The remote is on the nightstand. I reach for it before my eyes are fully open, thumb finding the power button by muscle memory. The TV flickers to life mid-sentence.
"—authorities are asking anyone with information to come forward—"
The footage is already playing. Of course it's already playing. It's been playing for two days straight across every channel that matters and plenty that don't. I could probably find it on the Weather Channel if I looked hard enough.
The figure in white walks out of the bank. The bag sags. The camera catches the mask — my mask, the one I made from a motorcycle helmet and spray paint and optimism. It looks ridiculous up there on the screen. It looks like a costume. It looks like something a child would wear to Halloween.
The footage loops. The figure shoves a police officer. The officer stumbles back into his cruiser. The figure doesn't hesitate. Doesn't slow down. Just keeps moving with that mechanical efficiency that makes my stomach turn because I remember it. I remember all of it.
The chyron reads: SUSPECT AT LARGE. JEWEL — HERO OR MENACE?
The comments scroll along the bottom. I don't know why I read them. I never know why I read them.
She's a villain. Look at her.
Arrest her.
My tax dollars paying for this?
She pushed a cop. COP.
Who does she think she is?
I read every single one. I make myself read every single one, like it's a penance. Like if I absorb enough of it, the weight will eventually crush me into something small enough that it doesn't matter anymore.
My hands rest on the blanket. They look the same. Same fingers. Same nails, still painted that chipped dark blue I put on three days before the accident, before everything, before I became whatever I am now. The nails are growing out. The polish is fading. Everything else stays the same.
I remember exactly how those hands moved. How they gripped the officer's vest and shoved. How they carried the bag of money like it weighed nothing. How they formed a fist and connected with Impmon's ribs and felt the give of impact and didn't stop.
How easy it was.
That's the part I can't get past. Not that I did it. That it was easy.
The door opens. I don't look up.
"Good morning," Olivia says.
I don't answer. My throat feels like I've been swallowing sand.
She doesn't push. She never pushes. She just stands there for a moment, and I can feel her deciding something — deciding that silence is acceptable, that I'm allowed to be a person who doesn't speak in the morning, that the world won't end if Jessica Campbell doesn't perform gratitude on cue.
Then she goes to the kitchen.
The sounds arrive in sequence. Cabinet opening. Pan on the burner. The sharp crack of eggshells. Oil hitting heat. The kitchen fills with the smell of butter and coffee, and it should be comforting. It should feel like the mornings I used to have, back when mornings meant my mom making pancakes and my dad reading the paper and Phillip arguing about which cereal he wanted.
It doesn't feel like that.
"Breakfast," Olivia calls.
I turn off the TV. The room goes quiet. I sit there for another thirty seconds, staring at the blank screen, watching my own reflection look back at me. Same face. Same dark hair, still too long, still unstyled. Same blue-gray eyes.
Same person who robbed a bank.
I go to the table. I sit. Olivia puts a plate in front of me. Eggs. Toast. Bacon. The kind of breakfast that takes effort, that someone makes because they're trying to do something good for another person.
I eat. The food has no flavor. It's not that Olivia's a bad cook — she's not. It's that everything tastes like nothing right now. Like my mouth has decided to stop participating in the experience of being alive.
Olivia sits across from me with her own plate. Her coffee is that terrible brew she makes, the one that tastes like someone described coffee to a person who'd never had it and that person just guessed. She drinks it like it's fine. She's always drinking it like it's fine.
The TV is still on in the living room. I can hear the faint murmur of the news. Another loop starting. The figure in white walking out of the bank.
Olivia doesn't comment on it. She just refills her coffee and eats her eggs and keeps the space open.
That's what Olivia does. She keeps the space open. She doesn't try to fill it with reassurance or platitudes or any of the things people say when they don't know what else to say. She just sits there and makes the silence feel like something I'm allowed to occupy.
I finish my eggs. I don't taste a single bite.
"Ethan's still asleep on the couch," Olivia says.
I look up.
"He stayed," she continues. "Didn't want to leave until he knew you were all right."
Something tightens in my chest. Not warmth. Something sharper than that. Something that feels like guilt wearing a different coat.
"He came for me," I say. My voice sounds strange. Flat.
"He did."
"He fought for me."
"He did."
"He saw me empty."
Olivia sets her coffee down. Looks at me with those black eyes that see more than they should.
"He saw you survive," she says.
I don't have an answer for that. I pick up my toast and put it back down and pick it up again.
I go to the living room.
Ethan is on the couch, still asleep. The blanket Olivia gave him has slipped to his waist. His jacket is draped over the armrest, and I can see the tear at the shoulder. The fabric is split clean through, the white stuffing poking out like a wound.
I did that.
I grabbed him there. In the amusement park. Under Killgrave's command, my hand closed around his shoulder and I pulled and the jacket tore and I didn't stop. I never stopped. That's what Killgrave did — he made me into something that didn't stop.
His face is slack in sleep. There's a bruise on his jaw I don't remember giving him, but I probably did. I probably did a lot of things I don't remember. The gaps in my memory are small but they're there, like missing frames in a film, and I don't know if I'm grateful for them or terrified of them.
He came for me. He fought for me. He saw me at my absolute worst — a puppet with cut strings, a weapon someone else was aiming — and he didn't walk away.
I don't know what to do with that.
I go back to the guest room. I close the door. I sit on the edge of the bed and pick up my own wrist, pressing my thumb against the pulse point, checking that the blood is still moving, that I'm still here, that this body is still mine.
The pulse beats steady. Reliable. Like it didn't spend two days doing things I can't take back.
I hold my wrist for a long time.
In the kitchen, Olivia starts washing dishes. The water runs. A plate clinks against the sink. Normal sounds. The sounds of a morning that isn't normal at all, dressed up in normal's clothes, pretending.
I think about the footage. The comments. The chyron that calls me a suspect. The word menace scrolling across the screen in red letters.
I think about the officer I shoved. The way he looked at me — not angry, not scared, just confused. Like he couldn't understand why someone who looked like a hero was acting like a villain.
I think about Impmon's face. The way he looked at me before I hit him. Like he was trying to figure out where his friend went.
I haven't forgiven myself. I don't know how to forgive myself. I don't know if forgiveness is even the right word for what needs to happen here. Maybe there isn't a right word. Maybe there's just this — sitting in a room, holding your own wrist, checking that you're still real.
The weight is still there. It's heavier now. It has a new shape, a new texture. It sits on my chest and presses down and doesn't care that I didn't choose any of it.
But Olivia made eggs. And Ethan slept on the couch. And the coffee is terrible and the toast is bland and the morning is wrong in every way a morning can be wrong.
And I'm still here.
I'm still here, and I don't know if that's enough, but it's what I have.
I let go of my wrist. I stand up. I go back to the kitchen.
Olivia looks up when I enter. She doesn't smile. She doesn't say anything. She just pushes the coffee pot toward me and pulls a mug from the cabinet.
I pour. I sit. I drink the worst coffee in New York City.
It still doesn't have any flavor.
But I drink it anyway.
***
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