Sep 3, 2024
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Hey, hey everyone!
So, I've finally gotten a little time and I'm trying to resurrect this here page!
At any rate, you'll probably see the posts pick back up.
We comin' back!
rage corrodes the container it’s carried in
drabble for @akaherosandwich
Luke Cage has a lot of anger; but he’s not an angry man, if you can appreciate the difference.
If you can’t appreciate the difference, try this:
There are two houses, alike in appearance, built next door to each other. Built with wood and little else. And beneath these houses, there are vines. Powerful vines, the sort that sneak through cracks and into walls, the kind that can destroy anything they’re allowed near.
Walk past the houses once as a young person, and then again when age has curled your bones, and you might see that one is uninhabitable, the vines having taken over every room, every slat in every wall and every floor, wreaking havoc with the foundations, growing through windows that are now shattered.
While the other stands.
The other still has vines, but is tended to by someone who won’t let them destroy the house.
In other words: Rage corrodes the container it’s carried in.
—
Luke Cage has a lot of anger; but he’s not an angry man.
Carl Lucas, he had a lot of anger, as well, and yeah, he was corroded, somewhat. But Luke Cage, he’s older, he’s smarter, he doesn’t see the world in black and white but in shades of gray, always shades of gray. And more than that, anger feels like acid in his muscles, and in his heart, and it’s one thing to maintain that rage against the forces trying to destroy Harlem, and against the greater forces behind those.
But.
He can’t maintain his anger toward Jessica, as satisfying as it might be.
Luke knows what it’s like, to be under Kilgrave’s spell. He feels like hell about the people he hurt while busting Jessica out of jail, and he still can’t believe his luck that no one died (or at least, if they did, the media was kept out of it; and ignorance, as they say, is bliss).
What makes him sick is knowing that the last thing Reva saw was Jessica’s face. But how can he blame her for that? If she’d been the bullet in a gun, he couldn’t blame her for the gunman pulling the trigger, and the more he lets himself stoke his pain, like coals in a fireplace, eager for oxygen, the more he realizes it has nothing to do with Jessica Jones. She’s a scapegoat. Worse: she’s a scapegoat who is so filled with guilt about what happened that she walked away from him, rather than placing the blame where it belongs.
He rolls over on the cramped couch in the back of Pop’s barber shop, unable to sleep or think or do anything that might help. He ruminates, he imagines, and he lets himself be engulfed with pain. There’s something satisfying about being this miserable. It feels a little like it’s all he deserves.
He sits up, rubbing his face, and clasps his hands between his knees.
No matter what else is happening in his head — no matter what he’s lost, no matter what he can never get back — he knows one thing.
Luke Cage is in love with Jessica Jones, and she might be the best damn thing that’s ever happened to him. Blaming her for Reva makes no sense. And he doesn’t want to feel like this, to miss this. To miss her. To want to hold her and prevent himself from doing it. They need each other. The city needs them both, and they’ll always be stronger together.
Luke drags himself off the couch and into the tiny, cramped bathroom to shower. The sun is barely casting shadows on New York City, but he’s not prepared to wait. For all he’s prepared to make a stand for Harlem, he’s rarely done it for himself, and this is the moment.
He needs to find Jessica Jones, and he needs to tell her he forgives her. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
~complete~
beginning of the end
@akaherosandwich
Strange how dull the world looked, only sixteen days after the last time he’d laid eyes on Jessica Jones.
So she was never going to talk to him again? Okay, no problem. He put the photograph of Reva in a drawer anyway. Not like he ever really looked at it, anymore, and now, when he looked at it, he saw Jessica’s beautiful, broken-hearted face, and hated himself for putting the dead ahead of the living.
“You should head,” Roy said, polishing glasses. “Go on, you’ve a face as long as a donkey’s, ain’t no one gonna want to buy a whole lot of drinks from a miserable bastard like you.”
“My favorite thing about you is the way you sugarcoat everything,” Luke deadpanned. “You go home, old man.”
Roy shook his head in assent, and turned around to calculate his tips. A few minutes later, he was settling his hat on his head, sending Luke a dismissive farewell with a shake of his hand.
Luke felt his pocket vibrate. The whole thing was probably academic; he didn’t really want to stay open much longer anyway. He pulled out his phone, and stopped dead.
Jessica.
He stared at the message for a long damn time, and finally replied.
[text]: Yeah, we should really talk.
It just seemed so unlikely.
[text]: I’m not far off closing, and I can keep my hands to myself.
He couldn’t send that. He hit the delete button repeatedly. Last thing he needed to do was make Jessica feel worse.
[text]: I’m not far off closing. Just come by when you can.
He hit send, and started to wipe down the bar again. Maybe she just wouldn’t. Couldn’t blame her; Luke knew he was a lot. It just hurt because Jessica was a lot, too, and his lot and her lot seemed to match up together pretty good.
found here/artist here