Written for the Daredevil/Defenders Exchange, for the prompt, ‘Desolation.’ This also fills the ‘It’s nice to see you again’ square on my Daredevil bingo card @daredevilbingo.
Read it here on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21435688/chapters/51076810
“Are we done, Detective?”
“You’re free to go, Miss Jones. But don’t go too far. And tell us if anything pertinent comes to mind.”
“I know the drill.” She pushed up from the table. “I’ll let myself out.”
In the hallway. “Jessica.”
She shoved straight past, not looking at Danny. “No. I’m done.”
“Jess. Jess!”
“Let her go.” That was Luke.
Just walk. One foot in front of the other. Through one set of doors then the next. Down the steps, towards her apartment. Scuffing, sometimes, on the uneven sidewalk. This was not how it was meant to go. Just once couldn’t it be okay? Couldn’t everything just fucking work out? She walked away from the precinct as fast as she could, without drawing attention. There was plenty of action, a few blocks away people, ambulances, police cars. All clustered around that building. But what was the point? The damage was done. He was gone.
She wasn’t fucking going to cry over some loser she’d only known a couple of days.
Not a loser. A person with a life. Fuck.
She needed something normal. Like bourbon. And a blackout.
A week later, she got a text.
Hey Jess, Luke & me R going 2 meet up, maybe meditate then spar. Wanna come?
He must have been fucking high.
She rolled over and shoved her phone away. When she woke up, she blocked his number.
Luke found her, eventually, weeks later, in a dive bar.
“How many places did you search in, asshole?”
“How are you, Jess?”
“I do better without small talk.”
He nodded. “Mind if I stay here and drink?”
“It’s a free country. For the moment, anyway.”
She swirled the pisswater in her glass and threw it back. It seared in her veins. She kicked idly at the bar and focused on the task at had. Which was, of course, forgetting. Always trying and failing to forget.
“You know,” Luke started, but she cut him off.
“What do you want with me, Cage? Cos I don’t have anything for you. Nada.” She spread her hands, showing him her empty palms.
He turned towards her. “Jess,” he said, quiet and low. Then he stopped and dropped his head, breathed in and out. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I want anything, I just…”
“Say hi to Claire for me,” she said, voice flat. She slipped off her stool and threw some crumpled bills from her pocket onto the bar. Pam swooped in without seeming to move, sweeping away the money, giving the bar a cursory wipe and vanishing again.
“She left.”
Jess shrugged. “People leave.”
“How’s Trish?”
“We’re not doing this.” One foot in front of the other, out the doors.
Out into life that never gave her a fucking break. Life that startled her with its beauty, with its hidden depths and its sheer persistence. It might be just chance and time that allowed life to start in the first place, but once it started and had a toe hold it was really hard to snuff out. Life of infinite, branching variety.
Life that gave and took away. Life that gave Trish the ability to help people, the brains to do that wisely, and the mother to screw her head up.
Life of cruelty.
Life that fucked over the one person Jess really loved.
Jessica couldn’t save her.
Jess stood there on that bare and freezing dock, watching the helicopter disappear, and she felt herself, paper thin, tear in two.
When she finally saw him, she froze for an instant in shock. She had heard he was back, impossible not to know. But he was also in her dive bar, just outside the kitchen. It wasn’t by accident.
He didn’t acknowledge her presence as she slid onto the bar stool beside him and nodded at Pam, the bartender. It was only after she had a glass in one hand and the bottle on the bar in front of her, and she’d taken her first slug, that she swiveled to face him.
“I could have used a lawyer who wasn’t completely deranged.”
Matt laughed hoarsely, didn’t turn her way. “That might have ruled me out. It’s nice to see you again.” He had one hand resting on his cane, folded up on the bartop. That didn’t seem sanitary.
“You’re fucking hi-la-ri-ous.” She swiveled back.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“I might, if she wasn’t dead.” She stared at her own reflection in the grimy mirror above the bar.
Matt shook his head and turned part way towards her, face tipped a little down.
“I’m sorry, Jess.”
“Your dead dad. My dead mother. Whatever.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry. For everything.”
She breathed in sharply through her nose, held it, breathed out slowly. Shrugged. Drank. “You’d better not be a zombie ninja. Cos I have had it with that shit.”
“Not a zombie. The ninja part?” He tapped his fingers on the cane.
“Yeah, well, I think we both know better than that.”
“Stick,” he began, swallowed. “And Elektra. They…”
“There’s a lot of people in that club.” She held up her glass, and he clinked his against it.
“Do you really need a lawyer? I’m practicing again.”
“I know you are. And it wasn’t for me.” Jess emptied her glass. “It’s too late, anyway.” Her traitorous heart was beating hard in her chest, and she knew Matt could tell. She topped up both their glasses, slopping a bit on the bartop.
They drank in silence for a while, and slowly Jess relaxed. Her chest hurt a little, but he was so warm and alive and he wasn’t expecting anything of her. Occasionally, he’d tilt his head and half-smile to himself.
“Hear anything interesting?” she asked.
Matt huffed. “Depends on your definition. But, since you ask, want to get out of here?”
She turned to study him, the cocky smirk, one elbow leaning on the bar. Why the fuck not. “Sure. My place. Yours gives me the creeps.”
