#spydersbite

Danny was social --- and good --- he trusted and genuinely liked so many people, but everyone he invited into their lives, Colleen was carefully suspicious of. His track record of Davos, Joy, Ward, Howard --- he trusted everyone and Colleen, the other side of the coin, trusted no one. But she had promised Jess that she would give her a chance. After all, Colleen’s argument had been circular on purpose, she hadn’t wanted to accept that Jess was on side, and there was only one way to truly find out. 

They had been tracking this bastard for a few weeks now, Colleen wasn’t great at waiting but... this was important, and she didn’t want to fuck it up the way she had with Victor Graves. The best time to hit him was clearly not in the office, but his home. Even with the guards that were too well trained to be state-issued. (The way they moved was too familiar, like the Hand. But Colleen stayed steady, Jess had warned her about this, they were prepared.) Colleen touched the communicator and spoke into it quietly. “I’ve got two at the side entrance.” The plan was to infiltrate at the same time --- and keep the exits covered so that the senator didn’t have anywhere to hide. (Splitting up felt wrong for a number of reasons, but Colleen couldn’t deny that it was a good plan.) 

The hallucinations had followed him most of the day. Miguel wasn’t sure which was worse, the sharp-dressed version of himself with his father’s voice or the sad, rumpled addict who seemed to rotate between euphoric highs and hangovers. It took Lyla’s constant jabbering in his ears to remind him that neither was real, but he knew he couldn’t count on that indefinitely. Already, his resolve was slipping. Already, the irrational fear that the things he was seeing were real was creeping into his mind, pushing passed Lyla. 

There was an itching under his skin that felt like the ghost of a withdrawal he’d left behind him long ago, and Miguel knew he was losing it. If there’d been Rapture available for purchase in this decade, he might have already bought some. As it was, he was eyeing up liquor stores and shady men on street corners, and he needed a distraction. He needed someone who could hold him back from becoming either of the nightmares haunting him, needed someone capable of tying him to a goddamn chair if he needed it. He needed the one person in this godawful shocking time period who could calm the pounding in his chest.

He needed Jess.

He was at her apartment before he knew where he was going, sitting outside the door with his knees pulled up to his chest. She wasn’t there. Lyla had scanned the building for her unique life sign and come up empty, so Miguel waited. He wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there when familiar footfalls reached his ears, and his hunched shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “Hi,” he said, voice muffled where his head rested against his knees. “Good news: Everything sucks. I want ---” He broke off, squeezing his eyes shut before leaning his head back and allowing it to rest on the wall behind him. “I really want a sho --- fucking drink, Jess. And I really need you to make sure I don’t get one.”

Tali, as it turned out, wasn’t much of a talker --- at least in English. Sharon had a feeling that it was because her accent was still a little rough. But even in Russian, her sentences were few and far between. But one thing did come out loud and clear... Tali liked Jess. Sharon didn’t know what it was, especially after the look Jess had given her when she realized the ‘extra cargo’ was a small child. But JD bought Tali a bear and that bear... Sharon wasn’t sure she’d get a chance to wash it, Tali refused to put it down or let it out of her sight. (Sharon tried to grab it when Tali was asleep to wash it and Tali’s eyes had flown open.) 

Sharon had shown up on Jess’s doorstep with Tali and the second they were inside the apartment, Tali was wandering around the kitchen. (Sharon was pretty sure she was looking for a knife, but Sharon was going to quietly pretend that Tali was just exploring.) “She hasn’t put that thing down since you gave it to her, you know?” Sharon said, nudging Jess gently. There was a brief silence where Sharon didn’t speak and she didn’t hear Tali’s footsteps in the kitchen anymore. (That meant that Tali was into mischief, didn’t it?) “Thank you... for helping me get her out of there. It means a lot.” 

There were two people that Bobbie trusted with her words. And she couldn’t find Miguel, but she couldn’t stay like this forever. At some point, Roberta would have to come out. Bobbie had control for days at a time before in emergency situations (and this definably constituted an emergency), but Bobbie had a feeling that her stay was going to be longer than she had planned. Not that Bobbie was trying very hard to get back --- her family was gone. And both her best friends were here... just one didn’t know who she was. Not yet at least. 

Bobbie was uncharacteristically nervous --- hesitant to reach out to Jess after what had happened. Could she still trust Jess after everything? Was this version of her friend the same women she knew in the future? (Bobbie was about to find out.) Dressed in street clothes, her uniform in a bag over her shoulder, Bobbie knocked on Jess’s door. When it opened --- Jess looked exactly as she had in 2099. She had seen pictures of Jess and Karen --- of Lindsay and Gerry --- and she looked exactly the same in all of them. It should have been impossible.

A lot of things should have been impossible, and yet here they were.

She looked the same.

It was jarring, catching her face in the crowd. He remembered a lazy morning in bed, tracing his finger across her arm as she spoke. I don’t age, she’d said absently, like it was an afterthought. I’ve been thirty for years now. I always will be. Does that bother you? Miguel had grinned, of course, wide enough to show off the fangs in his mouth. I’ve got fangs, Jess, he pointed out. Also? Talons. And you’ve seen what I can do with webs, so... No, it doesn’t bother me. And that had been the end of it. He’d figured it’d come up again in a few decades, when he was older and she was the same. He’d never seen this coming.

That conversation hadn’t happened for her yet. It wouldn’t for another eighty years or so, but Miguel remembered it vividly. He remembered her vividly, eighty years from now, and she looked the same. Or, at least... mostly the same. She was lighter, he realized, in this time. The smile on her face was one of the genuine ones, and those were rare. In all the time he’d been with her, Miguel had only seen it thirty-three and a half times. She looked happy, and Miguel knew it wouldn’t last. 

He should go. Before she could turn and catch his eye, before he could give history its shot at playing out the way it so desperately wanted to, he should go. He turned with the intention of doing just that, figured walking away now was the kinder thing to do for both of them, but he was a beat too slow. He heard her approaching, her footsteps achingly familiar even eighty years before he was meant to hear them. “Sorry,” he said when she approached, mumbling so his mouth wouldn’t open wide enough to reveal his fangs. (It’d been a long time since he’d done that with Jess. It’d been a long time since it was necessary.) “Probably looked like I was staring, huh? I wasn’t. I was just --- It looked like you were having fun. That’s what I was looking at.”

The bars in New York were alright; not quite on par with any of the good old pubs in the UK, but any place to get a drink was fine in John's book. Yet he had to admit he was getting a little tired of asking for chips and having the bartender hand him a bag of Doritos. (When he would subsequently tell them that he had not meant crisps, then he only got a blank stare in response.) So he was pretty bloody happy when he finally found a place that not only called itself a pub but also served honest-to-God chips--and knew exactly what they were called. Dropping in there had really felt like home, so John resolved to stop in again sometime soon.

That was not the only thing that made him feel like home that evening, for no sooner had he left the pub and started down the street than he saw someone who he recognized, someone he had met back in England. Jessica Drew had been quite a handful, and had it not been for the fact that she had ended up disturbing a pretty powerful demon, John would have said the demons should be scared of her. But that particularly nasty bugger had not been scared of anyone, and it was only through some quick thinking on both Jessica's and John's part that had gotten them out of it. Though he was loathe to spend too much time with anyone lest he get them hurt, John had to admit they had worked pretty well together. 

"Wha? Are me eyes deceivin' me? Jessica Drew?" he called after her, "I'd say it's nice ta see you again, but th' last time I ran inta you, a demon wasn't far behind." He glanced around, then smirked at her. "Ah, who'm I kiddin'? I'm the soddin' magnet fer demons, not you. But then I can't imagine you been livin' a quiet life since I saw you either. Or am I guessin' wrong?"