Chapter Text
How?
Nothing made sense. Had he followed her? But she had been so careful not to be trailed. Her horrified expression elicited a short-clipped laugh from Kilgrave who had been watching her intently from the other side of the busy boulevard. Other people were going on about their business, unaware of the ticking bomb walking among them. Across lanes empty of car traffic, he advanced with sure steps towards her, reminding her of a predator on the prowl.
Jessica clenched her firsts internally questioning whether she could knock him out before he immobilised her.
He stopped a few feet short of her, his woody perfume invading her senses. What was once appealing now made her choke. “Dear Patsy called to let me know you were planning an impromptu vacation without me,” the meaning of his words staggered her. Her lungs grasped for air. The fact that Trish knew him and foiled their escape plans could only mean that she too had been under his control all this time. What else had he ordered her friend to do?
Trish, I believed my distance was keeping you safe from him… I am so sorry.
“I am insulted really,” Kilgrave prattled on, a cold smirk tugging at his lips despite the debonair tone he laced his words with. “How naïve are you to think I would let you go so easily? Sure, you fooled me to believe in your good faith for a while there,” his voice slipped dangerously before he plastered the smile again, “but I did not live my life so far without a few fail-safes planned for any occasion.”
“What else have you done to her, bastard?”
“Just ordered her to slit her wrists and wait for me.” The earth disappeared beneath her feet. That’s why Trish had still been in the bathroom. Hardly had she moved an inch to lunge for him and run back upstairs, that Kilgrave ordered her to stay put. Jessica panted, beads of cold sweat trailing down her neck.
Kilgrave noticed her struggle to resist his order. “Ah, relax, you have no sense of humour. She is honestly fine. Though having her out of the picture is tempting, I never liked sharing.”
She spit at him, making him frown in distaste. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You vowed to stop hurting others.” Not so long ago, she had glimpsed a seed of hope for this demented man’s redemption.
If there was one thing she should not have said, it was that those exact words. She watched with trepidation as Kilgrave lost his composure. He kicked the luggage at her feet, sending its contents scattering in all directions on the pavement. “That’s utterly grand coming from you,” he seethed.
“Is anything wrong here, Ma’am?” She could not turn around as she was still under Kilgrave’s thrall, but she recognised the annoying voice of the receptionist behind her. She now felt bad for having been rude to him earlier today.“Go back inside,” she ordered the guy.
Her eyes begged Kilgrave not to do anything foolish. “You heard her. Go back inside and choke yourself on a napkin. And stop looking at her,” the furious man barked. The receptionist closed the door behind him.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jessica started, but was interrupted by his enraged voice. “That bargain you hold over my head, that was only valid as long as you stayed by my side.”
“That was the only way the world would have been safe, but you fucking left anyway. Who’s the selfish bastard now?” She had never witnessed such rage on his features before. Dark eyes were bulging from their sockets and his teeth clenched in an ugly grimace. When he reached for her, she flinched imperceptibly, and he stopped himself.
Rough fingers ran through his styled hair as he took a few steps away from her to pace.
“I was a fool, waiting hopelessly for you to love me.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. It was the demented grimace of a man bidding farewell to reason and embracing insanity. “Why did I subject myself to this torture when I possess the power to shape the destiny I want?”
“To shape you into who I want,” his eyes bore holes into her, sending a chill down her spine.
Jessica trembled. She almost welcomed the familiar terror of their early days together. Terror kept her sharp at least.
His agitated pacing stopped and he advanced towards her. “We shall have a clean slate, no ugly memories to weigh us down, no one to interfere. I will make you forget everything, all those heavy burdens of the past, until all you remember is me.” His hands clenched at his sides.
“I will make you love me, Jessica.” His tone was cold and certain, in stark contrast to the unhinged message conveyed by his words. Kilgrave believed everything said. The distance between them shrank further.
Horrified, the woman could imagine it clearly as daylight. The glimmer of a dark future where all freedom was forfeited. A serpentine voice, lingering presence of all his past commands, whispered in her head how liberating it would be to relinquish control. What good had freedom brought her anyway? Look at her pitiful life. Would it be so bad to have all ties severed to this world, a world that had been cruel too often and forgiving too little? A word from him and the pain would vanish.
The same voice from before painted a vivid image. Come days, she would be his starry-eyed ingenue, bathing him in smiles and hanging on his arm while he paraded her across the globe, indulging in the extravagant wonders the world had to offer. Come nights, she would be his seductive plaything, losing herself to his touch while he possessed her body and brought her to the brink of pleasure on expensive hotel sheets. She would be all he wanted: lover, whore and partner. What was worst, she had not doubt that on some level, she would enjoy everything. From the food to the trips, to his very touch. She was well familiar with the intoxicating allure of his plan, had already seen glimpses of what was to come.
However, that woman would no longer be Jessica Jones.
She would be nothing but an obedient puppet whose strings were pulled by him. Now he wanted to ensnare her with the most effective trap of all. Love. Or as close to a perversion of love as his power could attain.
He would have her join him in his madness.
“Tell me, was I such a monster? You and I, we had good moments, do not deny it,” at the very end his voice cracked.
Despite everything that had come to pass, indeed she could not. There have been good moments between them. Few and far in between. Yet enough to make her run as far away as she could.
She remained silent. Kilgrave smiled ruefully, having seen whatever he needed for confirmation. “I have shown you shameful secrets no living soul would ever see, I have laid myself bare at your feet only for you to abandon me.” His cheeks flushed with a mix of misery and fury. The more seconds passed, the more worked up he became.
“Why can’t you love me? Why?” He screamed, a sound so raw it ached to hear it. He stepped in the middle of the street, the overhead streetlights casting his angular face in unsettling shadows.
To her dismay, a handful of pedestrians had stopped to gape at the man’s breakdown. Though NYC witnessed daily such chaotic displays, be it from its homeless residents or its dissatisfied trading brokers, never had it seen such perilous heartbreak caused by a single man unfolding on its streets. Jessica braced herself to protect the civilians. Before she could interfere, Kilgrave barked at her to remain still and silent. The unlucky pedestrians never stood a chance against his power.
They were ordered to walk to the nearest bay and once there, swim into the depths of the ocean until their bodies gave up. Jessica stared at their retreating backs, committing their features and clothes to memory.
If she survived her encounter with Kilgrave today, she would need to recognise these victims. Either on the ocean’s shores in order to stop them from drowning or in the morgue to identify the latest batch of Jane and John Does. She also wondered whether the poor concierge was still alive.
“Now, where were we?” Kilgrave turned to her again, his face betraying no emotion. No trace of his earlier breakdown. And certainly, no remnant of remorse to the people he had likely just condemned to their deaths.
It downed on her then that all these months he had been holding himself in check… He had not changed one bit. Now she could see how much more terrible he could be. She was afraid her plan had unlocked a greater devil than the one she initially encountered that cold January night.
“You are mine, Jessica,” his voice pierced through her mind.
“Say it,” he growled impatiently. “I am yours,” reassuring words escaped her mouth even as her form doubled over from the intensity of his power. “Again,” he intoned, energised by her words. A cruel light twisted his face. “I am yours.” He made her repeat herself till her voice had gone hoarse.
Yet he was still not satisfied. She knew that look in his eyes. Knew it meant the end of life as she knew it. She might as well die now.
“Jessica, you love-,“ he started. His lips, lips she had kissed countless times this month, were moving lazily as if savouring the order he was about to inflict on her.
Time slowed down in that moment.
The bus came out of nowhere. She felt the rush of air as the steel beast swerved madly on the road in an effort to avoid its imminent collision with Kilgrave. There was no stopping it. He was mowed down by it, the impact throwing him several feet in the air before his form crashed unceremoniously on the ground like a broken china doll.
Only now did she hear the honking of the bus, slowly fading as the driver sped away into the night to avoid blame. She stared in shock at Kilgrave’s crumpled body. What the hell had happened? In a struggle to understand, her brain resurfaced some useless stats she had read regarding the frequent hit-and-run accidents of NYC.
She had been close. Close enough that she noticed the satisfaction morph into pained shock on his face.
Could she have stopped it? Looking back at the incident, while lost in the darkest pits of self-hatred, she would sometimes ponder that yes, she could have stopped it. A simple grab and push imbued with her strength would have kept him out of harm’s way. The more appropriate question was whether she would have wanted to.
Some questions were better off unanswered.
Jessica often dreamed about what could have been had that bus not hit him.
Tonight the nightmare was frightening in its vividness.
“Jessica, you love me and never want to abandon me.” She easily imagined this is the order he did not have a chance to finish uttering.
They go back to their penthouse where he strips her naked with a tenderness that makes her skin crawl and orders her to make love to him, slow and passionate as if she adores him. And in this frightening alternate universe, she does. With all her heart as she had been commanded to. He makes her orgasm twice before penetrating her. Upon every thrust of his hips, a fervent “I love you” escapes her lips and he smiles approvingly, moaning her name. She had faithfully followed the lines of the script he had dictated. Perversely, she relishes every second of this farce.
She loves him after all.
They reach their climax together and she cuddles him in the afterglow, holding him tightly in her arms. She finds it odd when something wet falls on her shoulder and it alarms her to find stray tears in his eyes. Her mind warns she should not make the man she loves cry. He assures her she had done nothing wrong.
Kilgrave then kisses her brutally and everything becomes a tangle of limbs and sweat.
They leave NYC the next day and cross the pond over to Europe. Every week they visit a new city and pretend they are lovesick fools. Rome. Barcelona. Marseilles. Strangers smile when they see them holding hands and some even go as far as to congratulate them on their honeymoon, assuming only a newly-wed couple could be so madly in love. In rare moments of lucidity, she thinks that love is a curse and that perhaps he is in love after all. When he reminds her, she realises she is too.
This would stretch on for months and perhaps years. After a while time loses its meaning. It’s all a blur but for his orders which remain the only constant in her life. To love him and to stay by his side are the prayers she wakes up to and goes to sleep with.
In the end, her nightmares always conclude with him meeting his death in an inevitable, gruesome car accident. She had dreamed about it enough times in the last week for her to no longer be immobilised by the instant guilt she associates with his accident. Even so far away from him, he continued to have a hold on her. Yet, the real tragedy of the recurring nightmare was that instead of relief, her dream-self had continued to feel the miserable love his orders had imposed on her long after his death.
This sick realisation always caused her wake up in cold sweat, sometimes forcefully shaken awake by Trish or other times jerked awake by her own terror. She silently thanked whatever god or better yet, devil had been listening to her for cutting off Kilgrave’s last order.
She would rather die than be his willing prisoner again.
She peered out of the bus window and for the first time since New York, the worried frown dissipated from her countenance. They would soon reach the Colombian border.
She pulled the blanket over Trish, the blonde dozing on her shoulder. As soon as Kilgrave’s orders had expired, Trish had broken down into a tearful mess, apologising profusely for alerting the man of their escape – every day for the last six months she had been brain-washed to call him should Jessica show up at her door. Jessica had simply shushed her and embraced her distressed friend, thus stunning the blonde into silence. They had both been through enough because of that monster.
The future was yet uncertain, but now that they were together and safe, that was all that mattered. Despite the bus’s rattling engine, Jessica finally allowed herself a nap.
This time, she dreamed of white horses running unchained.