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xp_logsHaller has to get through the maze of Jessica's damaged mind before the real repairs can begin.
Emotionally disturbing content warning - Sexual assault and coerced sexual assault (implied), emotional and psychological abuse, injury to a child
The lobby oozed with opulence. From the classic white-and-black checked marble flooring to the plush, cream furniture and art deco ceiling it was the very essence of a luxury apartment building. The telepath didn't know what sort of mindscape he'd expected to find after what Jean had told him, but it wasn't this.
"Jessica?" Jim called. There was no one around, not even a facsimile of a doorman to respond to intrusions. Pleasant but generic muzak played softly over the speakers, giving a recently vacated feel to the environs.
He strode further into the mindscape, getting a feel for the place. It was lush but unlived in, lacking the sort of specific details that would have identified it as a memory. Everything was pristine and perfect: a platonic ideal of wealth and class. Beyond the lobby the doors were all dark wood with gleaming brass handles. Experimentally, he opened a door.
You spin, laughing. There’s sunlight in the kitchen, the faint scent of bleach under hot oil and flour. Your skirt flies around your calves. You land on his lap, your voice high and airy, your head tilting back to the ceiling.
– you spin, laughing, seeing double; everything is fine, the light is bright, and you feel joy rise impossibly in your chest, lighter than air.
Spinning. The only thing that means anything is here, pressing close for a kiss, a low voice that is anything you’ve ever
Jim stepped back. A happy memory. Domestic, idyllic. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
He pressed against the threshold of the scene and was met with a subtle, plastic resistance. The hand he pulled away felt tacky, as if he'd set it against not-quite-dry paint. After a moment’s hesitation he raised his hand and pressed again, harder -- hard enough for his fingers to tear through the film and touch the memory beneath.
You spin, laughing. There’s sunlight in the kitchen, the faint scent of bleach under hot oil and flour. Your skirt flies around your calves. You land on his lap, your voice high and airy, your head tilting back to the ceiling, where mold clusters in fractal splashes.
– you spin, laughing, seeing double; everything is fine, the light is bright, and you feel joy rise impossibly in your chest, lighter than air. Something drags in your chest, a hook on a chain, but when you look, it’s gone.
Spinning, everything overlaid with a second skin that you can’t quite make out; it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything, just the impression of rotting wood over clean bright drywall. The only thing that means anything is here, pressing close for a kiss, a low voice that is anything you’ve ever
The telepath withdrew his hand. Fragments of the invisible curtain he'd torn away clung to it like spiderweb. He stared at it, then wreathed his hand in flames. The psychic residue vanished.
He walked to the next door and drew it open.
Isn’t that better? What do you think?
You look: red lipstick, dark-lined eyes, the gleam of jewels across your throat.
Take a spin, love. Show it off.
You look: A hand on your waist, on the small of your back, on your neck, in your hair.
You smile
No hesitation this time. His fingers tore through the psychic camouflage like wet paper.
You are told to look at yourself. You look.
Isn’t that better? What do you think?
You look: A gash of red lipstick for a mouth, dark-lined holes for eyes, the gleam of jewels cutting across your throat.
Take a spin, love. Show it off.
You look: A hand on your waist, on the small of your back, on your neck, in your hair. Musk and bleach, inseparable, something climbing up your throat.
You smile
Jim knew what this was. These memories, the ones ringing the perimeter of her mind -- they were psychic baffles. Real memories had been carefully curated and shaped to give the casual viewer an impression of happy normalcy. Unless you dug, you wouldn't realize anything was wrong at all. A telepath's way of covering his tracks.
Another door.
Club lights pulsing, violet lilac bright, a mass of bodies moving to an unheard tempo. Your throat closes on the heavy air, on the expensive musk hanging in it, and suddenly you can’t -
The club is almost dark. Light bounces off chrome, off the polished tip of a leather shoe. A cold chain hangs from your neck down between your breasts, disappearing underneath a dress; a hand on your arm. Your nails digging into the floor, into your palms, into plush carpet and concrete and you say please
Shreds of false memory curled beneath his nails as he tore it from the doorframe. Two more pairs of hands had joined them, one large and rough, the other adorned with rings and black nail polish. There might even have been the ghost of a third, smaller set joining in. Tearing into the construct like a birthday present you knew held a rotting fish.
Club lights pulsing, shading from white to ultraviolet blacklight; the air, thick with haze and musk and bleach. An empty club, the music off, the floors dirty.
Your view: Your hands, on the floor, rings gleaming in stuttered bursts of light. A man speaks:
Club lights pulsing, violet lilac bright, a mass of bodies moving to an unheard tempo; you almost can’t smell the bleach on the floor, even at this distance. Your throat closes on the heavy air, on the expensive musk hanging in it, and suddenly you can’t -
The club is almost dark. Light bounces off chrome, off the polished tip of a leather shoe. A cold chain hangs from your neck down between your breasts, disappearing underneath a dress; a hand on your arm; nothing so déclassé as a collar, my dear. Your nails, the wrong length, digging into the floor, into your palms, into plush carpet and concrete and you say please until you’re sobbing with
He was getting angry. Jim understood that like a man noticing storm clouds gathering in the distance. He needed to set that aside. Jessica didn't need anyone else bringing their emotions into her head.
He'd seen enough here. Anything worthwhile would be further in -- or up, as the case may be. The corridor seemed to end at a stairwell, and somehow using the elevator felt unwise. If the entryway had been constructed in such a meticulous manner it was possible traps had been laid, too. He opened the stairwell door into . . . wrongness.
The stairwell didn't match the lobby. It didn't even match its own door. The landing was misaligned, with one wall obstructing almost half of the doorway. The stairs themselves were cramped and dirty, unfinished cement. Sickly fluorescent light served as the only illumination.
As his feet scraped against the stairs Jim realized it was almost completely silent. The music from the lobby was gone, and nothing had arrived to replace it. The only hint of sound was what might have been the occasional murmur of a man's voice, muffled through many walls.
He had to half-climb across the railing to make it to the next level, but what he’d thought was a door turned out to be nothing but an image painted onto the wall. Unfazed, he took another flight that turned out to have enough twists for three until it found the next landing.
This time the door was real, and the handle moved. Jim pulled it open..
A man looks you in the eye, sure, steady. He tells you to do it. His voice doesn’t even waver, but, of course, it wouldn’t. It feels real, when he says it.
The tear-tracks on his face are almost dry.
Did you know that children’s bones are chemically different from adults’? More flexible, too, because they’re more porous. They say children heal more quickly, which is lucky, don’t you think? The little scamps are always breaking something.
He looks you in the eye: The kid is little; seven, maybe eight, round-cheeked and flushed with confusion. You can’t close your eyes, but you can try to remember being that small, that young, and it almost helps. She’s wearing a purple sweatshirt. There’s a stain near the collar.
Sure, steady: He looks you in the eye, and you look back. Someone is screaming into the humid air.
He looks you in the eye. Do it. He means it. He’ll know he meant it for the rest of his life. You don’t even have to do much, barely a twist, a tightening of your
There were no baffles up here. Nothing but plain, unvarnished truth. Thinning his lips against the remembered screams and pop of bone, the telepath let the door close again and continued upwards. The next door was only half the size of a normal one, as if someone had bisected it just above the handle before setting it into a blank wall. It opened nonetheless.
The sirens are off, now, but the bright flashing lights and the procession down the front steps attract attention, a crowd that you stand in, compelled, unmoving. The sheet over the stretcher seems brighter than white, until you see, on the far end, a growing spot of something dark. Someone jostles you.
No sirens, but somewhere inside the building someone is screaming. The night is clammy, the crowd transfixed. The door disgorges the stretcher, and then the man, bracketed by blue uniforms. He is covered in gore, down his chin, down his dress shirt; his hands, hidden, are probably the worst. He goes blankly, neutrally, unbothered. The crowd buzzes, thrums, gasps, whispers.
They’ve turned the sirens off, but the man beside you makes the rest of the noise meaningless. You know the exact moment that he catches the eye he seeks, because the man walking down the steps sags, and makes the only noise that you can really hear, a wail, a sob, a resonance in your own chest. He tries to reach for the stretcher, arms strained behind him, shoulders forward, and
Empty, helpless horror swept over him. Again he let the door close.
It went on like that floor after floor, memory after memory. Being made to hurt others. Being made to witness others’ hurt. Begging for her own degradation. Craving it, despising it, each in turn and both at once. And somewhere, despite the voice that had sunken itself into everything she was, knowing. Always knowing.
On and on.
Finally Jim came to what seemed like the last stairwell. The door was almost rusted to the wall, but the hinges gave way to the weight of four bodies pulling in tandem. This time what he found was not a flood of memories, but a simple hallway.
Fragments of memory slivered through this place, different than the ones he’d found on the floors below. As he stepped into the corridor Jim had an impression of a room padded with mats, like some weird echo of gym class. A sound like twisting metal. Kids squabbling. A man’s voice raised from the front . . .
It had the feel of an old memory, fragmented even during its creation. He didn’t have time to examine it closely, but its presence was encouraging. It meant he was close.
There was only one door here. It was a door that hadn’t been opened in many years, covered in peeling paint and almost invisible behind a pile of garbage bags and discarded furniture. Roaches scattered as Jim hauled away the refuse. He was puzzled to find the door had smoked glass, like the door of some kind of office, but the words had worn off long ago.
He steeled himself and opened the last door.
There’s nobody here, an anomaly in New York, but convenient. The elevator door slides closed, and you think, finally, finally, she’ll be here. The top floor is high above the ground, so the ride takes a minute, and the mirrored walls show you your own face, your skinny wrists jutting out of your leather jacket.
You step out onto lush carpet. It muffles sound in the restaurant, giving the place an eerie quality, out of place with the city.
“Tanis Lee?” You step toward the hostess booth. It’s her, you’re sure of it; you have her high school graduation photo on your desk at home, the same shiny dark hair, the same freckles, of a height with her parents. “Hey. Are you okay? I’m Jess. Your parents hired me to find you.”
Something is weird. She sees you; your eyes connect. She just doesn’t say anything. Her face doesn’t change.
The air shifts, obvious in this quiet, closed environment; you react before you’re thinking, looking to the side. You see a man: Shiny shoes, a suit with subtle purple pinstripes, a gold watch. You meet his eyes, and have the sensation that they flash, ultraviolet animal-shine.
“Hello,” the man says, and you don’t say anything. Something is telling you to say something, to say anything, but you stand there instead, half-facing him, half-facing the daughter your clients wanted so desperately to find - and yet you only look his way. “Who are you?”
“Jessica,” you say, which is not what you mean to say. You feel very far away from the parts of you that speak, that think, that move.
“Jessica,” he says, smiling; something high-pitched sounds in your ears. “Take off your clothes and tell me about yourself.”
The memory ended, and Jim was alone again.
He was in a tiny apartment with dingy blue-grey walls that had once been optimistically painted with white trim. The focal point of the room was a secondhand but serviceable desk set in front of the radiator, chairs placed on either side to receive clients. The faux-leather couch and chair set made it seem almost professional despite the suggestion of unwashed dishes and accumulating laundry in the adjacent rooms.
This room, unlike the lobby, was real – or it had been. It was detailed down to the scratches on the floorboards and knicks in the drywall. Maybe nothing impressive, but important to the owner.
It was rotting. The stench of close air and mildew hung thick. The only sound was the buzz of slow, heavy flies.
For a moment he just stood there, thinking. Thinking about an ordinary day, and the flat shine of a predator's eyes, and a world that had contracted until it was nothing more than a single, squalid room.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tattered curtain flutter. The window was open.
The ladder groaned beneath his weight as he struggled onto the roof. Beneath him the city stretched impossibly small, as if he stood on the top of a skyscraper and not an apartment building. There was no sound of traffic, or gunshots, or distant arguments: total silence. The lights were sickly as dying stars.
There was someone already on the roof. She stood with her back to him, gazing into the distance. Jim stopped.
Haller and Jessica have a conversation.
Emotionally disturbing content warning - Discussion of suicide
Additional TW: Body horror imagery
There was someone already on the roof. She stood with her back to him, gazing into the distance. Jim stopped.
"Jessica Jones?"
Silky fabric rasped as the woman turned, slowly; she almost seemed to start when she saw Jim, one hand bracing on the railing in front of her. Her eyebrows creased. "Who the fuck are you?"
"David Haller. I was the student counselor at Xavier's. Do you remember me?" In truth, he barely remembered her, either. She'd come to him once to discuss the possibility of counseling, but, like many prospective patients, had never actually committed to it.
These were all very normal things to consider, he thought, when he was talking to someone who was standing on the wrong side of a safety railing on the roof of a tall building.
Jessica stared at him. "The student counselor?" she repeated, incredulous, as if these words in this order made absolutely no sense to her. She finally shook her head, curls brushing bare shoulders, and passed a hand against her temple. "You need to get out of here, anyway." Her voice was unconcerned bordering repelling; the building swayed, although the air was dead and heavy.
"Why?"
Taken aback, Jessica's mouth dropped open. "Because you're a student fucking counselor, and this place that I'm, you know, sixty percent sure is my own mind is collapsing, and I'm finally getting to jump the fuck off a tall building, so please fuck off?" she said, her voice modulating, cutting more clearly through the silence. She absently rubbed at a spot on her arm, gold bracelets catching the dull light in dying sparks.
"So tell me why before you do it." Jim kept his tone infuriatingly neutral. She was angry. That was good. Even standing in the ruins of her free will, her own self-image dressed and styled how that man had wanted her to be, Jessica could still be angry.
"I'm serious," Jim continued. He came over to join her at the edge of the building, staying too far away to touch and easy to watch from the corner of her eye. He leaned his elbows against the rusting railing.
"When's the last time you just got to talk to someone?” he asked. “Just you. The building isn't going anywhere."
There was a beat of silence, as she absorbed this, disbelief crawling over her features in slow motion. "Are you fucking serious with this right now? I'm not going to stand here and - and have some kind of heart-to-heart with you." She let out a short breath, her voice gaining an almost-rasp, a plea, the words coming quicker. "I'm done, I get to be done. At least it's on my own terms. I'm not just walking in front of a goddamned train at rush hour."
Jim gave her a sidelong glance. "Is it?" Keep her angry. Make her think about it, really think about it. He thought again about that tiny, filthy room. It was so much to ask of someone who'd been through what she'd been through, but it was the only path he saw. "If you do it," he said, "it's the same result: you're gone, and he's still here."
Something like rage flared in her eyes, but adulterated rage, interlaid with hurt, confusion, fear. "Fuck off," she threw at him, the snarl in her voice desperate and tight. "What, you come and stumble around in here for ten minutes, for no reason, and suddenly you're an expert? You've got the solution? Get out." Her voice fell, suddenly, almost to a plea, like she couldn't help it, and her hand came up to her collarbone, rubbing at the skin there under a thin shiny strap.
Jim watched her, but made no attempt to move. He stayed as still as a man facing a skittish horse that could bolt at any moment. "I know what you're showing me," he said, quietly. "I know that you could have thrown yourself over before I ever got here. I know that safety railings wouldn't be on this sort of building if your mind hadn't put them there. Your mouth is saying you're done, but your mind is saying otherwise. Not one hundred percent. And if you're going to do this, this permanent thing, you should be sure." His mismatched eyes dipped to the peeling skin of her collarbone, then rose to meet hers.
"Don't you want to know what it's like to live beyond him?" he asked. "To do whatever you want, find out what you do want? Not even to try?"
Her knuckles scrubbed across the skin, rhythmic, pressing white, leaving red marks behind; and her face twisted like he'd hit her. "Even if I did," she said, her misery-taut shoulders drawing forward, " - even if I did, my head is fucked. You've been down there, but I've seen people lose their fucking minds. Thanks but no thanks to a persistent catatonic state."
Jim shook his head. "Fucked doesn't mean unfixable. I can help if you'll let me. Take out what he did, suture up the damage. Give you a chance to be you again. That's why I'm here."
Manicured fingernails scraped on a shoulder, digging in too hard, gathering dead skin underneath. She didn't look at Jim for a long moment. Her face moved like she was making an effort to keep it still, lips pressing together. When she did finally look up, meeting his eyes in challenge, it was still on a knife-edge, oscillating between a bleak certainty and something like a brittle hope. “You must be the best fucking student counselor in history,” she said.
"I was okay. I'm better at this, though." He said it simply and without bravado; it was only the truth. Jim's eyes fell again to where her fingers had dragged. He gestured with his chin. "But your third tell is why I know we have a good chance. Your shoulder, the one bothering you -- what do you see?"
"My shoulder?" Confused, she looked down, and recoiled: Not just dead skin under her nails, but shreds of flesh, putrified, dripping, and underneath - "What the fuck?" Leather, soft with age and use. She jerked back, her gaze flying back to Jim, the low light hitting the whites of her eyes, now. "Are you doing this?" A stiletto scraped backwards, a little.
Once again, Jim made no move. He could afford to be calm. Unlike Jessica, he was well aware she wouldn't fall if he didn't allow her to. Nothing would happen if he didn't allow it. He was a trained telepath in the mind of a woman whose natural defenses had been stripped to nothing, for years. If he'd willed it he could have bypassed this conversation and repaired her mind already.
That was why there had to be a conversation. Robbing Jessica of yet another choice could not be the answer to what had been done.
"No, it's you," he told her. He motioned to the city around them, and for a moment the after-images of three different sets of arms trailed after him. "The mind sets the stage. Who we are, what we see ourselves as -- it's here. We can't hide it. So when I saw you here, dressed like that . . . I wasn't sure. Maybe you lost so much of yourself all that was left was what he wanted you to be. It was a possibility." He gave her a crooked smile and shook his head. "But you wear his influence badly. Your mind is trying to reject it. It probably has been for a long time. Even now, it's peeling away. You're doing that."
Now that she was aware of it, she worked at the gore compulsively, shaking her hand to dislodge it; but it seemed thicker, not so willing to slough off. The rings on her hand caught on it, almost seemed to melt into it. Her eyes went back to Jim, following the movement of his arm - arms? - before refocusing on him with distrust. "And, what, you're some kind of philanthropist? What do you do?"
"I'm still a counselor," Jim replied, returning his hands to the railing. "But some damage can only be fixed by going directly into someone's mind. That's my specialty."
If anything, she tensed further, as though now recognizing him not as an unwanted stranger, but as a known threat. "So you go in and mess around in people's heads," she said, clearly meaning for it to be flat and accusatory; but a slight shake, the wrong tone, threw it off.
"No." The reply was sharp, much sharper than he'd intended. That had hit a nerve despite himself. Jim took a moment to pull himself back before he continued. "I never change minds, and I never take away choice. I only fix what other people destroyed. Telepathy shouldn't-" Jim broke off. This wasn't going to be enough. The air was thick with her mistrust, her fear. Why should she trust his words? Nearly a decade of her life had been given over to a man whose words twisted her entire reality.
Okay, he thought. Okay.
"I haven't been through what you've been through," said the telepath, "but I made this my job because I know what this kind of power can do." He took a step back from the railing, turning so he could face her fully. Jim made sure that she was looking him in the eyes. Then he placed his fingertips behind his jaw and lifted away his face.
The mask was only a visualization to help her process what she was seeing, but what it revealed was real. Although time had smoothed the seams joining David and Jemail’s psyches, the mismatch was undeniable. One eye from either man. A misaligned jaw that pulled one ear higher than the other to accentuate an asymmetric mouth. Skin mottled with both pinkish-white and olive undertones. Charles had been as equal as he could in preserving the essences of both men, and so if she'd looked she might have noticed not even the length of his long bones was consistent. One shoulder sat higher, one leg drew shorter. Even his fingers came from different hands.
He was no longer at war with who he was; he had been Jim for longer than he had ever been David. Even so, the evidence of how he'd come to be made him feel ugly and exposed in a way his DID never had. It was a fear his encounter with Arthur had only confirmed. No matter how skilled he became at psionic repair, all his patients would see was some misshapen nightmare-thing stepping into their minds and asking for their trust.
But he had seen the ugliest parts of Jessica already. All he could do was offer her the same courtesy.
"I know," he whispered.
He let her take a good, long look, and then slipped back into the face he allowed the world to see.
Looking at Jim, Jessica's expression had - shifted, almost crumbled, before firming back up again. Even her hand had stilled, momentarily, her dark eyes meeting his mismatched ones, and even this minimal diminishment of tension made her look tired and young under the red lipstick and the sleek purple dress. "Who - " She shook her head, dismissing the question. "You really think you can do something about - this." Me, she pointedly did not say.
Jim gave her another lopsided smile. "You saw what I am. You'll be easy." Not really, he thought, but she didn't need to hear that right now.
"We do it together," he said. "That skin he wrapped you in -- we tear it off. You take the lead. When you can't go any further, I step in. But only then." He studied her face, searching her dark eyes. "It's going to hurt. I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about it, but we won't stop until it's gone. All of it. Okay?"
She looked down to her arm, already bleeding filth down to her dripping fingers, her eyebrows creasing together. She swallowed. Then, seeming to brace herself, she dug in, and tore.
That it did hurt was obvious; tendons stood out on Jessica's neck and the muscles in her jaw worked, though her eyes stayed dry and fierce and focused downward, inviting no pity. Unevenly, strips of skin did begin to wetly peel away, skin ripping down into thin wet strips, needing to be jerked or shaken off. Somehow, it took much longer than it should have: Some areas were stubbornly thick and fibrous, others slippery and hard to grasp, and the work made her fingers begin to shake with effort - but, slowly, new skin and hair and leather and denim began to emerge, a strange patchwork.
It was only when short, uneven fingernails - now bare of jewelry - dug into the skin just under her jaw that she made a small, hurt sound, pausing to brace herself again. When she pulled again, only a thin, transparent layer came away to stick to her hand, and she swallowed against another sound, feeling at the edge of the ulcerated flesh she'd just revealed.
Jim held up a hand. "Stop. Let me help." He started to reach for her, then hesitated. "I'm not going to touch you, but I need to get close." He watched her expression for understanding. "May I?"
Jessica held his gaze for a long moment, her fingers curling defensively; but whatever she was looking for, she finally nodded.
The telepath gave her a small nod and reached for her face. He held his hand, fingers cupped, just an inch from the wound at the base of her jawline. The accretion of foreign influence manifested as a splotchy mass of black and green flesh. Dead tissue poisoning healthy tissue. Closing his eyes, Jim let power flow through his fingertips. It poured across her skin like water, each rivulet slicing the infection with the intensity of a scalpel. Chunks of rot began to drip from Jessica's face.
"It's going to be raw, but it'll heal," he said, drawing his hand away. "Can you feel any other spots?"
Her eyes focused inward, briefly. "There's something - " Her hands were less steady now, skirting the edges of the raw flesh as she reached behind her head, between her shoulder blades, bare over the dress’s low back; again, a thin layer of skin almost sloughed off at her touch. Her face was set with pain, now, and she was still hesitant, almost unwilling, but she turned around, revealing more decay.
The telepath pressed his lips into a thin line and reached out again. Once or twice he heard a small, pained noise as he worked, but Jessica held herself rigid as a statue. As his power sluiced over her the illusion of bare skin wrapped in a backless dress began to drip away, revealing something else: old leather, soft and dull with wear.
It continued this way for some time: rotting flesh revealed and excised, unmasking unadorned wrists, worn-in denim, utilitarian things with no relation to the sleek, elegant facade they replaced. Jessica’s hands were frankly shaking by the time they reached the end, the ground littered with the reeking, steaming remnants, sweat collecting on her skin. She blinked hard every so often. “Is that - is it done?” she asked with effort, her voice now a rasp.
She had been through an ordeal, and looked it. The patches he'd had to debride glistened with open wounds, but he'd been telling the truth: they would heal in their own time, in their own way. As they worked Jim had noticed the spots of infection had avoided areas around her vital organs. In the subjective reality of the astral plane contamination of those areas would have represented a critical compromise of her identity. No matter how far that man had sunk his hooks into her, he'd never managed to warp the core of who she was. Not once.
The last of the psychic poison coiled around Jessica's feet in ropes of sleek silk and golden jewelry and stinking flesh. He extended a hand, inviting her to step clear.
"Yeah," Jim said. "Yeah, you're done."
Jessica didn't take his hand immediately; she had to grab for it when she tried to step over the mess and her legs, locked in place for too long, buckled. "Shit," she muttered, but managed to stabilize, stepping out and away from the mire, which slid off her boots without sticking. She let go, looking up at him finally as herself, shifting uncertainly - as though she had to recalibrate to this body, something thrown off. "What happens now?"
Jim nudged the pile with his own boot. "For me? Cleaning up what's left. You get to rest. Your body is sleeping right now. We'll worry about what comes next later."
Something bleak crossed her face at that, but she shook her head and it was gone, fatigue and pain winning over; she leaned back on the railing, looking out over the darkness, the sparse city lights. "Guess we'll see," she said, not quite under her breath.
Emotionally disturbing content warning - Sexual assault and coerced sexual assault (implied), emotional and psychological abuse, injury to a child
The lobby oozed with opulence. From the classic white-and-black checked marble flooring to the plush, cream furniture and art deco ceiling it was the very essence of a luxury apartment building. The telepath didn't know what sort of mindscape he'd expected to find after what Jean had told him, but it wasn't this.
"Jessica?" Jim called. There was no one around, not even a facsimile of a doorman to respond to intrusions. Pleasant but generic muzak played softly over the speakers, giving a recently vacated feel to the environs.
He strode further into the mindscape, getting a feel for the place. It was lush but unlived in, lacking the sort of specific details that would have identified it as a memory. Everything was pristine and perfect: a platonic ideal of wealth and class. Beyond the lobby the doors were all dark wood with gleaming brass handles. Experimentally, he opened a door.
You spin, laughing. There’s sunlight in the kitchen, the faint scent of bleach under hot oil and flour. Your skirt flies around your calves. You land on his lap, your voice high and airy, your head tilting back to the ceiling.
– you spin, laughing, seeing double; everything is fine, the light is bright, and you feel joy rise impossibly in your chest, lighter than air.
Spinning. The only thing that means anything is here, pressing close for a kiss, a low voice that is anything you’ve ever
Jim stepped back. A happy memory. Domestic, idyllic. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
He pressed against the threshold of the scene and was met with a subtle, plastic resistance. The hand he pulled away felt tacky, as if he'd set it against not-quite-dry paint. After a moment’s hesitation he raised his hand and pressed again, harder -- hard enough for his fingers to tear through the film and touch the memory beneath.
You spin, laughing. There’s sunlight in the kitchen, the faint scent of bleach under hot oil and flour. Your skirt flies around your calves. You land on his lap, your voice high and airy, your head tilting back to the ceiling, where mold clusters in fractal splashes.
– you spin, laughing, seeing double; everything is fine, the light is bright, and you feel joy rise impossibly in your chest, lighter than air. Something drags in your chest, a hook on a chain, but when you look, it’s gone.
Spinning, everything overlaid with a second skin that you can’t quite make out; it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything, just the impression of rotting wood over clean bright drywall. The only thing that means anything is here, pressing close for a kiss, a low voice that is anything you’ve ever
The telepath withdrew his hand. Fragments of the invisible curtain he'd torn away clung to it like spiderweb. He stared at it, then wreathed his hand in flames. The psychic residue vanished.
He walked to the next door and drew it open.
Isn’t that better? What do you think?
You look: red lipstick, dark-lined eyes, the gleam of jewels across your throat.
Take a spin, love. Show it off.
You look: A hand on your waist, on the small of your back, on your neck, in your hair.
You smile
No hesitation this time. His fingers tore through the psychic camouflage like wet paper.
You are told to look at yourself. You look.
Isn’t that better? What do you think?
You look: A gash of red lipstick for a mouth, dark-lined holes for eyes, the gleam of jewels cutting across your throat.
Take a spin, love. Show it off.
You look: A hand on your waist, on the small of your back, on your neck, in your hair. Musk and bleach, inseparable, something climbing up your throat.
You smile
Jim knew what this was. These memories, the ones ringing the perimeter of her mind -- they were psychic baffles. Real memories had been carefully curated and shaped to give the casual viewer an impression of happy normalcy. Unless you dug, you wouldn't realize anything was wrong at all. A telepath's way of covering his tracks.
Another door.
Club lights pulsing, violet lilac bright, a mass of bodies moving to an unheard tempo. Your throat closes on the heavy air, on the expensive musk hanging in it, and suddenly you can’t -
The club is almost dark. Light bounces off chrome, off the polished tip of a leather shoe. A cold chain hangs from your neck down between your breasts, disappearing underneath a dress; a hand on your arm. Your nails digging into the floor, into your palms, into plush carpet and concrete and you say please
Shreds of false memory curled beneath his nails as he tore it from the doorframe. Two more pairs of hands had joined them, one large and rough, the other adorned with rings and black nail polish. There might even have been the ghost of a third, smaller set joining in. Tearing into the construct like a birthday present you knew held a rotting fish.
Club lights pulsing, shading from white to ultraviolet blacklight; the air, thick with haze and musk and bleach. An empty club, the music off, the floors dirty.
Your view: Your hands, on the floor, rings gleaming in stuttered bursts of light. A man speaks:
Club lights pulsing, violet lilac bright, a mass of bodies moving to an unheard tempo; you almost can’t smell the bleach on the floor, even at this distance. Your throat closes on the heavy air, on the expensive musk hanging in it, and suddenly you can’t -
The club is almost dark. Light bounces off chrome, off the polished tip of a leather shoe. A cold chain hangs from your neck down between your breasts, disappearing underneath a dress; a hand on your arm; nothing so déclassé as a collar, my dear. Your nails, the wrong length, digging into the floor, into your palms, into plush carpet and concrete and you say please until you’re sobbing with
He was getting angry. Jim understood that like a man noticing storm clouds gathering in the distance. He needed to set that aside. Jessica didn't need anyone else bringing their emotions into her head.
He'd seen enough here. Anything worthwhile would be further in -- or up, as the case may be. The corridor seemed to end at a stairwell, and somehow using the elevator felt unwise. If the entryway had been constructed in such a meticulous manner it was possible traps had been laid, too. He opened the stairwell door into . . . wrongness.
The stairwell didn't match the lobby. It didn't even match its own door. The landing was misaligned, with one wall obstructing almost half of the doorway. The stairs themselves were cramped and dirty, unfinished cement. Sickly fluorescent light served as the only illumination.
As his feet scraped against the stairs Jim realized it was almost completely silent. The music from the lobby was gone, and nothing had arrived to replace it. The only hint of sound was what might have been the occasional murmur of a man's voice, muffled through many walls.
He had to half-climb across the railing to make it to the next level, but what he’d thought was a door turned out to be nothing but an image painted onto the wall. Unfazed, he took another flight that turned out to have enough twists for three until it found the next landing.
This time the door was real, and the handle moved. Jim pulled it open..
A man looks you in the eye, sure, steady. He tells you to do it. His voice doesn’t even waver, but, of course, it wouldn’t. It feels real, when he says it.
The tear-tracks on his face are almost dry.
Did you know that children’s bones are chemically different from adults’? More flexible, too, because they’re more porous. They say children heal more quickly, which is lucky, don’t you think? The little scamps are always breaking something.
He looks you in the eye: The kid is little; seven, maybe eight, round-cheeked and flushed with confusion. You can’t close your eyes, but you can try to remember being that small, that young, and it almost helps. She’s wearing a purple sweatshirt. There’s a stain near the collar.
Sure, steady: He looks you in the eye, and you look back. Someone is screaming into the humid air.
He looks you in the eye. Do it. He means it. He’ll know he meant it for the rest of his life. You don’t even have to do much, barely a twist, a tightening of your
There were no baffles up here. Nothing but plain, unvarnished truth. Thinning his lips against the remembered screams and pop of bone, the telepath let the door close again and continued upwards. The next door was only half the size of a normal one, as if someone had bisected it just above the handle before setting it into a blank wall. It opened nonetheless.
The sirens are off, now, but the bright flashing lights and the procession down the front steps attract attention, a crowd that you stand in, compelled, unmoving. The sheet over the stretcher seems brighter than white, until you see, on the far end, a growing spot of something dark. Someone jostles you.
No sirens, but somewhere inside the building someone is screaming. The night is clammy, the crowd transfixed. The door disgorges the stretcher, and then the man, bracketed by blue uniforms. He is covered in gore, down his chin, down his dress shirt; his hands, hidden, are probably the worst. He goes blankly, neutrally, unbothered. The crowd buzzes, thrums, gasps, whispers.
They’ve turned the sirens off, but the man beside you makes the rest of the noise meaningless. You know the exact moment that he catches the eye he seeks, because the man walking down the steps sags, and makes the only noise that you can really hear, a wail, a sob, a resonance in your own chest. He tries to reach for the stretcher, arms strained behind him, shoulders forward, and
Empty, helpless horror swept over him. Again he let the door close.
It went on like that floor after floor, memory after memory. Being made to hurt others. Being made to witness others’ hurt. Begging for her own degradation. Craving it, despising it, each in turn and both at once. And somewhere, despite the voice that had sunken itself into everything she was, knowing. Always knowing.
On and on.
Finally Jim came to what seemed like the last stairwell. The door was almost rusted to the wall, but the hinges gave way to the weight of four bodies pulling in tandem. This time what he found was not a flood of memories, but a simple hallway.
Fragments of memory slivered through this place, different than the ones he’d found on the floors below. As he stepped into the corridor Jim had an impression of a room padded with mats, like some weird echo of gym class. A sound like twisting metal. Kids squabbling. A man’s voice raised from the front . . .
It had the feel of an old memory, fragmented even during its creation. He didn’t have time to examine it closely, but its presence was encouraging. It meant he was close.
There was only one door here. It was a door that hadn’t been opened in many years, covered in peeling paint and almost invisible behind a pile of garbage bags and discarded furniture. Roaches scattered as Jim hauled away the refuse. He was puzzled to find the door had smoked glass, like the door of some kind of office, but the words had worn off long ago.
He steeled himself and opened the last door.
There’s nobody here, an anomaly in New York, but convenient. The elevator door slides closed, and you think, finally, finally, she’ll be here. The top floor is high above the ground, so the ride takes a minute, and the mirrored walls show you your own face, your skinny wrists jutting out of your leather jacket.
You step out onto lush carpet. It muffles sound in the restaurant, giving the place an eerie quality, out of place with the city.
“Tanis Lee?” You step toward the hostess booth. It’s her, you’re sure of it; you have her high school graduation photo on your desk at home, the same shiny dark hair, the same freckles, of a height with her parents. “Hey. Are you okay? I’m Jess. Your parents hired me to find you.”
Something is weird. She sees you; your eyes connect. She just doesn’t say anything. Her face doesn’t change.
The air shifts, obvious in this quiet, closed environment; you react before you’re thinking, looking to the side. You see a man: Shiny shoes, a suit with subtle purple pinstripes, a gold watch. You meet his eyes, and have the sensation that they flash, ultraviolet animal-shine.
“Hello,” the man says, and you don’t say anything. Something is telling you to say something, to say anything, but you stand there instead, half-facing him, half-facing the daughter your clients wanted so desperately to find - and yet you only look his way. “Who are you?”
“Jessica,” you say, which is not what you mean to say. You feel very far away from the parts of you that speak, that think, that move.
“Jessica,” he says, smiling; something high-pitched sounds in your ears. “Take off your clothes and tell me about yourself.”
The memory ended, and Jim was alone again.
He was in a tiny apartment with dingy blue-grey walls that had once been optimistically painted with white trim. The focal point of the room was a secondhand but serviceable desk set in front of the radiator, chairs placed on either side to receive clients. The faux-leather couch and chair set made it seem almost professional despite the suggestion of unwashed dishes and accumulating laundry in the adjacent rooms.
This room, unlike the lobby, was real – or it had been. It was detailed down to the scratches on the floorboards and knicks in the drywall. Maybe nothing impressive, but important to the owner.
It was rotting. The stench of close air and mildew hung thick. The only sound was the buzz of slow, heavy flies.
For a moment he just stood there, thinking. Thinking about an ordinary day, and the flat shine of a predator's eyes, and a world that had contracted until it was nothing more than a single, squalid room.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tattered curtain flutter. The window was open.
The ladder groaned beneath his weight as he struggled onto the roof. Beneath him the city stretched impossibly small, as if he stood on the top of a skyscraper and not an apartment building. There was no sound of traffic, or gunshots, or distant arguments: total silence. The lights were sickly as dying stars.
There was someone already on the roof. She stood with her back to him, gazing into the distance. Jim stopped.
Haller and Jessica have a conversation.
Emotionally disturbing content warning - Discussion of suicide
Additional TW: Body horror imagery
There was someone already on the roof. She stood with her back to him, gazing into the distance. Jim stopped.
"Jessica Jones?"
Silky fabric rasped as the woman turned, slowly; she almost seemed to start when she saw Jim, one hand bracing on the railing in front of her. Her eyebrows creased. "Who the fuck are you?"
"David Haller. I was the student counselor at Xavier's. Do you remember me?" In truth, he barely remembered her, either. She'd come to him once to discuss the possibility of counseling, but, like many prospective patients, had never actually committed to it.
These were all very normal things to consider, he thought, when he was talking to someone who was standing on the wrong side of a safety railing on the roof of a tall building.
Jessica stared at him. "The student counselor?" she repeated, incredulous, as if these words in this order made absolutely no sense to her. She finally shook her head, curls brushing bare shoulders, and passed a hand against her temple. "You need to get out of here, anyway." Her voice was unconcerned bordering repelling; the building swayed, although the air was dead and heavy.
"Why?"
Taken aback, Jessica's mouth dropped open. "Because you're a student fucking counselor, and this place that I'm, you know, sixty percent sure is my own mind is collapsing, and I'm finally getting to jump the fuck off a tall building, so please fuck off?" she said, her voice modulating, cutting more clearly through the silence. She absently rubbed at a spot on her arm, gold bracelets catching the dull light in dying sparks.
"So tell me why before you do it." Jim kept his tone infuriatingly neutral. She was angry. That was good. Even standing in the ruins of her free will, her own self-image dressed and styled how that man had wanted her to be, Jessica could still be angry.
"I'm serious," Jim continued. He came over to join her at the edge of the building, staying too far away to touch and easy to watch from the corner of her eye. He leaned his elbows against the rusting railing.
"When's the last time you just got to talk to someone?” he asked. “Just you. The building isn't going anywhere."
There was a beat of silence, as she absorbed this, disbelief crawling over her features in slow motion. "Are you fucking serious with this right now? I'm not going to stand here and - and have some kind of heart-to-heart with you." She let out a short breath, her voice gaining an almost-rasp, a plea, the words coming quicker. "I'm done, I get to be done. At least it's on my own terms. I'm not just walking in front of a goddamned train at rush hour."
Jim gave her a sidelong glance. "Is it?" Keep her angry. Make her think about it, really think about it. He thought again about that tiny, filthy room. It was so much to ask of someone who'd been through what she'd been through, but it was the only path he saw. "If you do it," he said, "it's the same result: you're gone, and he's still here."
Something like rage flared in her eyes, but adulterated rage, interlaid with hurt, confusion, fear. "Fuck off," she threw at him, the snarl in her voice desperate and tight. "What, you come and stumble around in here for ten minutes, for no reason, and suddenly you're an expert? You've got the solution? Get out." Her voice fell, suddenly, almost to a plea, like she couldn't help it, and her hand came up to her collarbone, rubbing at the skin there under a thin shiny strap.
Jim watched her, but made no attempt to move. He stayed as still as a man facing a skittish horse that could bolt at any moment. "I know what you're showing me," he said, quietly. "I know that you could have thrown yourself over before I ever got here. I know that safety railings wouldn't be on this sort of building if your mind hadn't put them there. Your mouth is saying you're done, but your mind is saying otherwise. Not one hundred percent. And if you're going to do this, this permanent thing, you should be sure." His mismatched eyes dipped to the peeling skin of her collarbone, then rose to meet hers.
"Don't you want to know what it's like to live beyond him?" he asked. "To do whatever you want, find out what you do want? Not even to try?"
Her knuckles scrubbed across the skin, rhythmic, pressing white, leaving red marks behind; and her face twisted like he'd hit her. "Even if I did," she said, her misery-taut shoulders drawing forward, " - even if I did, my head is fucked. You've been down there, but I've seen people lose their fucking minds. Thanks but no thanks to a persistent catatonic state."
Jim shook his head. "Fucked doesn't mean unfixable. I can help if you'll let me. Take out what he did, suture up the damage. Give you a chance to be you again. That's why I'm here."
Manicured fingernails scraped on a shoulder, digging in too hard, gathering dead skin underneath. She didn't look at Jim for a long moment. Her face moved like she was making an effort to keep it still, lips pressing together. When she did finally look up, meeting his eyes in challenge, it was still on a knife-edge, oscillating between a bleak certainty and something like a brittle hope. “You must be the best fucking student counselor in history,” she said.
"I was okay. I'm better at this, though." He said it simply and without bravado; it was only the truth. Jim's eyes fell again to where her fingers had dragged. He gestured with his chin. "But your third tell is why I know we have a good chance. Your shoulder, the one bothering you -- what do you see?"
"My shoulder?" Confused, she looked down, and recoiled: Not just dead skin under her nails, but shreds of flesh, putrified, dripping, and underneath - "What the fuck?" Leather, soft with age and use. She jerked back, her gaze flying back to Jim, the low light hitting the whites of her eyes, now. "Are you doing this?" A stiletto scraped backwards, a little.
Once again, Jim made no move. He could afford to be calm. Unlike Jessica, he was well aware she wouldn't fall if he didn't allow her to. Nothing would happen if he didn't allow it. He was a trained telepath in the mind of a woman whose natural defenses had been stripped to nothing, for years. If he'd willed it he could have bypassed this conversation and repaired her mind already.
That was why there had to be a conversation. Robbing Jessica of yet another choice could not be the answer to what had been done.
"No, it's you," he told her. He motioned to the city around them, and for a moment the after-images of three different sets of arms trailed after him. "The mind sets the stage. Who we are, what we see ourselves as -- it's here. We can't hide it. So when I saw you here, dressed like that . . . I wasn't sure. Maybe you lost so much of yourself all that was left was what he wanted you to be. It was a possibility." He gave her a crooked smile and shook his head. "But you wear his influence badly. Your mind is trying to reject it. It probably has been for a long time. Even now, it's peeling away. You're doing that."
Now that she was aware of it, she worked at the gore compulsively, shaking her hand to dislodge it; but it seemed thicker, not so willing to slough off. The rings on her hand caught on it, almost seemed to melt into it. Her eyes went back to Jim, following the movement of his arm - arms? - before refocusing on him with distrust. "And, what, you're some kind of philanthropist? What do you do?"
"I'm still a counselor," Jim replied, returning his hands to the railing. "But some damage can only be fixed by going directly into someone's mind. That's my specialty."
If anything, she tensed further, as though now recognizing him not as an unwanted stranger, but as a known threat. "So you go in and mess around in people's heads," she said, clearly meaning for it to be flat and accusatory; but a slight shake, the wrong tone, threw it off.
"No." The reply was sharp, much sharper than he'd intended. That had hit a nerve despite himself. Jim took a moment to pull himself back before he continued. "I never change minds, and I never take away choice. I only fix what other people destroyed. Telepathy shouldn't-" Jim broke off. This wasn't going to be enough. The air was thick with her mistrust, her fear. Why should she trust his words? Nearly a decade of her life had been given over to a man whose words twisted her entire reality.
Okay, he thought. Okay.
"I haven't been through what you've been through," said the telepath, "but I made this my job because I know what this kind of power can do." He took a step back from the railing, turning so he could face her fully. Jim made sure that she was looking him in the eyes. Then he placed his fingertips behind his jaw and lifted away his face.
The mask was only a visualization to help her process what she was seeing, but what it revealed was real. Although time had smoothed the seams joining David and Jemail’s psyches, the mismatch was undeniable. One eye from either man. A misaligned jaw that pulled one ear higher than the other to accentuate an asymmetric mouth. Skin mottled with both pinkish-white and olive undertones. Charles had been as equal as he could in preserving the essences of both men, and so if she'd looked she might have noticed not even the length of his long bones was consistent. One shoulder sat higher, one leg drew shorter. Even his fingers came from different hands.
He was no longer at war with who he was; he had been Jim for longer than he had ever been David. Even so, the evidence of how he'd come to be made him feel ugly and exposed in a way his DID never had. It was a fear his encounter with Arthur had only confirmed. No matter how skilled he became at psionic repair, all his patients would see was some misshapen nightmare-thing stepping into their minds and asking for their trust.
But he had seen the ugliest parts of Jessica already. All he could do was offer her the same courtesy.
"I know," he whispered.
He let her take a good, long look, and then slipped back into the face he allowed the world to see.
Looking at Jim, Jessica's expression had - shifted, almost crumbled, before firming back up again. Even her hand had stilled, momentarily, her dark eyes meeting his mismatched ones, and even this minimal diminishment of tension made her look tired and young under the red lipstick and the sleek purple dress. "Who - " She shook her head, dismissing the question. "You really think you can do something about - this." Me, she pointedly did not say.
Jim gave her another lopsided smile. "You saw what I am. You'll be easy." Not really, he thought, but she didn't need to hear that right now.
"We do it together," he said. "That skin he wrapped you in -- we tear it off. You take the lead. When you can't go any further, I step in. But only then." He studied her face, searching her dark eyes. "It's going to hurt. I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about it, but we won't stop until it's gone. All of it. Okay?"
She looked down to her arm, already bleeding filth down to her dripping fingers, her eyebrows creasing together. She swallowed. Then, seeming to brace herself, she dug in, and tore.
That it did hurt was obvious; tendons stood out on Jessica's neck and the muscles in her jaw worked, though her eyes stayed dry and fierce and focused downward, inviting no pity. Unevenly, strips of skin did begin to wetly peel away, skin ripping down into thin wet strips, needing to be jerked or shaken off. Somehow, it took much longer than it should have: Some areas were stubbornly thick and fibrous, others slippery and hard to grasp, and the work made her fingers begin to shake with effort - but, slowly, new skin and hair and leather and denim began to emerge, a strange patchwork.
It was only when short, uneven fingernails - now bare of jewelry - dug into the skin just under her jaw that she made a small, hurt sound, pausing to brace herself again. When she pulled again, only a thin, transparent layer came away to stick to her hand, and she swallowed against another sound, feeling at the edge of the ulcerated flesh she'd just revealed.
Jim held up a hand. "Stop. Let me help." He started to reach for her, then hesitated. "I'm not going to touch you, but I need to get close." He watched her expression for understanding. "May I?"
Jessica held his gaze for a long moment, her fingers curling defensively; but whatever she was looking for, she finally nodded.
The telepath gave her a small nod and reached for her face. He held his hand, fingers cupped, just an inch from the wound at the base of her jawline. The accretion of foreign influence manifested as a splotchy mass of black and green flesh. Dead tissue poisoning healthy tissue. Closing his eyes, Jim let power flow through his fingertips. It poured across her skin like water, each rivulet slicing the infection with the intensity of a scalpel. Chunks of rot began to drip from Jessica's face.
"It's going to be raw, but it'll heal," he said, drawing his hand away. "Can you feel any other spots?"
Her eyes focused inward, briefly. "There's something - " Her hands were less steady now, skirting the edges of the raw flesh as she reached behind her head, between her shoulder blades, bare over the dress’s low back; again, a thin layer of skin almost sloughed off at her touch. Her face was set with pain, now, and she was still hesitant, almost unwilling, but she turned around, revealing more decay.
The telepath pressed his lips into a thin line and reached out again. Once or twice he heard a small, pained noise as he worked, but Jessica held herself rigid as a statue. As his power sluiced over her the illusion of bare skin wrapped in a backless dress began to drip away, revealing something else: old leather, soft and dull with wear.
It continued this way for some time: rotting flesh revealed and excised, unmasking unadorned wrists, worn-in denim, utilitarian things with no relation to the sleek, elegant facade they replaced. Jessica’s hands were frankly shaking by the time they reached the end, the ground littered with the reeking, steaming remnants, sweat collecting on her skin. She blinked hard every so often. “Is that - is it done?” she asked with effort, her voice now a rasp.
She had been through an ordeal, and looked it. The patches he'd had to debride glistened with open wounds, but he'd been telling the truth: they would heal in their own time, in their own way. As they worked Jim had noticed the spots of infection had avoided areas around her vital organs. In the subjective reality of the astral plane contamination of those areas would have represented a critical compromise of her identity. No matter how far that man had sunk his hooks into her, he'd never managed to warp the core of who she was. Not once.
The last of the psychic poison coiled around Jessica's feet in ropes of sleek silk and golden jewelry and stinking flesh. He extended a hand, inviting her to step clear.
"Yeah," Jim said. "Yeah, you're done."
Jessica didn't take his hand immediately; she had to grab for it when she tried to step over the mess and her legs, locked in place for too long, buckled. "Shit," she muttered, but managed to stabilize, stepping out and away from the mire, which slid off her boots without sticking. She let go, looking up at him finally as herself, shifting uncertainly - as though she had to recalibrate to this body, something thrown off. "What happens now?"
Jim nudged the pile with his own boot. "For me? Cleaning up what's left. You get to rest. Your body is sleeping right now. We'll worry about what comes next later."
Something bleak crossed her face at that, but she shook her head and it was gone, fatigue and pain winning over; she leaned back on the railing, looking out over the darkness, the sparse city lights. "Guess we'll see," she said, not quite under her breath.
