25k words, complete @Ao3 by Detective_Animator
Genre/What to expect: Hurt. Some comfort. A little more hurt. Recovery not made easy, but made worth the effort.
Rating: M
Pairings: Jessica Jones/Patricia, WalkerJessica Jones/Zebediah Killgrave
He’s gone, he’s dead.
But she’s broken, parts don’t work how they should. Like code wiped clean, she doesn’t know how to operate. She’s a fragile machine who needs to be rewired to think normally again.
Suitable for fandom blind readers? Somewhat. It might be necessary to know the show for later chapters and to help with background information about the characters involved.
Reviewed by: Tafferling
This one is a bit of a wild ride. It follows Jessica as she breaks away from Killgrave, her body and mind still fighting his entrapment, and the whole world no more than a playground for her fidgety, torn nerves.
“Trish.” Her voice is hoarse, scratchy. It hurts to speak. He told her not to speak. She feels sad for betraying his order. She’s afraid. She feels worthless and stupid and ‘God damn it, she couldn’t follow one fucking order correctly?’
At times we might think Hey, she’s getting there! but there’s always more, and we’re left with a bit of a bleeding heart for Jessica’s struggle against her own mind. Or what she’s trying to make hers again.
It’s a virus that crawls through her system, worming it’s way into important files, deleting ones it finds useless. It inputs one thought, one single file spread throughout her body. She loves him.
Detective_Animator does a great job depicting the subject matter of Post Traumatic Repair, and more than once I’ve been left with an uneasy feeling in my gut brought on by an accurate depiction of suffocating panic leaking from the words. The analogies drawn against machinery and computer code fit the tone and give a fantastic comparison.
While Jessica is certainly the focal character of the piece, Trish is the protagonist, and we’ve still got Killgrave as the villain, ever present as his memory whispers in Jessica’s head. But Trish– Trish, she shines. She’s patient. Compassionate. Patient some more, because Jess is not making any of this easy. Not for herself, or her loving friend, who stubbornly follows her through the grueling steps of recovery. Even if at times she’s being pushed away.
At the point of reviewing this, Post Traumatic Repair is not yet finished, but it leaves off at a point where you’ll definitely be wanting more. I won’t spoil it though. Go find out for yourself!
Review examples from Ao3:
By LetaDarnell: We’re getting somewhere now. Or are we?
This is pretty accurate for anyone who’s been through something traumatic, especially feeling violated or ‘invaded’. It looks like you did a lot of research for this, which makes the story much more readable and easier to connect to the characters and situations, unlike stories built on cliches.
By Christyflare: Read this same day it came out, but I didn’t want to comment until I had read the first five chapters again to see what you meant in the top notes… Stuff happened, and I ended up just reading them like now.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh dear… Poor damaged Jessica. REALLY hoping it’s just a hallucination and she’s safe and not actually with Kilgrave after he tells her to imagine being without him or something…
Writing. Reading. Dreaming. 