Where do I even begin?
I suppose I could start on the worst night of my life, lying on the kitchen floor drenched and chilled to the bone, covered in glass and blood and sweat and tears. Or I could start back at the very beginning on the day my mum told me that I was different, special, and that my life would never be safe or normal. Or perhaps I'll start on a Wundagorian rooftop staring at a face I hadn't seen in a lifetime, a face that would change my very existence and make me question everything.
But no. Then you'd know all my secrets, and what would be the fun in that.
No, I think I'll start on another rooftop in a city far, far away from the wastes of Wundagore, on a night I didn't know would, in its own way, change my life.
September 23, 2015
London, England
I'm sat atop a high rise flat in Northwest London eyes squenched closed, hands balled up, trying to drown out the city below. The shouts. The screams. The cries for help. Muggings and murders and bar room brawls all ringing in my ears, happening at once, reducing my entire world one cacophonous roar of depravity.
Be honest. You expect me to stop all this. To keep these people from ripping each other apart. To jump in save the day. That's what the hero would do, isn't it?
But not me. I don't do that anymore.
Now before you take it upon yourself to start judging me, let me tell you, I've had a right spell of bad luck, and we're not talking "lose your job, get dumped, spill coffee on your favorite jumper" bad luck. We're talking "death, destruction, and total loss of control" bad luck. The kind of bad luck where you get the only people who trusted you killed, and end up trusting all the wrong people. The kind of bad luck where you walk willingly back into the hands of the man who used you as his own personal test dummy only to have him use you again making you even more of a freak of nature.
My fists begin to spark and my eyes begin to heat and glow just at the thought of him.
Otto Vermis, a bloated two-faced rat, pretending to be a man. One day I'll find him, and when I get my hands on him I'll—
No.
No, I won't get my hands on him. He's gone to ground, just like all the other HYDRA scumbags that Fury unearthed. And I won't go looking. Won't get involved again. Not this time. Not after what happened to Nick. Not after what I let happen.
Let the world believe Jessica Drew is dead and gone. It's better that way.
Besides, Captain America himself is heading up the task force to hunt down any remaining HYDRA agents who scurried off into the shadows. If anyone has a reason to hate HYDRA like I do it's him. They took his life too, after all.
I sigh through my teeth feeling the heat in my eyes burn out, and I finally glance down at my hands, pale and shaking, but normal.
That was a close one. I need to be more disciplined, more careful. I let myself get to caught up in the chaos and I almost broke my rule. I almost got involved.
That's the problem with being here in the city. It's just so bloody loud. Chalked too full of people cheating and lying and hurting one another. It makes it hard to do nothing. But when it's quiet—well then it's me and all my mistakes and that is far, far worse.
I'll be honest with you. This was not the life I had planned.
Young Jessica Drew did not see herself twenty-five and already at rock bottom, propped atop a building cold and homeless because there's nowhere safe for her to go, and nowhere left for her to run. I'm a wanted woman.
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