Two weeks after Kilgrave's death, over a week since Jessica's release from jail and freeing from charges in regards to it, and she had yet to appear in Trish's home. After giving her a fierce embrace outside the police headquarters, silent but laden with all the emotion and pride in her she could convey better and Jessica mind take in better in gestures than words, Trish had driven Jessica home to her still-ravaged apartment. She had left her, overwhelmed and exhausted, under Malcolm's watchful presence, resisting her temptation to override Jessica's insistence to be left alone. Against her own urges to the contrary, Trish had given her time and space, even as she knew the woman would likely use it to drink herself nearly unconscious and withdraw from anything resembling humanity.

Not that Trish could blame her. She herself had experienced more than a few restless nights lately, waking up shaken, examining her hands for the blood she knew should be staining her flesh and the skin torn back from her knuckles . She would reach for her headphones, fighting to block from her ears the memory of the sound of someone's bones cracking beneath her fist. All too easily she remembered the calm, purposed thoughts not her own, but nevertheless focused and strong that had fixated in her mind, the intention to kill people whose names she did not know and who had done her no harm. She would have done it, wanted to do it, even as the tiny piece of her own will, pushed to the back of her brain, had reeled in horror at herself, unable to muster the will, let alone the strength, to fight back.

She had received commands from Kilgrave only three times, on only two very brief occasions, and yet she had not escaped mentally and emotionally unscathed. She could not even imagine the horror that was Jessica's daily reality, the severity of the trauma it must be for to have been commanded day after day, hour after hour, for eight months of unending and all too vivid hell on earth.

Two weeks later, Trish still found her hand drifting up to her lips, rubbing hard in unconscious effort to wipe away the memory of Kilgrave's lips over hers, of his wet tongue in her mouth. Her skin still itched with a sharp feeling of uncleanness each time she remembered his arm around her waist, his hand touching her face. They were the very same hands that had once violated every part of Jessica's body against her will, the same hands that, without having to touch at all , were stained with the blood of the deaths he had commanded to occur.

Trish still remembered and hated the part of her that had actually wanted to touch and kiss Kilgrave, the part that had, on his orders, physically responded with enthusiasm and arousal. So many times she had told Jessica that her actions, her responses to Kilgrave were not her fault, that she could not blame herself and should not despise herself for anything that she had done while under his control. She had never understood until now that her well-meaning words would have been impossible for Jessica to follow.

Trish still braced herself, though she knew it was illogical, still half expecting one of Kilgrave's possessed ones to come to her apartment and find a way inside, intent on killing or hurting her upon his command. She knew it was impossible. Jessica had told her that his commands lasted twelve hours, at the most, without him renewing them to the person commanded. He had been dead for two weeks, and yet still Trish checked her locks and camera feeds frequently, a part of her not quite believing that there was no longer a need to.

But any remaining fears or trauma she harbored, Trish knew, were nothing, not even within the same league or vicinity of those of Jessica Jones. And without Jessica coming around or contacting her, Trish couldn't know just how badly she might be doing now, after she had finally brought Kilgrave's reign of terror to an end.

Trish knew it was illogical and hardly psychologically sound thinking, but still, she had harbored an unspoken hope that once Jessica had managed to stop Kilgrave, once and for all, his death or capture would provide her with resolution. She had hoped that Jessica's heroism would help to improve her view of herself and dash her self-destructive tendencies, to rid her of the guilt and self-loathing she had carried for far too long and on needless grounds. She wanted Kilgrave's death to magically bring full closure to Jessica, to take away all the pain and trauma she had suffered at his hands. Jessica deserved that, and Trish wanted that for her, so badly that she sometimes felt a physical ache in her empathy and grief for Jessica.

But she had read enough about posttraumatic stress disorder to know that any one given action or event was not enough to override the damage that had been done to Jessica's thinking, feelings, and even the unconscious functioning of her brain and nervous system after what she had experienced. It simply didn't work like that, even for someone as strong, brave, and intelligent as Jessica, even with the extraordinary power she possessed. Trish understood that only time, patience, support of others, and the difficult, painful work of therapy and mental effort would really help Jessica move on- nearly all of which Jessica categorically refused to accept, engage in, or even entertain the possibility of trying.

Jessica Jones tended instead to bulldoze her way through life, relentlessly fleeing, ignoring, or burying the aspects that she couldn't control or which caused too much pain. Sometimes Trish suspected that she felt she wasn't worth the effort of trying to help herself. Trish loved her adopted sister more than anyone else in the world, owed her much of her recovery and even her continued survival. She admired Jessica for so many reasons, had always envied her talents and bravery and wanted to have what Jessica seemed to dismiss as almost an annoyance more than an asset. But everything in her that Trish loved and appreciated, everything that she saw as wonderful and loveable and worthy, Jessica seemed blind to. As observant as she could be of others, Jessica appeared to be remarkably blind and close-minded when it came to her view of herself. And as much much as she hated this and fiercely disagreed, Trish had learned that it was just one of the frustrating parts of Jessica that she couldn't change and therefore had to accept.

Things would improve for Jessica, Trish believed, if she would just give up her stubborn insistence on solitude and return to living with Trish in Trish's apartment. Living with Trish, she would have the steady, reliable presence of someone who loved and looked out for her more than Jessica would for herself, someone who knew and understood her and would continue to try to prod her into healthier ways of thinking and being. If Jessica would go back to living with her, Trish herself could feel marginally better that Jessica would be somewhat safer. At the very least she would more often have some idea of where she was and what she was getting herself into.

But of course, Jessica refused to do this, even after Kilgrave was gone and the excuse of Trish's safety being threatened by Jessica's presence around her was no longer valid. It seemed to Trish that she preferred having the freedom to drink herself into oblivion without Trish's judgment, perceived or otherwise. She preferred the absence of someone trying to take care of her or support her.

Still, even after a week of ignored texts and calls, Trish held onto the hope that Jessica would appear one day on her balcony, waiting to be let in, as she always eventually had before. No doubt she would be drunk and dirty, maybe weaving in place or slurring her words. She would probably be short on details and obnoxious in attitude, sleep deprived, underweight, and infuriating in obvious lack of self care. But still, she would be seeking Trish out, letting her into her life and her emotional space, even if it were only briefly and at surface level. No matter what shape she might be in and how she might present herself, Trish welcomed it, hoped for it.

And one day, just past the two week anniversary of Kilgrave's death, Jessica finally granted Trish's hope.

88

Had Trish not been propped partially up on her couch the evening that Jessica appeared, she might not have heard her knock at the balcony. It was soft enough that even with her proximity, Trish dismissed it as a sound from her television, kept at quiet volume as she dozed with its noise as a background drone. It could have even wishful thinking on her part; several other nights, she had gone to check her balcony doors, thinking she just might have heard Jessica outside. This was one of several nights that she had accidentally-on-purpose allowed herself to fall asleep in front of the TV, a cup of tea in front of her, half listening on the off chance that this would be the night that Jessica showed up to her, asking without actually asking to be let in to her apartment.

It wasn't until Jessica knocked on the glass doors a second time, slightly louder and more forcefully, before Trish acknowledged to herself that she had indeed heard its sound and was able to accurately identify its source. Her heart leaping in partial excitement, partial dread in anticipation of what circumstances might have finally brought Jessica back to her, she got to her feet, attempting to approach the other woman at a reasonable rather than rushed pace.

As she would have guessed, Jessica looked drunk. Her eyes were glazed over and only partly open, her hair a tangled mess partly hanging over her face, and her clothes were wrinkled and weathered, appearing to have been worn for several days, and worn roughly at that. She carried nothing with her, and Trish saw that her hands were shaking just enough not to be able to escape her sharp once-over. Was she starting to go into withdrawal from alcohol, or was she having a panic attack, seeking Trish out for unconscious assistance to fight through a trigger for her trauma? Was she in shock, or somehow injured?

Her concern for her cranked up several notches higher, sharpening into gut-twisting anxiety, Trish fumbled to unlock and slide back the balcony doors, stepping back to give Jessica room to come inside. She looked her over again, even more carefully than she had before, and this time saw the long tear in Jessica's dark jeans, at the side of her thigh, the blood darkening its edges and still seeping through the open wound exposed to her view. Clearly Jessica had been injured, and to Trish's horror, it appeared that she was bleeding not from some accidental stumble resulting in a cut or scrape, but from someone deliberately stabbing her.

"Oh god, damn it, Jessica, what happened, what did you do?" Trish blurted, her words coming out in a higher, more stricken pitch than she had intended.

She hurried forward to take hold of Jessica's arms in an effort to guide her forward, lending support if Jessica should need it to continue the rest of the distance to her couch. Jessica gave a brief, breathless sounding chuckle in response to her, attempting without real force to shrug out from under Trish's hands. Seeing her injured leg limp with this half-hearted effort, Trish maintained a determined grasp on her, refusing to let her pull away as she continued to half drag her the remaining few steps forward.

"I show up with a fucking stab wound in my leg, and you ask me what I did?" Jessica mumbled, shaking her head slightly in apparent cynical amusement punctuated with a noise somewhere between a snort and a huff. "Shouldn't you be asking that from the guy with the knife?"

"Knowing you, something happened to provoke it, whether that was mouthing off to someone you shouldn't have or putting yourself in some kind of crazy situation you would have been better off and perfectly capable of avoiding," Trish retorted, blue eyes narrowing as she leveled them back at Jessica. "So again I ask. What did you do, Jess?"

Settling her gently onto the couch, she pushed at her shoulders for Jessica to lie back, placing a pillow beneath her head. Jessica let herself be manipulated into position, seeming almost grateful as her body sank back into the comfortable fabric of Trish's couch. It wasn't the first time she had spent a night passed out on it, and it would no doubt not be the last.

"Stopped a guy from finishing what he started on a girl," she muttered, her tone dismissive, but Trish saw the tension in her jaw as she spoke and knew that the situation had touched her at a deeper level than she wanted to admit to herself or Trish. "He fought back. Had a knife. His mistake, he'll know that now."

Trish didn't ask what it was, exactly, that Jessica had done to make him figure that out. She knew the other woman wouldn't kill him, but that didn't mean she wanted to know what it was she had done.

"I'd say any situation that ends up with you being stabbed is your mistake too," Trish sighed, shaking her head. "Seriously, Jess, you could have been killed. Powers or not, you're not invincible, and you know it."

She didn't ask where Jessica had been for the past week, what she had been doing, or what had kept her away. She knew by now that Jessica couldn't put into words the answers to these questions, at least not enough to bring Trish satisfaction in them or to make her feel any better about her chosen withdrawal.

She took hold of Jessica's leg, easing it up on a second pillow, murmuring to her that they needed to raise it up above her heart level to help with pain and to stop its bleeding. Inwardly appalled as it sank into her just how long it might have been that Jessica had ignored her injury and allowed it to bleed in favor of getting drunk(er), Trish resisted the urge to lecture. Instead she stepped back to look her over now that she was settled, assessing her current condition.

Jessica didn't appear to be in shock, at least not severely so, nor did she seem to be dissociated or in a state of panic. She had been present enough in reality to cackle at Trish's concern and wisecrack, anyway. Perhaps the alcohol had helped ward off emotional response and given her the distance from feelings that Jessica had indicated it often did. Trish didn't approve of her drinking to self-medicate, but with her own past experiences, she could understand and emphasize.

Overall, Jessica appeared mostly okay, if somewhat pale. She was probably in some pain, but seemed numb to it, either from denial or the effects of alcohol. Her leg's bleeding seemed slow, barely more than a trickle resulting from movements more than continuing blood flow. Even this was probably because she had been using and putting weight on her injured leg for far longer than Trish would have thought possible or wise. The relative lack of bleeding seemed like a good sign to Trish that Jessica would be all right, tough Trish was no medical expert. She had seen considerably worse in Jessica before, and the woman had generally recovered with as little medical attention as she could get away with receiving.

Clucking her tongue with her disapproval, Trish didn't bother to voice it. It wasn't as though Jessica would take it to heart and actually listen in the future.

"How long ago did this happen, Jess?" she asked instead. She knew she generally got better results by simply sticking with the facts more than advice or lectures when it came to Jessica, although that didn't mean she would be able to keep from eventually giving them all the same.

Jessica lifted one shoulder into an exaggerated shrug, letting it drop back heavily in a movement that looked almost painful to Trish's eyes.

"Dunno. Eight shots or so ago? Maybe more, maybe less. Stopped counting."

Hardly a surprise. Trish herself usually struggled to estimate or keep up with Jessica's drinking.

Guessing that she was likely dehydrated, maybe lightheaded from the alcohol consumption combined with blood loss, Trish turned towards the kitchen area of her apartment, retrieving a glass from its place in her cabinets. Filling it with water, she returned to Jessica, pressing it into her hand.

"Drink. All of it. This will probably help you somewhat."

Jessica narrowed suspicious eyes down at the liquid. "Is this vodka? I'll take it, but I'd rather have bourbon or whiskey."

She gave an experimental sniff at the glass's edge, wrinkling her nose when she detected little to no odor. "Yeah, you got anything stronger than that?"

"You need water, Jess. A real drink that really hydrates," Trish attempted to reason with her, keeping her tone matter of fact. "You'll thank me for it later."

"Yeah, gotta disagree on that," Jessica huffed, attempting to thrust the glass back towards Trish. "Water is not a real drink. A real drink contains alcohol and can actually get you drunk. Drink equals drunk. You have to have something, somewhere."

"Drink the water first, Jessica," Trish said softly. She switched her approach, shifting her expression to an imploring one in hopes that a slightly more emotional appeal would bend Jessica's resistance. "For me, okay? After that, we'll see about anything else."

Jessica kept her eyes towards but slightly averted from Trish's for a few moments, a sentiment that was dark, furtive, and complex in the surface of her hooded gaze. Several beats later she lifted the glass to her lips silently and drank a few sips from it without further protest or comment. Trish gave her a warm, genuine smile of gratitude and covered the hand on the glass with hers, squeezing briefly and gently. She was quick to let go before Jessica could respond or attempt to move away.

"I'll get what I need to fix you up. Be right back."

She was glad to see when she returned from her bathroom with the bandages, wash cloths, antibiotic ointment, and peroxide that she always kept on hand, more for Jessica than anything or anyone else, that the other woman had actually finished most of the water in her absence and had set it down on the floor beside her. Kneeling down beside her, Trish lay her doctoring supplies nearby and gestured in the direction of Jessica's legs.

"Okay, pants off. Can you do yourself, or do you need me to help?"

"Your seduction talk can use some work," Jessica smirked, cutting her eyes at Trish in a manner that Trish would have categorized as flirty, had this been someone other than Jessica and in a situation with any romantic overtures towards it at all. "I usually need a little more of a warm up before I hop right into action, and another drink would help too."

"Jess, shut up," Trish told her, but the words had some affection to them even as she rolled her eyes. "Come on, get them off so I can look at how much you went and messed yourself up here."

In the end she did have to help Jessica undress, bracing one hand against the couch as Jessica lifted up her hips and pulling her jeans down with the other. Letting the dirty jeans fall to the floor behind her, she peered down at Jessica's wound, assessing it with it fully exposed now to her vision.

As she had thought, the cut had penetrated some of the slim, toned muscle of Jessica's leg, but Trish was relieved to see that it hadn't hit bone. For most people, stitches would be required, but she knew without asking that Jessica would refuse a hospital visit and that she would likely heal more quickly and thoroughly than most people would, given rest and time. The best she could do for her now was clean and dress the injury, attempt to talk Jessica into resting, and keep an eye on her and her healing until Jessica inevitably took off.

Trish noticed that the muscle of Jessica's leg was twitching intermittently, and she wondered whether this was from delayed response to pain, overuse, or just anxiety at Jessica's half-dressed state. Trish and Jessica had both seen each other partially dressed and even naked countless times since their teenaged years, but this had sharply decreased in frequency since Jessica's abduction and rapes. She couldn't be sure that Jessica wouldn't be triggered by it or wasn't close to being triggered now, so she had avoided nudity or anything close to it between them in the past year.

Unsure how to ask, or whether Jessica would even answer, Trish settled for covering Jessica's right knee with her hand and giving it a light squeeze of wordless reassurance. She left it there until Jessica seemed to marginally relax before beginning to clean and dress her wound. Jessica didn't flinch or show a noticeable physical reaction to her careful touch, keeping her head tilted back and her eyes only partly open.

"Your hands are cold," she remarked after a couple of minutes had gone by. "You sure you haven't gone zombie since I last saw you, because there is no way someone with hands that temperature has an active pulse."

"Shush," Trish muttered, giving a poke at her uninjured leg. "I'm working here."

"Patricia Walker. Talk show host by day, nursemaid by night," Jessica said, but her tone seemed more distant than before. "You remember the time I doctored up your thighs?"

Trish's hands stilled, and her eyes lifted quickly up to Jessica's, suddenly serious. "We've…we've never talked about that."

Why now, was what she wanted to ask but couldn't quite say aloud. Why after all this time, did Jessica have to go and bring this up?

The scars on her thighs were long healed and had faded with time to the degree that a Trish was pretty sure they were visible only if a person knew to look for them. Still, they seemed then to itch and burn in response to Jessica's reference, and she felt suddenly and intensely aware of their presence on her skin. She had for nearly two decades been careful about covering them, whether in clothing or meticulously applied makeup, and since the original incident of their occurrence, no one had ever asked or even seemed to notice them. She had almost managed to believe that Jessica herself had forgotten them.

But here she was, talking about them now.

"It was fucking Dorothy's fault," Jessica went on, ignoring Trish's reply. "Why the hell she wanted to pimp you out like that…fuck, what kind of mother is cool with her sixteen-year-old being on the cover of a magazine in a string bikini? Like perverts hunched in their mother's basement in their tighty whities didn't jerk off at your picture enough, without stripping off your clothes on top of it. And then to tell you everyone is going to laugh at you if you don't starve first…fucked up."

"Jessica," Trish repeated, the words tight and strained, her body motionless and tense. "Why are you talking about this?"

Because she was drunk, of course. Being very drunk was the only time that Jessica would allow even a small fissure of a crack in her usually thick, steely walls around herself, the only time that she might actually talk about something more than necessary exchanges of information or sarcastic, cynical quips. Sometimes, very rarely, the things she would talk about had something to do with her thoughts or feelings, though afterward she seemed to forget her revelations, or else to expect others to pretend as she did that they had not been voiced aloud.

But this time, she was talking about Trish. And rather than giving her unasked for thoughts on Trish's present, she had chosen to go back to a past that was almost never given reference between them.

"It was fucked up what you did too," Jessica went on, ignoring Trish's question. She adjusted her head against her pillow, as though to get more comfortable. "I mean, on one hand, go Trish, kinda badass. Couldn't let you go through with a bikini shot with big red marks up and down your legs. It would take some serious makeup to cover that and she knew it, so you got your way, and that's a damn good threat to hold over Dorothy's head. Don't make me do shit I don't want to, or else!"

She chuckled, but there was an emptiness to the sound that made Trish swallow, pressing her lips together. "I figured it was a one time thing. You always were a wuss with pain. But then you did it again that one night, and Dorothy wasn't anywhere to be seen, so what happened then, huh?"

Trish knew exactly what she was referencing. It had happened years ago, in a state of mind that was difficult for her to even quite remember in a sequential manner. She had been very high, very depressed, and saw nothing in her future to give her hope of her life improving. She had just lost out on several roles in movies, TV pilots, and even commercials that she hadn't even been excited over to begin with, and every man who seemed even somewhat willing to give her a shot had made it clear just what they expected of her in return. Cutting her wrists had been tentative, not so much a suicide attempt as an experiment or rehearsal of the possibility, and the gesture had been so hesitant, the resulting injuries so minor, that they had eventually healed without noticeable scars.

But Jessica, of course, had seen and immediately understood what had happened at the time. It had prompted the discussion of her attending rehab for the second time, and the resulting overdose that had resulted in going through with it.

"Jess, you're drunk," Trish said finally, as much as a reminder to herself as in response to Jessica. "Let me finish up here, and then you need to drink some more water and sleep this off."

She had almost finished wrapping up Jessica's injury, checking that it was secure and wouldn't easily be undone with movement, when Jessica spoke up again, her words seeming more distant and emotionally vacant than they had been before.

"I almost killed myself once."

For Trish, time seemed to stop. She felt her breath catch, her eyes growing wide, not seeming to remember to blink without her conscious effort to resume normal functioning. She stared down at Jessica with suddenly slackened expression, turning the woman's word over in her mind, attempting to reconcile them into another meaning, into a misunderstanding or a misheard phrase. But Jessica kept talking, her dark eyes looking past Trish, but not fuzzy and vague in their lack of focus.

"He let it lapse, for one second," she said. "His control. I walked to the balcony and I looked down. It was high…enough that anyone would die, if they fell. I could die, if I twisted just right. If I didn't let myself land on my feet."

Trish let her hands come slowly to rest at her sides, drawing away from touching Trish. She attempted and failed to slow her breathing into something approximating its normal rhythm, not wanting to distract Jessica and possibly stop her words from continuing. As much as it hurt to hear what she was saying, as shocked as she was to know, she needed to. She needed to hear, she needed to understand any part of Jessica that Jessica was letting her see.

"Thought about it," Jessica murmured, her eyes half closing. She didn't seem entirely aware that she was speaking, or that anyone else was present to hear. "Wanted to. Almost did. But I didn't. Sometimes I don't know why. I thought about it so much after…wished I had. Wished it could all just be over, forever. But it didn't happen, and I didn't get another shot, after. He didn't give me the chance."

Trish had to turn her head away, attempting to blink back the tears standing now in her eyes. She had known from what spare details Jessica had given her of her time in Kilgrave's control how she had suffered, had seen the dramatic effect it had on her and her daily life in the aftermath of her escape. She knew very well how much Jessica suffered now, and it was this knowledge and her love for Jessica, the depth of the bond between them, that enabled her to get through the infuriating things Jessica so often did. But knowing that Jessica had thought of suicide…knowing how close she had come to going through with it…it was a knowledge far too painful and foreign of her own view of Jessica's strength and will to be able to easily accept.

Trish couldn't deny that she knew for herself how it felt to wish for death. She had never spoke of it to Jessica, but she suspected that a part of Jessica knew. There had been a few dark nights, after sinking to depths low enough that Trish hated herself in the midst of her drug use, when she had wondered and dwelled over how it might feel for all the pain in her life to come to a permanent end. She had flirted with the idea of suicide, going over possible methods, and the selfish, vindictive parts of herself had enjoyed the idea of her mother's possible grief and regret for her treatment of her. She had imagined how the world, so dismissive and callous in their view of her now as a washed up, pathetically wasted former child star instead of a person of talent, a person worth being admired, would sing a different tune with her death. There would be glowing articles in memory of her, praising her and honoring her as it seemed impossible would ever happen again in her life.

She had thought about it. But no matter how low she sank or how hopeless everything had seemed, in the end, Trish couldn't seriously consider it, let alone make an effort towards completing suicide. She had still had enough love and guilt towards Jessica not to want to lay one more burden of guilt and trauma upon her, even before Kilgrave. And she had still carried just enough confused, ambivalent love towards her mother not to want to cause her total devastation.

Still, she remembered vividly how it had felt to want her own death. She could not bear the thought of Jessica experiencing this, maybe not just for a few moments or nights, but possibly for days or weeks, or even the length of the time in Kilgrave's captivity of her.

She didn't want to know the details, or how far it had gone. She didn't want to ask the questions of whether Jessica still harbored thoughts or possibly even plans. But she had to know. It was important, vitally so, for Trish to know, in case she needed to protect Jessica as much as she could from the enemy of herself.

"Do…do you still think about it, Jess?" she whispered, aching with her desire to reach out to Jessica, to somehow in touch give both herself and Jessica the comfort they both needed. She didn't follow her urge, not wanting to break the moment between them, to possibly push Jessica into verbal retreat of physical flight. "Do you still want it?"

Jessica's eyes opened, but did not connect with Trish's. The shrug she gave her in response was exaggerated, perhaps intended to be comical. Trish saw nothing funny about any of this.

"I'm not sober enough to know," she answered, far too lightly for Trish to believe the emotional accuracy of her tone. "I drink enough so I don't have to figure that out, one way or the other."

She cocked an eyebrow, letting her eyes briefly flick towards Trish's. "Speaking of, you gonna get me something, or not?"

Not, if Trish could get away with following her own instinctual resistance of that. But she didn't say so, instead attempting to keep Jessica focused on the topic at hand.

"Jessica…this is serious. This is- I didn't know-"

"Yeah, and this would be why I didn't tell you," Jessica exhaled, letting one hand flop over limply as she waved it vaguely in Trish's direction. "I knew you'd have a lecture ready and get all mushy gushy over me. Alcohol is a lot more effective in solving the problem, and I've got that covered, so save your breath."

She paused, making an ineffectual effort to lift herself up on her elbows. "Where is this drink I keep asking for, anyway?"

"Fuck the drink," Trish answered, more strongly and harshly than she would normally speak to anyone, let alone Jessica. "That isn't important right now, Jessica. This is. What you just told me, this is what we need to be talking about right this second. Are you…you're expecting me to believe that you really don't have any idea whether or not you're suicidal? That's not possible, Jessica, and that's not a good enough answer for me."

She took a steadying breath, impulsively laying a hand on Jessica's bare knee as she made herself soften her tone. "Please, Jessica. Try to concentrate and answer me. I need to know this. I have to know this."

Jessica's eyes met hers for perhaps a moment or two, and Trish saw how they briefly seemed to focus and take in the all too stark feelings she knew must be showing in her face. Jessica dropped her gaze far too quickly for Trish to read her in return. When she spoke, she was quieter, more subdued than before. She seemed to be making an effort to focus and be serious in her response, as Trish had asked of her.

"I'm not suicidal, Trish, you can calm down. I just don't know why the fuck I'm still alive. I don't see a reason for it, when I could have been gone ten times over. It's not like I'm of use to anyone. I piss people off and fuck up their lives by existing, so I'm not seeing why it is that I still do. It's like the universe's joke."

Trish's heart sank, and she felt almost sick with her sorrow for Jessica's self-perception, the detached, blank set of her face that told her nearly as much as Jessica's words. She kept her hand on the woman's leg, trying to get her to look at her as she kept her gaze intent on Jessica, her voice fervent with feeling as she responded.

"You have use to me, Jessica. My life is better because you're still in it."

Jessica barked out an approximation of a laugh that was jagged and harsh to Trish's ears. The only humor present in it was sarcastic and dark, but at least her eyes flitted back towards Trish's.

"Your life is better? Your life was fucked up before you ever knew my name, and it's only gotten worse with time."

"Excuse me, rude," Trish put a hand to her chest, mock affronted. "I think I've done pretty well for myself, thanks, and I've cleaned up a lot of the crazy that used to be part of my life."

She made sure that Jessica was paying attention, looking towards her face, when she continued more seriously. "I can't say that you haven't fucked up, Jessica, or that you haven't added complications to my life. But what I can say and what you have to believe for yourself is that my life would be a lot more fucked up without you in it."

She looked into Jessica's eyes steadily, refusing to be the first to look away, or to let her get away with shrugging off what Trish was telling her. Jessica turned her head just enough to be putting on an act of avoidance, but not enough to be rendered unable to see Trish out the corner of her eye. Trish waited, hopeful that she could somehow out-stubborn one of the most hard-headed women she had ever met, and manage silence until Jessica finally gave a verbal response of acknowledgement.

She should have known better. Jessica could outlast her any day, and she seemed to have figured out that Trish wanted and expected something out of her, even if she didn't know exactly what. Apparently she had decided to be on the same side and give her nothing at all.

Sighing, Trish relented, releasing Jessica's knee to sit back on her heels. She regarded her with the weary, exasperated affection of one sister to another, irritated, frustrated, but never even entertaining the thought of walking away.

"You have to think of what it is that holds you here," she said finally. "If…if those thoughts ever come back. Of…you know. Wanting to die. You have to think of something that would stop you."

She paused, knowing the risk of her words before she spoke them, but putting them out there all the same. If they helped keep Jessica stable, alive, or both, then damn it, she didn't care if they hurt or made her angry, they were necessary.

"Like your parents, Jess. Or your brother. What would they think, if you killed yourself, when they had no choice in their deaths? Or…what if you die, and it turns out you can't ever see them again or be with them because of that?"

She braced herself for Jessica's eyes to narrow, sparking with hurt and rage, for her words to come out in spitting, vicious barbs. It was even possible that she would lash out, instinctively wanting to hurt as she had been hurt. But the alcohol combined with blood loss seemed to be mellowing Jessica far more than Trish had expected, because Jessica just shook her head, settling back against the couch again with a sigh of her own.

"Nah. I don't believe in an afterlife or any of that shit. I won't see them and they can't see me. There isn't anything left of them to be disappointed or upset. Besides, they'd probably get it, even if they could see. They probably feel like I should have died along with them."

She paused, her words dropping lower, thicker, aimed down towards her chest.

"Fuck, what they'd think of me now. Their kid, their sister, a drunk….fuck up…a murderer."

"Jessica," Trish broke in, horrified, but Jessica's eyes opened, and she spoke more clearly, almost enough so that Trish could have believed she were sober, had she not known otherwise.

"It wouldn't be thinking of them that would stop me. It would be thinking of you. Just you."

"What-" Trish started, her brow furrowing in her confusion, but Jessica continued as though she had not heard her, her eyes open and unguarded as they settled on hers.

"If I was tripping down suicide street in my head again. It would be you that made me backtrack. It would be thinking of you."

Trish's breath grew shallow, and her blue eyes blurred with the sheen of quickly rising tears. She blinked rapidly as she held Jessica's gaze, seeing the sincerity shining back at her.

She knew that Jessica was drunk. She knew she was injured and likely barely conscious, surviving off who knew how many days without proper sleep or food or minimal hygienic care. She knew that she would likely pass out from sleep or just plain unconsciousness in the next ten minutes or so, and she would probably not only not remember a word that she had said, but would deny it entirely, if Trish were to attempt to bring it up to her.

She knew all these things, but she also knew that this did not mean that what she had heard and seen in Jessica was real, intentional, and all the more to be treasured in its rarity.

There seemed nothing left to say, no further reassurance that Trish needed. She stood, clearing the supplies she had used for Jessica and returning them where they belonged. Retrieving a blanket from her closet, she covered Jessica up to her shoulders, leaving her dressed in her underwear and dirty t-shirt. She knew from repeated experience that Jessica would refuse to sleep in borrowed pajamas, proclaiming them to be "too matchy."

Jessica let her tuck her in. When Trish sat down at her feet, taking Jessica's hand into hers and holding it over the blanket loosely, Jessica did not pull away or even so much as playfully kick in a show of protest that might normally present itself at Trish's efforts or caretaking or affection. She didn't even make a joke about Trish's supposed sexual attraction to her or mommy issues. Instead, she let Trish be the first to pull away, once Jessica's breathing had evened out into the first stage of sleep.

As Trish carefully withdrew from her, bending first to lightly press a kiss to Jessica's forehead before exiting to her own bedroom, she knew what to expect when morning came. If Jessica was even still present- something that was highly unlikely-she would no doubt be pissy and snappy, extremely hungover and having nothing but complaints to verbalize. She would demand rather than ask for a drink, and certainly there would be no acknowledgment of the events or conversations from the night before. When she left out, it would likely be without a goodbye, and it could be weeks before Trish could expect to hear from her again.

But whether or not Jessica would, Trish would remember what had been said between them. She had learned long ago to cherish those small, ever so brief moments in time when Jessica let her see behind her walls, when she let Trish know the depth of her love and trust in her. Those moments were brief in length and infrequent in occurrence, and yet when they came, it was enough to get Trish through all the other times when Jessica's actions and words seemed to nearly bury them over and push them aside.

End

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