Work Text:
The number stares at you constantly. Blinking, and blinking, and blinking at you. You’ve been ignoring it for over a decade, and you can’t help but think you’ve been quite successful, except now, now you can’t stop thinking about it. You can’t stop thinking that it could be possible. You used to ignore it because it couldn’t be true, you denied it for years – your counters just faulty, Jessica, it’ll reboot - then you told yourself they deserved more than you, even before Kilgrave you didn’t deserve them. After Kilgrave… well after that you resigned yourself to be alone forever, or well, primarily alone intermingled with some heated one time encounters because you were already denying yourself so much.
The thing is she’s avoiding it too.
Except she isn’t really. She never was. You just never let her say it because you can ignore the looks, and the sighs, and the gentle touches that are burnt into your brain like phantom kisses, but even you couldn’t ignore the words. Everything is easier to avoid when it isn’t tangible. The inevitable is easier to delay when you can pretend it isn’t fate at all.
You can still remember it though. The moment. You’re not sure you could forget it if you tried. Which you don’t. Despite everything, you know that memory is your lifeline; you cling to her and that feeling whenever you’re knocked down and think about not getting up. You think about it all the time. You think about her all the time.
You were thirteen (which seems ridiculously young to be meeting your soul mate) and your parents were still alive, your brother was still alive, you were happy. It feels like a lifetime ago, and yet you can picture it clear as day – probably some symptom of the whole destined to be together thing.
You can perfectly recall the murmurs through the hall that “Patsy Walker” was moving to your school and the subsequent “OH MY GODS” and other terms whispered that don’t even deserve repeating.
You can picture watching your counter get lower and lower with complete clarity. You told your mum that you were worried, that you weren’t ready for that kind of pressure. She just smiled at you as she placed a tender kiss on your forehead and said you wouldn’t be scared when it all fell into place, you’d just feel warm. So you carried on. Normal day after normal day until you had an hour left. One hour. Sixty minutes. Three thousand six hundred seconds. You’re pointedly ignoring it by the time you realise you only have two minutes left but you’re at school and you can’t help but worry that it’ll be a complete and utter idiot – except, haven’t you already met all of them? How could it have possibly not already reached ze-?
You smack straight into her.
Then you land right on her. And retrospectively you can admit it’s a good story. If it had happened when you were older you think it would’ve probably been more romantic, or at least, sexually charged. Instead it’s awkward because you haven’t even kissed anyone before, and yourhands are quite firmly pressed onto her breasts which only becomes more apparent with each shaky breath she draws against your face. You jump up quickly with a brush and don’t think twice as you pull her up with you.
Then you ignore her. It works for a year. Then the accident happens and her mother, seemingly oblivious to her own daughters counter being at zero and her anxiety at being confined into a home with you, decides taking you in will be just the publicity stunt they need to cover something or other up. That’s when it gets hard. That’s when you start to realise you can’t truly avoid it or, more specifically, her. But that doesn’t stop you from trying.
But then it just keeps building and building like this festering disease and you try to hate her, or resent her or anything but like her. You fail. You fail every time. But, in your defence, even you can’t deny that fourteen year old Trish (Patsy was always a stupid name) has this insane smile and an occasional snort that slips into her laugh that makes your heart clench, and a bunch of other completely sappy shit that you’d never actually say out loud because even at fourteen you’re Jessica Jones, and you’re not supposed to be the one with feelings.
You leave Dorothy’s Den when you’re eighteen because she finally pieces together your mirrored counters and sheepishly stolen glances when you think no one is looking. She kicks you out. Trish follows you out the door shouting that her mother and she are through, both professionally and familiarly. Acid burns in your throat as you realise the latter affects the woman more. If only she realised what she was giving up, something worth far more than money.
The apartment she buys is nice and your cold heart warms an inch when she assumes without question that you’ll live there too. You have to admit that your heart is never cold around her when she shows you your room and ends the night wrapped in your arms pretending you can’t see the flashing zero on her wrist or the one on your own. You know that you love her then. You know that you’d love her even if it wasn’t fate. Loving Trish is inevitable but not because you're soulmates, because she makes you remember what is to be human. She makes you remember how to feel.
You laugh at the man who challenges Trish to love tester even though you really want to punch him in the face. Several times. The game is stupid and redundant in this world and so is hitting on Trish when it’s common knowledge that her timer is at zero. You’re not common knowledge though, and his smirk is cocky enough to tempt you into teaching him a lesson. She half heartedly tells you not to do it but underneath you know she appreciates it, you know she loves the way you smirk when he hands you the money, she loves that you do it for her. She loves you.
She kisses you the night Kilgrave takes over. It’s not soft or slow and there’s certainly no preamble. She kisses you in desperation. She kisses you with everything she has left. She kisses you because you won’t let her get the words out and it’s all she can think to do to make it real, to make you admit this thing between you isn’t going away.
Kissing her is like drowning. Not like you were losing yourself in her, but in the way you couldn’t help but hold your breath until your head was pounding and you knew you wouldn’t survive it. You couldn’t remain unchanged by it.
It’s the reason you go out, you need a minute to clear your head, to decide if you’re ready to subject her to a whole new level of shit in the name of love. Your decision to go back to her is only hindered by your inability to leave a man beaten in the street, and the shit storm that follows as a consequence. His voice wraps around and around you until you can’t hear anything else, until you can’t think any thought that isn’t conjured from his own mind, until your own will is a dwindling image of Trish and the zero on your wrist.
He breaks you.
He rebuilds you in his own mind, in his own image, but you remain broken.
Even when you break free of his hold they’re still there – the cracks, the scars, the indelible marks he’s left on your skin.
You fall down on her doorstep that night. She’s shaking when she opens the door. She thinks it’s your blood but you can’t correct her in whimpers and tears and it’s all she can do to hold you as you crumble. You fall asleep curled up in her arms for the first time in your life, soothing yourself with the steady beat of her heart and the comfort that it’s over. He’s dead and it’s over. He’s dead.
You leave before sunrise.
You avoid her all over again. You can’t burden her with this, you tell yourself, but you know you’re just afraid. Your heart cracks and reforms into something distorted and empty. It takes one step onto her balcony, one look tinged with hope from her, one word from her mouth for it to right itself. One second by her side makes your heart realign and it sickens you. It makes you feel vile. What right do you have to feel whole after what you did? After what he made you do?
You want to kiss her.
You want to remember the ecstasy of her lips as something other than the calm before the storm. You crave her warmth and the soft brush of her hands through your hair. You need her like you’ve never needed anyone. But you’re abominable and she’s Trish. You ask her for money and she obliges because you’re on the edge of an abyss and she’s Trish. You pretend you don’t feel the comforting way her fingers slide along your own when she hands you the cash but you do. You can pretend all you want but you do. You revel in it and then you drink yourself into a hole because he’s back and you can pretend all you want, but just like the warmth of her hand, you can’t act like Kilgrave isn’t there forever. Eventually you’ll have to face it head on.
She starts showing up again because you gave her an in. You gave her an in and you got her totally worried and worked up so she starts looking to help. You can’t blame her really. You’ve always had each other’s backs and after springing a huge revelation (AKA the impending clusterfuck) she was obviously going to look to help. That doesn’t stop you from being annoyed obviously. It doesn’t stop you from trying to pretend you don’t care and thrust her money back at her in full. It does make you sigh and finally admit that you need her to leave because you need her alive, because you would risk anything in this world, including your own life, but you wouldn’t risk her.
You pretend that you’re annoyed and scared when she flips your body onto the mat. The nagging voice in the back of your head tells you that you are scared but only of how quickly the look she gives you has your pulse racing. It’s hot though. Trish is hot. Usually you can ignore the twist in your gut when you realise she’s beautiful but there’s something more carnal, more inescapable, about the way she’s making you feel right now - the way you start to unravel without her even having to lay a finger on your skin.
She goes off to make sandwiches and you just lay there for a minute, catching your breath, begging your pulse to steady, pleading with your mouth to disconnect from the filthy ideas running through your brain. You lay there for a minute staring at the zero on your wrist knowing that you’ll walk into the kitchen and find to insanely well crafted PB&J sandwiches and Trish unthinkingly eating the peanut butter straight from the jar with childlike glee.
She offers you a spoonful and all you want is to taste it straight from her lips so instead you shake your head and grab your sandwich. If you let a real smile loose when she spills juice all down herself well it’s not exactly your fault. Your heart stuttering when she swiftly pulls off the ruined shirt and inspects the damage isn’t your fault either, but it is the reason you all but run from her apartment with half assed apologies. It’s also the reason you can’t drink orange juice for a week without thinking about it, without thinking about all of her. That’s not such a big deal though since you’ve always preferred whisky anyway.
After a while you admit to yourself that she’s made her way in. Regardless of how hard you tried to ignore her, Trish has weaselled her way completely back into your life with a few pretty smiles and kind words.
God you’re so weak.
Apparently neither super strength nor mind control resistance can save you from ending straight back with her. You hate yourself for letting her get involved, for letting yourself go straight to her with every new lead, every new problem when you watch her jam a bullet against her temple. She looks so fragile, so unlike the Trish she’s built herself up to be, as she shoves and shoves and shoves it into her skull in a weak attempt to obey his orders. You watch her shake. You watch her silently plead for it to finally be over. You beg her to open her mouth and your whole world comes back into focus when she seems happy with the result. Then you just stare at her, desperately clutching at her face like a lifeline because you know you were so close to losing her. You were one jammed chamber away from having her corpse in your arms.
It only makes you hate him more.
It only strengthens your resolve.
It only weakens the wall you’re using to keep Trish away from you.
Watching him kiss her makes your timer itch. It makes your skin crawl. It takes everything in you not to launch yourself over there and tear his throat out but you won’t give him a chance to hurt her, or hurt these people. You play him like a fiddle and watch the childlike glee fly across his face. You watch the excitement in his eyes that you’re under his control - that he can do whatever he wants without consequence. Step after step he gains on you but you don’t move, or flinch, you just wait and smile on command like your smacking the final nail in his coffin.
Snapping his neck makes the whole world seem brighter. Watching him crumble like he made you feels amazing, but not as good as it did to admit you love Trish. It’s nice being able to say it and yet still having some excuse, some cop out. Not that you don’t love her. Of course you love her, it’s just that admitting you love her comes with so many strings attached and you did, kinda, just kill a man so it may not be the best time to finally be giving in to the whole soulmate thing.
You do let her hug you though. Obviously when you say ‘let’ you mean she threw herself into your arms and you clung to her like your life depended on it. You’re not sure how long you stand there, hugging her with everything she can handle, breathing in everything that’s so distinctly Trish. You do know you only let go when a cop tugs at your arms and slaps you in cuffs. She barely flinches. You just smile and for once - it feels good.
Which brings you to now. Now being the time where you still pretend timers don't exist but finally admit to yourself that you know she's been counting up since the first time you saved her from her mother. Now being the moment where you decide to stop being a chicken shit and drag yourself to her apartment. Now being the time you still hate her doorman and land on her balcony instead. Now being the time you (semi) patiently wait for her to open the door instead of breaking through the glass like you’re itching to.
Now being the time you run your thumb across her zero and your lips against her mouth.