I am apparently in desperate need for some more distinct crossover between the Netflix shows and AoS, so a certain Inhuman has a run-in with another of the superpowered residents of Hell's Kitchen during his time on the run. Spoilers for both Jessica Jones and recent Agents of SHIELD. Fair warning, I'm probably a little out of character here; except for Jessica's potty mouth, hence the rating.

Usual disclaimers and all that jazz. Enjoy.

I thought I'd learned my lesson about breaking into morgues. Then again, who am I kidding? I don't learn lessons, I just keep doing stupid, illegal shit for no reason. So the foodie morgue attendant, who had been Kilgraved, but was now probably back to his usual self and none the wiser that I had already found my John Doe in some unfortunate couple's fancy high rise, was still texting me.

This body was young, he'd said, but so weird it merited a text. Also, he wanted a table at another famous Manhattan restaurant. I told him to hold his breath until I saw what I was getting out of this deal. He wasn't wrong, though. Giant, gaping, cauterized holes in peoples' chests aren't exactly normal. I guess it's a good thing I specialize in the opposite.

As it turns out, I'm a goddamned sucker for big, sad eyes, and there's a whole world of weird out there I had no idea even existed.

Just another Thursday, right?

Most people would probably consider breaking a man's neck in what amounted to cold blood (no matter that he had deserved something a lot more painful and a lot less quick) the action of a sociopath. Or at least a military commando. Not a tiny woman, certainly, even one who came with a bad attitude and a habit of sticking her nose in other people's business. But somehow, Jessica Jones found herself in the position of being a hailed for a hero instead.

She hadn't wanted this, which was the understatement of the goddamned century. This whole deal came with all the crap she'd tried to abandon. Strings. Friends. Hell, Malcolm had appointed himself her secretary. Luke was MIA, of course, but she found herself checking in occasionally at the hospital she'd taken him to, just to check and see that the nurse who'd saved him was okay. She'd started going for coffee with Claire, for fuck's sake. Okay, so maybe that had an ulterior motive. Because now she knew that there was someone else in Hell's Kitchen, someone else who was… gifted, and she hadn't wanted to give Kilgrave any more mind controlled-muscle then, but now she was curious. Not that Claire was being forthcoming. Other than offering to send the guy word that she wanted to meet him, the nurse wouldn't budge on the details.

She really should have been working on research for one of the slew of new cases that had cropped up in the wake of Kilgrave's inglorious demise. The woman with a hungry kid and a deadbeat ex was on the top of the stack. He was some low-totem enforcer in one of the gangs, and she'd been trailing him around, waiting for an opportunity to get him alone in a back alley somewhere, but so far she'd had shit luck with that. The idiot had his boys with him everywhere.

So when she got a mystery text about a body in the morgue where she'd found Clemens burnt to a crisp, from the attendant she'd halfway assumed was dead, she figured she'd check it out. Just in case.

"This is a bad habit," she muttered to herself under her breath as she twisted through the lock on the door. It was the dead of night, but apparently Mr. Foodie was home with the flu; he'd told her he'd meet her tomorrow night, but Jessica wasn't exactly what you'd call patient, so she figured she'd take a peek herself first. That way, if it was none of her damned business, as it probably wasn't, she could avoid having to sweet talk the troll. Of course, given how she'd had to break in and all, she hadn't exactly been banking on company.

There were the corpses of course, three or four of them laid out on metal tables with sheets thrown over them, waiting to be autopsied, but there was one body walking among them that was still very much alive and kicking. She couldn't see much from where she was crouched behind a table, but he looked young, maybe mid-twenties. The grungy hoodie, disheveled dark blonde hair and the scruffy beard trying to grow in… she'd have had him pegged as a lost grad student if it hadn't been for the look on his face when he got to the last table and lifted the sheet.

She'd expected fear, or sadness, but not tired resignation; not anger. And that made her curious, despite her own better judgement.

"You make a habit of breaking into morgues?" she stood up abruptly. She'd raised her hands, expecting him to pull a gun on her, but apart from raising his hands like he planned to shoot lasers out of them or some shit like that, he was unarmed. She'd seen the look that was now gracing his boyish features before, too; she'd have bet a lot of cash that he was on the run from someone. Law, probably, because as soon as he got a look at her and realized the obvious (that she was definitely not a cop), he relaxed. Slightly, anyway.

"Says the woman who broke into the morgue," he shot back nervously.

"Fair point," she acknowledged with a shrug, before she nodded towards the body on the table, "I know one of the attendants. He lets me know when weird shit shows up. Friend of yours?"

"Why do you care when weird shit shows up?" he ignored her question.

She shrugged, "I had a problem. The kind of problem that leaves bodies in his wake. Let's just say he had a broad and distinct signature."

"Past tense."

"Yeah, well, he was an evil asshole."

"If he's dead, then why are you still looking for his leftovers?"

"I'm not," she stepped closer with every question, as he backed away warily, "I guess I was just curious. How about you?"

His eyes, wide and afraid and a little bit sad, like the puppy that's been kicked one too many times, darted back and forth between her and the door, but he didn't seem inclined to threaten her so long as she paid him the same courtesy. That was fine. She could work with that. In the meantime, she lifted the sheet on the body he'd been looking at. It was a young man, probably about the kid's age. Chinese, maybe. He looked perfectly healthy, at least until you got to the gaping hole in the center of his chest. It looked like someone had punched a perfect circle all the way through his body, only the wounds were sealed and there was no blood. Like whatever had done it had cauterized the flesh on its way through. She gagged a little.

"That certainly qualifies as weird shit," she muttered, lowering the sheet carefully, "I'm guessing he was a friend of yours. And I'm guessing you know what did that."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Private investigator," she handed over her business card with a shrug, "Do me a favor and don't drop that in here, huh? I don't need any nosey morgue staff on my ass about a broken door."

"You broke the door?"

"I'm stronger than I look," she deadpanned. She expected fear, or uncertainty, but if anything that confession seemed to make him lower his defenses a little.

The sounds of voices and footsteps upstairs made them both jump.

"How about we get out of here, and then maybe you can explain to me what puts holes like that in people's chests, okay?" she asked pointedly as she ushered him towards the broken window where she'd gotten in the first time.

She really didn't care if he followed her back to her apartment or not, but she left the offer open, because she wanted answers to what the hell kind of thing could do that, and why, and if she or someone she remotely cared about might ever run into it. Also, he looked like he could do with a drink. Maybe a meal. Just his luck Malcolm had started leaving food in her kitchen.

"So, let's establish a couple of things," she said conversationally as she passed him a carton of leftover rice, "First, you're on the run. From the cops, I'm guessing. Which I don't really care about, so long as no one smashes my new window."

She pointed at the window in question helpfully as he sat and fidgeted.

"Second, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you're… Gifted. And not in the way they give out scholarships for."

"So are you."

It wasn't a question, and even though he really hadn't seen her, and she could deny it, she'd acknowledge just a little thrill of excitement to realize that there was someone else, besides her and Luke, and Kilgrave and Claire's mystery friend. So she shrugged.

"Maybe I am."

"Is it a recent development?"

"Not in the slightest," she sighed at his expectant look, "I was fourteen."

"Are you an Inhuman?" he asked after a moment.

She blinked, "What the hell is an Inhuman?"

He tensed up a little, but then seemed to realize the futility of whatever he'd been planning to do, and sank back into his chair instead, "It's a long story. You probably wouldn't believe most of it."

Jessica barked out a laugh, "I can lift a car, if I want to. If I were to jump off of a small high rise, I would land on my feet and walked away without so much as a limp. I have a friend whose skin is unbreakable, and until I snapped his neck, I knew a guy who could control minds. The aforementioned evil asshole."

She had to be honest, she'd been expecting a bigger reaction to that. He barely looked up from his food, just shrugged as if all of that was no big deal.

"Okay, fine, you have a better story, fire away," she challenged, her voice full of annoyance.

The lights in the apartment started to flicker, and she cursed under her breath, "Damned wiring in this damned place…"

"It's not the wiring," the kid said, and suddenly she was entranced by his left hand, which was dancing with crackles of blue and purple electricity.

"How the hell are you doing that?" she tried to keep her voice steady, but she could seem to keep it from shaking a little.

"How can you lift a car?" he shot back, extinguishing the handful of lightning and looking back at her. The lights stopped flickering.

"I don't know," she found herself answering honestly, "There was a car accident. I was in the hospital for a while. Mostly unconscious… a friend of mine, she thinks someone did something to me there. Like an experiment or something. But I don't know. Your turn."

"I'm… you know aliens are real, right?" he paused to clarify. She rolled her eyes.

"I was in the city when that portal opened and they came out and attacked it. Of course I know that aliens are real."

"The ones who attacked New York aren't the only ones out there-"

"No shit," she interrupted, "The big guy with the hammer and the cape?"

"There was another race that came to Earth a long time ago. On the order of thousands of years ago. According to a friend of mine, they were fighting a war and wanted to engineer super soldiers, so they started experimenting on us. Mixing in their DNA. Then they decided that the results were too dangerous and tried to kill their experiments, but they failed. Some of them survived. They called themselves Inhumans… there's a small percentage of the population who are descended from those people, and they inherited small amounts of alien DNA. It's recessive. Dormant. Until a chemical compound activates it, and you… change. That's where my powers came from."

"You're an alien?" she asked flatly. He rolled his eyes at her.

"No, I'm not an alien."

"But you're a few hundred greats back Gramps was?"

"I don't…" he shook his head and shrugged helplessly, "Sure. Something like that."

"Why are you telling me all of this?" she asked in a softer voice, "You thought I was an Inhuman too?"

"Yeah. Something happened a few months ago. The chemical that causes terrigenesis was accidentally released into the ocean. It's working its way through the ecosystem."

"And anyone whose exposed to it who has these alien genes will… change?" she supplied, "I take it these powers aren't usually tame or easy to adjust to."

"Not in the slightest," he quipped, his voice hollow, "That was my job, back before… I helped people through the transition. Helped them come to terms with their new selves, and control their powers."

He was talking about all of this like there was a secret conclave of Gifted people somewhere, and Jessica had to admit that the thought was a little alluring. Not having to hide. Not that she was doing much hiding, but just meeting Luke had been… freeing. Knowing there was someone out there who understood what it was like to be different, to be feared for simply existing, for something that you couldn't help… so maybe that was why this kid was sitting in her office, eating her leftover takeout, and looking a little less scared and homeless as the minutes ticked by. Maybe that was why she offered him the use of her shower and the couch for the night if he needed it, and maybe that was why she never asked for his name.

And maybe because of all of that, he told her anyway.

"That guy you killed. The evil asshole," he asked her quietly after he'd emerged from the bathroom and they were sitting around with glasses (whiskey for her, water for him, because apparently he didn't drink) while she did research, "Is he the only one?"

"That I ever killed? No," she stared down into her glass, "He made me kill someone else. Someone who hadn't done anything, except try and help someone she loved understand why he was different. But she knew too much, so he wanted her dead. I didn't want to do it. Somehow it broke his control over me. His… the person who made him what he was said that he emitted a virus, but sometimes I wonder if all it took to break his control was to know that you could."

She glanced his way, "How about you?"

"Once. It was an accident. I didn't know he had a bad heart. A pacemaker. I'd never… even when people were trying to kill me, I always held back just enough."

"Who was he?"

"A friend. The only friend I thought I had left," he raised his glass and chuckled dryly, "My AA sponsor."

She snorted and clinked her own full glass against his, "Well, I'll drink to that."

"It doesn't make you a monster," she said suddenly a few minutes later, "I mean, I chose to end Kilgrave, so I guess that makes me a monster, but he was a bigger one. But shit happens, and accidents are accidents. You just do whatever you have to do to get by."

"One day at a time?"

"Yeah, sure, something like that," she downed the rest of her glass and stood up, "The thing that killed your friend in the morgue. Do I need to worry about that?"

"No. It's going after Inhumans. That's why I started tracking down my friends from… where I was before. Somehow it knows who we are. I need to find a way to stop it."

She rolled her eyes, "And you don't think you're a goddamned hero."

"What's a hero?" he mused, almost to himself. She didn't think he expected an answer, but she was drunk enough not to care. Besides, she was the girl who just said whatever the hell she wanted, right?

"Someone who does stupid fucking things because they're the only one who can."

He was gone by morning, with nothing but a hastily scribbled thank you note stuck to the refrigerator. And a quick search of the news outlets showed a newly formed government task force hunting down a fugitive wanted for questioning in relation to a hospital bombing, and a subsequent death they were calling murder. And there he was, in his hospital ID photo, wearing a lab coat and a friendly smile, and Jessica almost didn't recognize the haunted, desperate kid who had followed her home from the morgue in the smiling med student in the picture.

He was a fucking doctor. No wonder he was so broken up over accidentally killing his friend.

It didn't take much sleuthing to track down the truth about that, either. It was all in the poor schmuck's obituary; that he'd survived heart surgery, and spent his time working hard and doing good shit for other people. That it was sad and a shame that one of those people he'd tried to help had turned on him. Except Jessica was pretty sure that the poor schmuck had been the one who'd turned on the guy he'd tried to help, and a few volts of electricity through a metal bat had done a lot more damage than the kid had intended.

At least she knew for sure now that the weird shit that had turned up at the morgue this time wasn't her problem. Not in the slightest.

Just another fucking Thursday.

Reviews are nice if you're inclined. Thanks for reading.