it’s a sloppy jessica (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
underachievement) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2018-06-23 01:43 pm
underachievement) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2018-06-23 01:43 pm
. 01 // I've never seen Sharon look so bad before.
WHO: Jessica Jones
WHERE: Fountain, Inn, Woods
WHEN: June 21st (evening), June 22nd and onward
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Panic attack, alcoholism, party crashing, mention of disturbed sleep, PG-13 language
WHERE: Fountain, Inn, Woods
WHEN: June 21st (evening), June 22nd and onward
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Panic attack, alcoholism, party crashing, mention of disturbed sleep, PG-13 language
06/21: FOUNTAIN, 11PM+
- Jess sputters out of the water's thrashing surface, spitting and cursing like Aphrodite with a hangover. She hangs over the fountain's edge for a while, catching her breath. She can hold it for several minutes, if she gets a chance to hold it. Her life isn't exactly lousy with chances. Once she's ridden the survival reflex out, there are still minutes of panting and gasping to do, until she can utilize the rhythm of the words not again that repeat ad nauseam in her head, assigns a breath to each one. Gradually, as she's able to let herself breathe, she hammers the words into nice, harmless numbers.
Her throat and nose still burn from hacking up water but she can see through the chaos in her head, at least.
It's dead dark and she's alone, immersed in the cold water up to her chest. There are a few lights, not too far off, that her vision sharpens around as she adjusts to the night and blinks water from her eyelashes. Jess heaves herself out, as heavy as if she were wearing jeans but, disconcertingly, she's not. She can't tell what colour they are but they feel thin. She pats the collar to confirm it's not another shitty jumpsuit, tamps down the dread that she's returned to Reims. This isn't how they do things, for one, and the Sound Eaters would have gotten her by now and sent her to the Reset Room. No sandpaths under her feet when she starts walking.
Jess is no less on guard for having battened down her composure, and she's no less unaware that she's without her regular roster of super powers and currently walking around with her new ability on blast: A two foot shield repelling physical contact. She's hardly inviting it, soaking wet and glowering, blatantly brand new in her red scrubs, yet bleeding the vibe that she's going through the same shit as always, just on a different day.
Prior to checking out her device, the network, the villages, or anything, she beelines towards the potluck in its dying hours. The first person she passes within two feet of will be brusquely shoved aside and likely lose hold of anything they've got in hand. Come get batted about by the force field she has no control over or remark on the sneer of mistrust she's giving all the food and drink (and tell her what's good). (The force field can affect physical objects as well but let's say nothing larger or heavier than your average person.)
06/22: INN 9AM+, WOODS 4PM+
- Despite raiding the proverbial fridge, Jess then staunchly refuses as much hospitality as possible. She spends her first night in a free room and the next morning huffily turning her back on the empty bar. She stalks around outside, technically goes for a walk, taking whatever turns lead to solitude. After some time to herself, she levels out by familiarizing herself with her device and the attached network.
That's where she gets the idea to go and scoop up some camping supplies, since it doesn't seem too difficult. To get them. Camping, as she found out a reality and a half ago, is pretty frickin' hard after the rations and matches run out. Jess doesn't go out far into the woods, she gets exhausted quick by ditching the path and kicking through branches and underbrush. She won't know how far away she really is or isn't until nightfall and the lights show up (or don't). Far enough for her to give up with satisfaction, drain half her one, single bottle of water, then get her tent standing.
There is no path leading to it but she starts to gently trample one in over the next few days. She squirrels away amenities from the Inn, so if anyone has noticed a couple things missing and follow the button prompts, this is where their inquiry will lead them. Happen upon her coming and going, since she really isn't that far away from regular foot traffic, and even once she figures that out, she's going to keep procrastinating moving her shit. Depending on how good the sleep she got the night before was, the tent may sit inside a distinct berth of twigs and branches. Like a fairy ring but for jackasses.
OTHER
- [ ooc | Will match tag style if you prefer brackets! Feel free to toss any other scenarios at me, as long as they don't contradict the above two. My plot post is here if you'd like to discuss first, and here is Jess's bio and application with her CRAU history. ]
party on wayne
When he's good and dizzy from the back-and-forth, he starts heading towards the fear and into the belly of the beast, as he's always been wont to do. It gives him a laserlike focus he hasn't had since that terrible place, trudging silently along the party's edge with an only slightly less stealthy pup in tow. After only a few days in Frank's care, Aretha had become a regular Castle disciple the same as damn near every able-bodied creature in Reims. His heart is beating louder and with steadily increasing force every silent step he advances in the soft grass. What is he supposed to be looking for? What is his body reacting so violently to? And since when does he get the honest-to-goodness heebie jeebies??
Without warning, a casserole dish - his, actually - flies off the serving table seemingly of its own accord and smacks into his leg with a dull crack before hitting the ground hard. He stares as it bounces off one muscular calf like it hit a late-model sedan instead of a guy. Frank shields Aretha instantly as he waits to see if it'll shatter, and somehow - it doesn't. One layer of trauma successfully dodged, then. Or so he thinks until his gaze climbs up towards the source of the accident: an extremely pissed off looking Jessica Jones. Not that she really has another look, or that he'd ever taken issue with this one; but she isn't supposed to be here. None of them are. And yet that's three, count 'em (3) unlikely transplants from a silent hellhole to... this shit show. His heart is so high up his throat now he's tasting it, but he fights the overwhelming sense of dread down as he pushes himself back up to standing. She's really here, she has to be. Even stoned out of his mind he couldn't have created this scenario if he tried (and he wouldn't because she would kill him) (again.)
"...Jess?"
It's a breath more than it is a word, but sign language, texting... It couldn't touch this moment. It's strange and wonderful and adrenaline is moving through his system like it was injected right into his bloodstream. He's stumbling forward, reaching out - anything to assure himself this is really happening. An attempt is made to touch at her shoulder, but that irksome feeling is back, crawling along his skin until the forcefield encapsulating her throws him back a pace or two. He trips over the downed casserole dish and goes down just as hard on his backside. The pain doesn't register because he's caught looking up at her again, and maybe it's the pot but everything now is beyond surreal. He sighs out a deep, choppy breath; the loudest he's dared since his own arrival days earlier. Did he bring Kamala and Jessica here somehow? That's probably a self-centered crock of shit, right? He really hopes so.
He sits there a moment and just tries to breathe. Fight or flight is still teeming through him even if he knows she's safe. Despite what she thinks of herself, she just might be the safest person here for him to be around. Not that he expects her to agree to be around him at all - that was usually how this went in Reims anyway. He would edge ever closer while she ran full-on in the other direction and somewhere along the way time and space would fold and allow them to occupy the same space for a time. It's as ephemeral as the broccoli and cheese sauce Aretha is happily lapping off the ground, or the fat joint he'd smoked earlier. Why had he done that again? Oh yeah - peer pressure.
Jessica may have never actually seen him in anything other than the hand-sewn jumpsuits though he often accessorized beanies with jackets from home that he modified with big silent buttons instead of their usual zip closure. Here he can dress almost entirely like an actual human being and even more shockingly, he's actually choosing to do the normal thing for now. He's in a stolen/borrowed henley in navy blue that's a little too snug for him and darkwash jeans that are slightly on the large side. The boots he'd found seem to fit the best of the items he'd hodge-podged together, but they're just nondescript work boots someone had left before breaking in, so now he supposes it's on him to try.
He really can't believe he's seeing her right now, something akin to wonder striking his expression. It isn't quite dreamy-eyed, but it's pretty damn close despite the fact that she'd just knocked him on his ass. The dog's expression isn't much different, though there's more confusion mixed in when she finally looks up from her impromptu treat, wagging her tail uncertainly like she isn't sure if this is friend or foe. Frank thinks it's a healthy disposition to have when it comes to meeting Jess, so he doesn't try to encourage her to be any friendlier.
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The noise of the collision (with what) almost gives her a heart attack. She curses loudly to find half a second later she didn't voice anything. Jess kicks shards of the broken casserole dish away from her feet, then throws her sharpened glare straight through son of a bitch.
Son. Of a bitch.
"Sonofabitch," she grates, shutting her eyes. Shutting down her whole, all of it. Deliberate 404 error. Will not compute.
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"Yeah." A grunt only and yet it's closer to a conversation with words than anything he's had here up until. Frank works his jaw and narrows his eyes in her direction, but it doesn't pass for cold or even tepid and he knows she won't be fooled. Letting out a long, deep breath - one that doesn't even make an attempt at silence - he's still trying to work out what happened, rubbing at one arm through his shirt sleeve to stave off the sudden goosepimples that had arisen. That keep rising even though Jessica isn't a threat, not to him. It's such a strange response he feels like he's being betrayed by his own body.
He shuffles a few steps forward again, but keeps a much firmer breadth as he tries to negotiate what had knocked him over. Frank holds a hand out like he's blind until he finds it, a strange pressure in the air that refuses to let him pass through. His eyes are wide and concerned now, but he takes a few more steps back to avoid the inevitable: Jessica's characteristic bailing shattering more fragile items in its path, namely him and
hisNOTHIS dog."Something's happening to us." Now that he's spoken more than a syllable, his voice sounds like sandpaper that's been pulped and then repressed into bigger, rougher sheets of sandpaper. Apparently, even now, he still doesn't mind wasting precious oxygen on stating the obvious though. At least he's consistent.
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"Something's happening to you," Jess utters along a sneer, crouching to collect the smaller chips and shards on the ground. Anyone else would offer him a hand off the ground but the last thing Frank Castle has ever needed is her help. He's already got a new goddamned dog, he's probably adopted the whole town and built them a rec center regardless of when he arrived. Bitter thoughts roll through her like rocks in a tumbler, while she tells herself she is thinking about nothing but the porcelain or ceramic--
"Ah- Shit!" -- that nicks the inside of her middle finger, between the first and second knuckles. Jess sucks the blood away and the line of flesh fills with it again. Plus it hurts. When was the last time she got cut by glass? Glass. The only material known to man, aside from their balls, that she could make a profession out of breaking with her bare hands. She wipes the blood off on her soaked scrubs, which leaves her hand smeared pink and wet, and the damn cut keeps on bleeding. "God damn it." She cranes her neck to peek over the tabletop for a napkin or something else she can tear up for a bandage.
The dog, meanwhile, does all she could ask it to and restricts its interest to Frank, keeping its distance. He must have tripped on his own feet. Look she know it doesn't make any sense but Jesus Christ does she have an artery in this finger? Can that happen, if you use it often enough?
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"Like I said: something's happenin' to us." Will you listen to him for once??? He won't be upset or surprised if she blows him off again, but she knows he's incapable of not trying. It might just be his most infuriating quality. Even if he could write off the twelve simultaneous panic attacks he's having, that wouldn't explain her impenetrable bubble or the gushing blood from her finger. None of this should be possible. He knew this place had to have a caveat. Summer Vacation isn't an actual location, except for maybe on the Disney channel.
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"Serial abduction," she supplies as she soaks a napkin through with blood, discards it, then curls her fingers around the rest. She keeps the stack in her fist, rising to her feet and then kicking loose dirt over the sharp white bits she didn't technically break so they're not her responsibility to clean anyway. Looking anywhere other than him spares her compulsively cataloging physical details for intense processing later, and seeing as right now Jess can't even process the concept of "later," the eye contact they share is choppy at best. "I'm not doing this with you again."
Go back the way she came or take the odds that the lit building is home to a first aid kit and no devil-worshipping cults upwards of five or so members, her brain is harried to make a decision. His sixth sense ought to be at a high DEFCON: Her uncertainty is prying her panic back open with the steady, escalating precision of a vivisection, with all the viscera that implies.
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"Doing what?" Okay, now he's raising his voice, as much as he's able anyway, so slightly above a scratchy stage whisper. It's one thing when he blames himself for her showing up here knowing full well it's irrational. It's another thing entirely to have her take out their shared kidnapping fantasy take II on him the second she arrives. Frank crosses his arms over his chest, looking up at the Inn and then back at her, wondering what's going through her head. "Oh, for Christ-- You think I wanna be here with you again?"
After everything that happened, he still regrets the words as they tumble haplessly from his lips. That isn't what he means and she should know it by now. This time he glances to Aretha for guidance, but she just thumps her tail against the ground and gives him an expectant look herself. God, she really is Karen's dog.
"At least let me look at your hand. You shouldn't be..." Hurt at all, let alone bleeding like that.
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"I don't want your help," she snarls and advances a step. Jess feels nothing particularly strange as her anger hurtles toward its peak and everything familiar about the result, even though she didn't swing a fist: Frank knocked back and off balance, Jess swaying on her planted feet, afraid of what she's able to do when she's not in control. If the napkins weren't stuck to her hand with the blood they've staunched, they'd fall from her grip. Great. So she's still a weapon, now she's just single use and prone to misfiring. Jess reiterates from above, "I don't want to hear your voice. I don't want to see your face."
She figures if she retreats, her aggro-bubble will come with her, and backs off in the direction of the lit building. She needs to know that Constance isn't there. Among other people. To put a cap on it, as she heads away, "Don't find me."
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"Fuck you too, Jess!" That one's loud even by normal standards, sorry kiddos. He doesn't even bother to get up off the ground, shouting at her back as she evacuates with as much efficiency as ever, albeit with different shitty superpowers. This time he doesn't even have the comfort of laughing as she almost falls off a slippery roof. Somewhere buried deep under the creepy dread this place saw fit to give him on top of his already beyond healthy paranoia turnt up by marijuana-- is the urge to follow her. And maybe in part it's just to be contrary. Just because she says she doesn't want him to.
Between the first factor and the second, he stays down a while anyway. This place isn't that big, there's no way she can avoid him forever. Or, actually... he probably shouldn't discount just that possibility. Aren't they better off without each other? With no Kilgrave and no Sound Eaters there's no reason for him to reprise his role as her loyal lackey-turned-lieutenant. So maybe this is it, and being stoned for this part takes a lot of the pressure off in the end.
He isn't sure how long he stays like that, on the ground with Aretha guarding him. When he eventually does get up, he stumbles, his foot having fallen to sleep so it had to be a while. He cleans up the broken casserole dish before bailing himself at last in the opposite direction.
Woods
But she still goes out most days, to plot the land she'd tell anyone else, but driven yet by a need to find something, anything out there that explains what is happening here to all of them just a little more clearly. Most days end like this one, something small at least achieved even if she returns home feeling disappointed.
The man-made color and lines of the tent easily catch her eye, and she diverts toward it — Not to disturb so much as just to get a quick look. Owen had told her they'd gotten some tents in the big crates that had arrived with them back in April, but she didn't realize they'd be this nice. The back of a dark head looks vaguely familiar, and she startles a little when she recognizes the face.
"Jessica, right? Hey."
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Jess has just returned to her hovel after freshening up at the Inn, making use of the bathroom while demand was low. She grabbed a blanket and some clothes previously but hit the storeroom again on her way out: A couple more items of clothing (so she can go longer without bathing), folded up in a blanket that she carries in both arms. Nothing that can be all too heavy but she sets it down very fucking gently, out of habit. The insects chirp incessantly, ambivalent to her, then her name comes as almost a relief.
Straightening up with a sigh, Jess turns around to be met with a face whose familiarity is at odds with the newness of her voice. She might have trouble placing her if not for what research she blearily remembers from her brief return to New York. She got down into the details of the Punisher trial, as well as into a bottle of bourbon, and Karen Page was kind of a big detail, or else the name wouldn't have stuck.
"Hey," she says back, a monotonous reflection of Karen's greeting since Jess has no idea what inflection to go for. The last time they were in a room together, Jess didn't even have the balls to break the news about Matt to her and his friend Nelson. She let an empty doorway to the talking.
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And then, of course, there's Matt.
"Is this a permanent thing?" she asks now with a faint smile and a motion to the tent. It's an easier question, maybe, than the welcoming small talk, which would have felt smaller than ever, an awkward stepping around of the ghost peering over their shoulders.
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"Taking it one day at a time." It could be sarcastic and honest but Jess leans tiredly on the latter. It's her general strategy for not going crazy whenever this happens. Since it can, apparently, to the same people more than once. She'd rather get struck by lightning. Ten times. Successively. But at least she knows her home is out there, waiting for her to come back. Suspended in time or going on without her, the same as she left it or different, doesn't matter.
Putting a pin in the idea of Karen Page, Jess takes in the actual woman in front of her. The relative comfort of her bearing and clothing in contrast to the violence of Jess's arrival and the cult-y scrubs she's rolled into a makeshift pillow. "How long since you got here?"
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One day at a time Karen gets well enough, and figures doesn't merit a pithy remark. When she'd first got here, each day was exactly that: One foot in front of the other, pushing forward, ostensibly looking for answers but mostly just getting through the day. Hell, she might have been in a tent in the woods herself if it hadn't have been for Claire.
And Claire knows Jessica, Karen realizes now. Claire had been there, with Matt and the rest.
"Claire Temple is here," she adds. "If you didn't already know. We room together, but she spends most of her time in the hospital."
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"Well that's comforting." That the hospital is so busy. Maybe Jess is wrong about the silent evil lurking deeper into the woods and she just arrived on a good night. Jess kicks her bundle further into the tent then leans down to zip it up. Then she heads over to the path that Page has stopped on, twigs catching on the laces of her boots.
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"Matt was here, once," she adds almost reflexively. "Before I got here. Nobody else, though, from—" The group, whatever they were, and the poor schmucks like herself caught in their orbit. "At least, not that I can tell. The records are a little patchy in places."
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"I could take a look at those," she mutters. Not an offer to help or to undermine the work Page has put in, more like mustering up a peckish appetite in anticipation of an extravagant feast. Nothing she learns is going to help her get back, same way it was the last time this happened. Here's Karen Page to prove that. Jess comes to stand beside her, hoping for a nod in the right direction.
"Nobody else" doesn't necessarily mean nobody else. There are people she never had the misfortune of meeting and Jess would like to keep it that way. If they can mess with people's powers like they have hers, maybe they have other checks in place to prevent sociopaths from running wild.
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She glances back over her shoulder with a faint smile. "You're a PI, right?"
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"In New York," she confirms, glancing into the woods. Technically a lie, since she didn't exactly throw herself back into it in the week she was home. But hey, she doesn't have to care, 'cause "I don't know what good that's gonna do me in the Hundred Acre Wood."
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And when you add up the disparate stories of everyone here, along with the strangeness of the place itself, it a lot to know. Maybe there's no pattern to any of it, but Karen doggedly keeps looking for one.
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"Like what's with the cult pajamas?" which Jess is far from entirely convinced this place isn't.
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Hell, they're technically not forced to wear them anyway, if you don't mind spending your time in Jim-Bob overalls.
woods bc showing up late with flowers is my thing in rp
It's pretty much a complete accident that she stumbles across Jessica's tent. She doesn't actually see anyone around it when she does. It doesn't stop her from getting nervous. I mean someone was clearly here recently. She can't exactly make a giant fist and punch them if they're nuts. "Please don't turn out to be some crazy survival person..." She mumbles under her breath before clearing her throat. Okay be cool, Kamala. They might not even be inside the tent! "Hey, I'm just minding my own business. Please don't freak out?"
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You know who you are. But that's hardly mastery over her whacky new power or her new limits due to the loss of her old one. This shield bubble thing is psychic instead of physical, except that it seems to kick in alongside other physical reactions: quickened heart rate, shortness of breath, the usual cornucopia of hyper-anxious bullshit. Given her usual luck around people, she can still talk herself into one more night far and away from them, a couple nights in a row.Jess isn't sure what time it is or how long she's been in and out of sleep, just that she doesn't feel rested. Petulantly, she kicks at the tent wall, rattling the whole thing. The tent is haunted. By an alive bear. She shuts her eyes hard and starts to scrape together the energy to get rid of whoever woke her up by use of actual language, if they're gonna make her. Another hard nudge to the tent wall. There's such a bear though.
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