a ‘drabble’ where jessica tries to save wanda from a fatal situation and ends up dying in the process:
Jessica shouldn’t even be here. But after what happened with Pietro and Trish, she decided she needed to face the asshole twins face to face. There were rumors that they’d fled the city, left the Avengers Tower far behind. No one knew where they had gone.
But she wasn’t a P.I. for nothing.
It took some doing, some less-than-legal activities, but she tracked Wanda’s cell phone signal to Chicago. Since she had $500 dollars that neither Trish nor Bruce would take (assholes), she’d bought a plane ticket.
She’s been following them for a few days. They’re good at this, but she’s better. She almost loses them a couple of times, but she always manages to track them down. She’s a woman obsessed, even if she isn’t sure what the hell she’s going to say when she finally corners them.
She tracks them to an abandoned house on the edge of the city. There’s a dozen of them in Chicago, the less run-down ones taken up by squatters, but Wanda and Pietro apparently aren’t picky. She doesn’t get it. They’re goddamn Avengers, they could get a fucking hotel for free if they used that card. But it would defeat the purpose of staying under the radar.
She watches from a rooftop across the street as Pietro zips out. Probably to go scrounge up some food, or maybe some new clothes. His are looking ratty these days. Her eyes flick back to the broken windows across the street, where she can see Wanda’s shock of red hair. She’s staring down at her cell phone almost longingly, a forlorn look in her eye. She finally tosses it aside, lays down on a moldy mattress in the corner.
The armored truck pulls up ten minutes later.
Jessica’s breath catches in her throat. She glances in the direction Pietro disappeared in, but there’s no silver blur racing back. “Shit,” she mutters, as men pile out of the truck. There’s an octopus signature on their armbands, and they’re clad in full body armor.
Not that it’ll save them from what Wanda can do.
She hesitates, hands gripping the rooftop ledge tightly. She can take care of her goddamn self, she thinks ruefully. But there’s dozens of them, and when a second truck pulls up, Jessica’s heart leaps to her throat.
“Goddammit,” she mutters, making her way to the side and jumping into the alleyway. She lands softly enough that they don’t hear her, she’s always better at jumping down than up. She watches them from behind a dumpster, as they approach the door.
They kick it in, and things happen quickly. The agents stream into the building. Upstairs, Wanda appears in the window again. Even from here, Jessica can see the fear in her eyes. The hesitance as she stares at her hands.
She bolts out of the alleyway, heading straight for the building. The drivers yell, reach for the door handles and their guns, but she’s fast. Not as fast as Pietro, but fast enough to prevent the first one from getting out, to slam his hand in the door and then rip it off. She drags him out, and one good punch leaves him limp in her hands. The second driver grabs her from behind. She twists, cocks an elbow against his eye, then whips around to punch him, too.
When she left, she thought Pietro would be the only to feel her fists.
She races into the building. The men are upstairs, and she can hear screams and shouts and gunfire. She takes the stairs two at a time, skipping the ones that look too broken to hold her weight. When she gets to the room, Wanda’s hands and eyes are glowing red, and it freezes her for a moment.
Minds aren’t something you can goddamn play with! But Wanda doesn’t look like she’s playing right now. Even as more agents fall to their knees, clutching their skulls and wailing with agony, more stream forward. She grabs the nearest one, throws him backward, out of the room, against the wall. He yells, and they notice her.
Wanda’s eyes meet her for a moment, The red fades from her irises minutely. Jessica doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know she’s wondering what the hell Jessica Jones is doing here.
Jessica doesn’t know either. But she doesn’t waste anymore time.
A handful of agents turn their guns on her. They fire, but she ducks, lunging forward. She kicks the feet out of one, imitating what Nyssa did to her, slams her fist against his skull hard enough to feel it rattle against his helmet. There are bright waves of crimson flying everywhere, scorching the walls, and more agents are on their knees. Jessica slams one upside the head, if only to make the screaming stop.
There’s too many of them. Outside, she can hear another truck arrive, more boots on the stairs. They want these twins, and as much as she (sometimes) hates them, Jessica isn’t about to let that happen. The room is chaos incarnate, a whirlwind of fists and gunfire and scarlet jolts of goddamn magic.
They swarm her. She punches, kicks, tries to twist away. One of them jabs their gun against her head, her knees buckle, and then they’re dragging her up.
“Stop! Or we kill your friend here,” a voice calls from behind her. The room stills. Wanda keeps her hands up, but the red glow fades from her fingertips. Men are still wailing. Jessica struggles, but her head swims, and there’s got to be five pairs of hands on her.
“She’s not my friend,” Jessica hisses, still squirming. She can’t break free, even with all her strength.
Wanda’s eyes are wide with panic and confusion. “Let her go,” she says slowly, taking a step forward.
The men tighten their grip.
“Absolutely,” the man says again. He steps forward to meet Wanda, gun still in hand. “As soon as you come with us. Quietly, if you please.” His voice is sickly sweet.
Wanda’s eyes narrow. “You’ll kill her anyway,” she says. Jessica’s heart thuds against her rib cage, not at the thought of dying, but because she knows Wanda has read his mind again. No one deserves that. Do they?
The man glances back at her. Jessica glares at him, wishes she had the energy to spit in his face. “She might prove useful,” he says. Then he lifts his gun, points it square in her face. “Your choice, Wanda.”
Jessica stares at the barrel of the gun, then up to Wanda’s gaze. Her eyes are bright red again, it sends a chill through her. She can see the thoughts whirling in Wanda’s eyes though. That hesitance. Time slows down for a moment. The wind whistles through the broken window, the one she’d been watching Wanda from. And that’s when she sees the silver blur on the horizon. Wanda’s back is to the window, she doesn’t know, doesn’t realize. But Jessica sees an out. For Wanda, anyway.
“Don’t do it!” she yells suddenly, struggling again. The men have to readjust her grip. “Goddammit, Wanda, don’t you fucking dare!” she screams. She scoffs at the men. “You goddamn morons,” she seethes. Her eyes flick to Wanda’s again. ”That mind-reader would never sacrifice herself for a piece of shit like me.”
Hopefully, Wanda gets the message. Jessica clenches her jaw, then thinks one thought, loud and clear. The window. Pietro’s outside. Get out, while they’re distracted.
Wanda shakes her head. Jessica thinks it louder. Get out before they take you and your goddamn brother. Do it for him.
“Is that a no, Ms. Maximoff?” the agent asks. He walks forward, presses the gun against her throat. At least it will be quick.
Wanda hesitates, then lowers her hands. “Thank you,” she says, and a look of confusion crosses the agent’s mind. But Jessica feels relief surge through her. “Do what you must. But you will never touch me or my brother again.”
And then she’s gone. She leaps from the window – Jessica just has time to see the silver blur catch her, and then there’s a shot.
Jessica stares up at the Avenger’s Tower. She’s taken to doing that lately, to just perching herself on the highest rooftop nearby and watching. Taking pictures as the Flag Waver and Tin Can walk in and out. Sometimes she even catches Clint or Natasha. But usually, her focus is on Wanda’s room.
It’s not a good idea. She doesn’t think Pietro will count this as ‘keeping away’ from his sister, but she doesn’t know how else to deal. (Besides liquor, that is, and even her liver can only take so much.) So she sits on the roof and takes photos she shouldn’t take.
“I’m sorry,” she says, lowering the camera and looking down at the pictures of the woman she’s just taken. Wanda looks shaken, scared, terrified. Jessica knows that look. “I can still feel you in my head,” she whispers, to only the wind. “Ever since that night. It’s like – like a fungus or a fog, it just creeps in sometimes. Like he does,” she says, letting out a shaking breath. “You’re red. He’s purple,” she tells the picture. The color of blood and bruises. It’s fitting. “I’m sorry, I’ve said that a thousand goddamn times. But I wouldn’t change a thing,” she says, risking a glance at the actual building. At the actual Wanda. Can she hear me all the way from here? she wonders. “I wouldn’t take it back,” she says, a little louder this time. “Even after all this. Even knowing what I know. Because it wasn’t your goddamn fault, but it still feels the same.”
If she could change anything, it would be herself. But as sorry as she is, as much as she hates herself now, she’s not sorry for defending her mind. For keeping it hers. It’s not about control like Pietro keeps saying, it’s just about hanging on to what little sanity she has left.
“Natasha is everything I wish I could be,” Jessica slurs to Clint. She dragged him to a bar this time, and she keeps breaking glasses on accident. “If anyone can actually make amends for their shit, it’s her. She’s – she’s like nothing else. No one else is that strong, that capable, that hot –” She grins to herself, tips the bottle back again. “And I trust her. I do. Christ, that’s weird.” She shakes her head, glances at him. “But even if I could steal her from you – which I goddamn can’t, by the way, I’ve fucking tried getting her to make out with me – I wouldn’t. She deserves better, deserves you.”
trish:
Jessica looks over at Trish, dozing on the arm of her couch. Buffy is playing in the background, a demolished bowl of popcorn on the table in front of them. Jessica has her feet sprawled out on Trish’s lap, taking up most of the couch. “I’m proud of you,” she says quietly, because she doesn’t want to wake her sister. Couldn’t say these things when she’s awake. “For doing the hero thing. Even though I think you’re a goddamn idiot, too.” She bites her lip, glancing over the steal-healing bruises and cuts, shifts her legs so they aren’t so close to Trish’s bruised ribs. “You’ve always been a hero to me, Trish. Always.”
wanda:
Jessica is drunk, has been for a good two hours. The kind of sloppy, terrible, let’s revisit every terrible memory drunk. So she has her phone out, flits between her text messages with the asshole twins. You’re a monster, she reads from Wanda, and her grip tightens on the phone. “I wish I could fucking hate you,” she mutters darkly, glaring at the phone through blurry eyes. Tears or booze, she’s not sure which. “More than myself anyway. Goddammit, how are you – how are you such a goddamn, motherfucking hero? How can you do manage to do good with what you can do, how do you goddamn smile still –” She stops herself, breathing heavily. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m the piece of shit. But I just don’t get it. How you can be such a goddamn good person, with a ‘gift’ like that.” She sighs irritably, tosses the phone across the room. “I don’t hate you. I don’t. And that’s what sucks about this the most. That I can’t even hate you, that you’re still so much better than I could hope to be.”
Send me a ϟ for a plot I think would be fun for our muses.
Peter and MJ visit 616!Gwen’s grave together. On the anniversary. (By fun, you meant heart-wrenching right.)
Send me a ♥ for one thing peter likes about mj.
Peter loves everything about MJ. But if he had to boil it down to just one thing, it’s her dedication. She might seem flightly and aloof, but when it comes to the people she really cares about, she never lets them down.
Send me a ≠ for something peter would never say to wanda.
“Lay off of MJ, okay?” Alternatively. “I still have so many questions about that day...”
Send me a ؟ for a random thought kate has about mj.
Kate, sitting on the apartment couch, watching MJ from afar. I wonder if I suggested ‘seven minutes in heaven,’ if I’d get the chance to make out with her again... Ya know, just to be super sure and stuff.
Send me a ♪ for a song that reminds me of kate/wanda and my favorite lyrics from it.
Black Magic by Little Mix“Take a sip of my secret potion // I'll make you fall in love // For a spell that can't be broken // One drop should be enough”
Send me a ♥ for one thing kate likes about nat.
JUST ONE??? Kate loves that Nat never gives up. No matter what life throws at her, Nat is two steps ahead at all times. She always seems to know what she wants and where she’s going and how to get there. Kate would kill to be that sure of herself.
