahead of them is bright, and its yellow lights feel an awful lot like heaven. Jessica halts, wrapping an arm around Trish’s waist. “I know.”