tell her the TRUTH!!!

[legit]

THE TRUTH MEME

➝ Comment to this entry with your characters.

➝ No matter the question, your character feels compelled to answer truthfully. Even if it's the most personal question they've ever heard, or a query about something they would normally refuse to talk about -- too bad. Some veritaserum must have been slipped into their drink, because they just can't help but tell the truth!

➝ Watch the madness unfold.

shamelessly stolen from here.

Comments

jessica jones.

[underachievement]

[ mmmmmmmmfuck ]

[380s]

Why do you care so much about the dog?

[He'd call it a softball if there was such a thing with her when talking about anything.]

[underachievement]

I don't know. [ kind of true, but it's a reflex, not an answer. ] I guess because I used to want one.

[ not going to give without getting. ] Why do you?

[380s]

[She gets a hard look for that one, but it's just as true for him, in a way. But Max isn't about keeping his family alive. That might almost be a healthy response.]

All he did was fight for other people. People who didn't give a shit about him, or anyone else. Didn't deserve that.

[It all felt too familiar.]

[underachievement]

[ makes her wonder if that's why he stuck to her after she knocked kilgrave out of his head, but she's as much to blame for that, if not more. there's no good answer anyway. ]

So which stray did you pick up first?

[380s]

[He wishes he didn't keep finding kindred spirits in this town, but New York holds a lot of broken things. People and dogs, apparently.]

He ain't a stray. Took him from the Irish before-- [He tried to kill her, unwillingly. He grunts at that memory.] We met.

[underachievement]

[ sounds stray to her. wouldn't he have chosen a life on the street over that shit, if he ever got the chance to run? wasn't a home he was a part of. ]

What'd he tell you? [ the inflection is flat-ironed out of her question, as if that means she's not asking one. ] About me.

[380s]

A load of bullshit.

[The answer is immediate, his voice harsh and insistent, but he squares his jaw and shakes his head. She knows that already. Anyone who got taken over by Kilgrave did.]

That you killed people. Said you ruined people's lives and deserved a bullet through the skull as much as any of the mob.

[Anger radiates from Frank as he recalls it. He wouldn't have bought that at face value under any other circumstance.]

[underachievement]

[ "you should kill yourself." maybe if she had, if she didn't leap off those subway tracks at the last moment, hope would still be alive. incarcerated and publicly vilified, but alive. ruben would be, and robin would have her brotherslash-lover. nothing could have saved reva. jess laughs and it sounds more like something knocking into her than coming out. ]

That actually sounds true, for the most part.

[380s]

[Frank just sighs through his nose in response, and as always, it sounds more like an angry bull than anything else. He's no stranger to survivor's guilt, but over the course of whatever it is he has with Jess, he learned the two of them process it very differently. His nose scrunches the way it does when he smells bad coffee.]

Nah. Still bullshit.

[He understands the self blame, to an extent. Frank wouldn't have gone after Jess if someone just told her she killed people. He would have looked into it, traced her movements for a little while, maybe, but the lies would fall apart quick and he'd get back to the people who deserve it. As for Jess, she blamed herself for things far beyond the mind control.]

If you were responsible for any of that, I would've plugged you by now. He's dead. Carrying his ghost on your back ain't gonna make things better.

[underachievement]

You met him once. For five minutes, from the sounds of it. Look how over it you are.

[ so she didn't pull the trigger or load the gun -- she was a part of it. if she tried to get head shrunk again, she might find a term for it. accomplice is her best approximation, and thinking that implies too much agency makes her sick. enduring kilgrave's perversions as a bystander was never a reprieve from having his attention and the shame of both was nothing next to what came after the accident. what only stopped a few months ago.

frank can't talk about him like he's gone when bringing him up still gets his fists clenched. ]

[380s]

Do I look like the forgive and forget kind of guy, Jones?

[It's rhetorical, but he won't blame her for answering it, either. Frank brushes his fingers together to avoid showing his fists, but it works for all of five seconds. He isn't implying she should get over Kilgrave, more that he's what deserves all the anger.

Frank doesn't stop to wonder if he might not just be angry just for himself anymore. That's a dangerous train of thought.]

Why do you think what he did is your fault?

[She could avoid being honest about Max, but the fire in Frank's eyes says this won't be as easy.]

[underachievement]

[ right, he'll just take that anger and put it through someone's skull with a bullet or a hammer or whatever's handy. she'll try and stay too drunk to take it out on the people around her and herself, in that order. jess bristles at the perceived implication behind the word "think," like he's an expert on kilgrave, or, much worse, her. it's just a word but she's not settled in that rational part of her mind right now. ]

If you came home and someone had nailed Max's head to the wall, you don't think that'd have something to do with you?

[380s]

[Frank lets out a short laugh, humorless as hers, but with an edge of frustration. Jess can deflect like a pro, enough to make the guys who trained him to endure interrogation jealous.]

There's a difference between bein' the cause and creatin' the effect. And that ain't an answer.

[He doesn't know why he's pushing this. Probably shouldn't be, but something compels Frank to find out why she punishes herself for things beyond her control.]

[underachievement]

[ neither is that, in her opinion. it takes every dreg of strength not to invoke schoonover and the castles and bring this conversation, and who knows what else, to a catastrophic halt. her unflinching, battering stare challenges him to ignore the hit she's sparing him. keep pushing. ]

Hope died because I tried to save her. I could have killed him and I didn't. [ she tried to do it the right way. her way. but was it ever? hope was the symbol of her redemption, courtesy of kilgrave. all but literally gift-wrapped. christ. he got that into her mind well after he lost the ability to control her and he's still in her goddamn head, even burned to unmarked ashes. was hope's suicide her own terms, jess's failure, or kilgrave's mercy? ]

Every person he hurt is on me. [ so he designed it that way, so what? doesn't change the results. ]

[380s]

[Frank is treading on a mine field, and he knows damn well Jess has a finger on the detonator. He's dug his heels in now, though, and when he wants the truth, or even tells it, he always barrels forward.]

But then you did. You stopped him from hurting anyone else ever again.

[He stops, and when he looks her in the eye this time, his gaze doesn't burn. There's a murk to it, a twitch of uncertainty somewhere on his face.]

What the hell else can you do?

[underachievement]

[ she wills herself to resist the physical urge to deflate with her lack of satisfying response, drawing on the rage of fucking frank castle asking her that, when taking themselves out on each other was supposed to be an answer. a resort, if nothing else. turns out she sucks at self-mutilation. the fact that trish has asked her that question over max further sublimates her exhaustion and exasperation, an empty well left into which her anger sluices and pools too lowly.

nothing is going to get her clean again when the muck seeps up from inside, and nothing can scald her long enough to keep her skin sloughed clear. ]

Stop myself. You don't know the shit I did. [ her gaze is stagnant, without pride. he hasn't heard or seen the half of it: the shit she is. ]

[380s]

If it's things that son of a bitch made you do, I don't give a shit about what you did.

[She puts aside what he does of his own volition, God knows why. He'd be a shitheel if he didn't at least do that. Watching her stew in her emotions, however, makes him question himself.

When he finds the end of the road Karen tried to help him find, will he be in the same place as Jess, or will he keep going? And is that why he really killed Schoonover?

No, a voice digging into the back of his brain protests-- no, he needed to die. Frank heaves another sigh and runs a hand across his face. His eyes cast off in no particular direction.]

You still didn't answer. About Max.

[underachievement]

[ he didn't make her morbidly focus on the life her victim had before she and kilgrave came along, or anything that happened with luke because of it. she's allowed to hate herself for that and to lash out at herself when she misses him or the future she struggled not to imagine with him. for as long as it takes to forget the saccharine romance movie bullshit forced into his mouth.

jess leans into frank's aggressive ambivalence with a fleeting smile, slight and scathingly accommodating.

god, right. max started this. there's a meagre amount of comfort in the fact that frank isn't a metaphor kind of guy and he wouldn't veil an attempt to unearth her feelings about him behind a pitiable pit bull. it could still stand to feel farther removed from the argument she threw them into. she can't stay away. ]

Because I obviously give a damn. [ jess pushes away from her desk, gets to her feet after spending too long sitting there across from him ]