Noelle - Day 72 (More Story Parts)

As the title says...
...And I kinda promised that I would post story parts.  Well guess what - I'm not just posting two R.M.S. parts - I'm posting THREE!!!  Yes, I'm awesome like that.  Well, I hope that you're ready to read, because here I come! Click the link below to read on.

Random Marvel-based Story (Parts 34, 35 and BONUS!!! 36)

The next morning, Danny woke up with a start, feeling like something was wrong.  The whole memory of yesterday crashed down upon him, but he ignored it as best he could and stood up, stretching.  If Jess won’t talk, there’s no way to force the words out of her, he thought.

A yellow piece of paper caught his eye - scrawled with the words “Gone out.”  He stared at it, willing it to go up in flames, before he realized that his fists were clenched.  He breathed in deeply, before tossing the paper in the trash.

Where did Jess go?  Did she really just disappear again?  Danny shrugged this thought away.  Knowing Jess, it wasn’t anywhere interesting - the bookstore, or the coffee shop down the street.  He glanced out the window, but JACKIE was still in its usual spot across the street.

Suddenly the door slammed open, revealing an very frustrated-looking Jess, chattering away on her phone.  Iron Fist waved at her stiffly and poured himself a cup of black coffee.

“I told you already, I’m supersorry I missed it, I know, I shouldn’t have, but look, you know the stress I’ve been under lately.  Uh-huh,” Jess said, dropping her bag on the floor and ignored Danny, who simply leaned against the counter and watched her to some amount of amusement.  “Is he really that upset?  I’m so sorry!  I feel terrible, Stars, but I had to miss it, ok?  Yeah-wait I have a call on the other line, can I call you back later?  And talk to him for me, would ya?”

She pressed a button on the phone, jerked her head at Danny instead of an actual ‘good morning’ and started talking again.  He shrugged and pulled another book off the shelf.  Jess talked on the phone a lot, usually with someone that she called ‘Stars’, although occasionally a Music-man and a Bunny slipped in.  He tried to focus on his book, but Jess’s chirpy morning voice was too noticeable for him to read “Poisons and Venoms; Survival in the World of War, By Prentice B. Smith”.

“Hello?” Jess said, her voice a bit higher than usual.  “Yeah, I don’t think I have much planned for the afternoon.  Let me check my schedule, hun, and I’ll be right back.  Don’t go anywhere.”  She covered the phone with one hand and hissed, “Do we have S.H.I.E.L.D. training at all today?”  When Danny shook his head, she returned to her cellphone and said, “Ok, I got nothing.  Brent’s Bakery?  I know that place, it’s that cute little shop over on 183rd Street, right?  Ok, meet you there later.”

Danny smiled at Jess as she closed her phone, but he couldn’t help wincing on the inside a hair, though he wasn’t actually sure why.  Why should he care if Jess was dating?  Besides, it could be anybody that she was meeting!  He was jumping to conclusions.  Why am thinking about this, he thought.  Confused, he shook his head like a water-logged dog and turned back to the book.

“Sorry about all that Danny,” Jess said with a sigh, flicking her phone closed.  “My morning has been insane right from five A.M.  Yours?”

He shrugged, tossing his long, blonde hair aside.  “Fine I guess.  Just woke up a few minutes ago.”

“Really, sleepy head?”  Jess teased, pulling a pill bottle from the top of a cabinet.  “It’s nearly nine o’clock!  Oh, and by the way, I wouldn’t read that book after dark - it gets nasty towards the end.”

Danny grinned, but the way Jess’s eyebrows creased and her hands quavered made him worried.  “Do you feel alright, Jess,” He asked curiously, hoping he wasn’t intruding too much.  The coldness in his voice surprised even him, but he didn’t really care.  I’m not going to forgive you just yet, he thought, wondering if Jess had heard it too.

“No,” She said.  Her smile faded slightly before she shook the pill bottle and said, “I just have a headache, that’s all.  Painkiller.”  She shook the bottle again, making the pills rattle, as if that would ease all the stiffness in the room.  Danny was still thinking about the night before - her threat to leave the team, everything.  Jess’s smile faded even more.

When he didn’t respond, she added tentatively, “I think I’m going to go lie down, since we don’t have any training today.  Wake me up before lunch would you?”

She walked away, and with a weak grin, shut the door behind her, leaving Danny alone in the kitchen.  Again.

THUD.

A huge thump echoed through the bare apartment, making Danny jump and Honey, who was laying in the patch of sunlight on the floor, hiss and dart under the couch.  He rushed to the bedroom door, but hesitated.  Maybe she had just dropped something.  Instinct told him otherwise though, and he only knocked once before he threw the door open.

*******

Jess was spinning, spinning like a top in water.  Sluggishly, she opened her eyes, but the light was too bright and too sharp.  Wait a minute, where am I?  She wondered.  What is that noise?  The air that she flew through was much too nice to care though.  She let her eyes close, relaxing.

A eerie song, much too cheerful to be right, wafted to her on the winds, but the high-pitched notes only dug deeper into her head ache like knives.  She cracked her eye open again, trying to find the source of the horrible, sugar-coated music.  All at once, the wonderful floating feeling vanished like a running fox, and with a hit to the stomach that made Jess double over in pain, she fell to the ground, panting for air.

The music swelled and hissed, and the grass between her fingers grew up so fast that it jammed under her fingernails and pricked her bare skin.  She stood slowly, watching the tiny beads of blood, like rubies on her skin, crack and fade into nothing in the air.

She looked around, swaying to the whipping breeze.  The sticky-sweetness of the music was making her sick, but Jess held her ground and looked around her, not even stopping to wonder how she had gotten here.  She was surrounded by a white, misty forest, empty of all sound except the rushing wind and the ever-echoing notes.  A carousel spun before her, spinning round and round.  Jess watched it, frustrated for reasons that she didn’t know or care about, as the wild, mounted horses reared, tossing plaster hair and rolling wild eyes.  Cracks made their way up through them, even as the carousel spun faster and faster.

Like a broken music box, the music never stopped but just went on and on, ever repeating.  The crazed horses never made a sound, but the cracks deepened and stretched their ever hungry fingers farther up.  The horse’s white eyes that flew past her cried diamonds that shattered when they hit the ground, like a beaker smashing against a wall.  Even that sound faded too fast to be normal, eaten up by the pressing fog, and one by one the strange horses exploded as the cracks became too much - too hungry.

Jess cocked her head to the side, but nothing could clear the rushing sound out in her head.  The fog pressed in on her and the reality of the situation shattered.  She wasn’t meant to be her but everything felt strangely...familiar...like she had been there before, a long time ago.  All of this, all of it felt wrong...wrong...wrong....  The last thing she heard before the white mist filled her vision was an echoing scream of, “No!”

*******

“Jess please wake up!”  Danny shook the girl’s limp body again, half-frantic with panic and fear.  He pressed against her stomach in a lame attempt at CPR, and she choked, sitting up and gasping for breath.

“Wha- what happened?”  She spat out between coughs and hacks.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Danny said, looking into Jess’s gray eyes.  “Anything I should know about?”

Jess coughed again, racking her thin frame and pulled herself to her feet.  “No, I don’t know what happened,” she said earnestly, “But I’m going to find out. I-”  She hesitated.  Seeing things wasn’t good, even for her.  “How long was I out?”

“Seven minutes,” Danny said, sitting down on her bed.  “I heard you fall and thought that you had hit your head or something.  Are you sure you’re alright?”  He said as Jess swayed on the spot, her eyes unfocused.

She shook her head like she was bringing her thoughts back down to earth.  “I’m fine,” she said firmly, but a note of uncertainty leaked in.

“Hey...”  Danny added, trying to comfort her.  “You can tell me if something’s wrong.  Does this have to do with last night?  Did something happen while you were gone those three days?”

Jess’s eyes narrowed and she stood up, all signs of fatigue long gone.  “Back off!”  She screamed, pushing him away.  He fell back on the bed, halfway in shock, and she turned her back against him, her voice hard as a rock.  “You’ve done enough.”

Danny refused to back down but pressed on again.  “Jess please, you can tell me.”  She turned, and they stared at eachother, silent.  “Please,” Danny added pleadingly.

Jess remained expressionless.  He took a very slow, careful step towards her, but Jess whipped away again, her hair flying around her like a black halo.  “Enough, Danny.  I can’t and I won’t talk,” She added, clutching her hands to her heart.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t!  You think I wanted to do this?”  The ground rumbled, shaking both of them to the ground, as if it agreed with Jess’s angry shout.  She kneeled on the ground, panting, long after Danny could stand.

“Hey, it’s ok,” He said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.  She pulled away, shaking.  “It’s ok, Jess, things will be alright.  I understand that you’ve been under pressure recently and -”

Jess sprang to her feet, quivering with even more rage than before.  “Understand?  You understand?  You understand nothing about anything Danny!”  She took a step forward, right into his personal space.  He backed up a foot, but Jess kept pressing.  “I have had enough of all of this!  I didn’t ask for any of this, and that’s something you never will understand.  Never!  I’ve had enough!”

The ground groaned and shook again, but Danny ignored it.  He backed up another step, putting his hands in the air.  “Jess, you’re doing something that you’re going to regret.”

“I regret a lot of things,” Jess spat with bitter sarcasm.  She stepped forward, but there was no where for Danny to move anymore.  She had backed him against the wall, and all of the sudden Danny realised she was holding a knife.  “What’s one more?”

“Now,” she said, putting an elbow against Danny’s throat to stop him from moving too much, “You can stop fooling yourself into thinking you can get me to spill, or I tastefully remove your head from it’s neck - are we clear?”

To his eternal credit, Danny didn’t even blink.  He had seen this a hundred times - Jess bantering with a villain.  But this was different; he wasn’t a villain.  Jess feels like I’m threatening her, he realized, and stopped trying to squirm his way out of her death grip.  “Jess,” he said in a soothing voice, “I know you’re angry.”

She smiled, a slightly scary look when one is holding a knife.  “Trust me sweetheart, when I’m angry, you’ll know.”

Then all at once, Jess realized that she could hear every one of Danny’s heartbeats.  What am I doing?  She wondered, her eyes widening.  And in that moment, over-run with emotions and pain, she loosened her grip and -

- Danny kissed her.  Not waiting to be fully let go, still pinned against the wall with a knife pressed against his neck.

Something had snapped inside of Jess, Danny could see it in her eyes, and that was his last thought before Jess punched him in the face.

P.S.

Please note that since I'm kinda falling behind in R.M.S., there won't be anymore for a while. Don't worry, when I have some ready, it will be posted right away.