Disclaimer 1. I do not own Jessica Jones or any of its characters. 2. The lyrics quoted are from "Haunted" and "Snow white queen" from Evanescence. I don't own them either.
TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR EXPLICIT DISCUSSIONS OF RAPE AND ABUSE AND ITS IMPACT. Language warning.
"Watching me, wanting me, I can feel you pull me down. (You belong to me, my snow white queen. There's nowhere to run so let's just get it over.)
Saving me, raping me, watching me...(Soon ,my love, you'll see, you're just like me. Don't scream anymore, my love, cause all I want is you.)"
Can complex human emotions and thoughts be really broken down into carefully constructed sentences in languages that have eons of dust settled over them? Is sitting on the goddamn couch of a goddamn shrink and talking about her feelings, like a bloody voice-over in a movie, with picture montage and gloomy music and shit, supposed to help her?
Sharing is supposed to make the heart lighter, but what do you do when you're not even sure if you still have a heart left in your chest? God, she hopes she doesn't, because that little shit would break into a thousand more pieces all over again. It's a bloody confetti can rattling inside her rib-cage, waiting to burst open like it's her goddamn eighth birthday, and she sure as hell hopes this fifth bottle of scotch can put it out of its goddamn misery.
How does she feel? How does a wasp feel, trapped in a spider's web, alive but captive, wriggling to get away, the vibrations of its own movements haunting it into believing that the predator is back and would pound on it any second?
Her predator is back, oh there's no doubt about it, the blood stains on the elevator of her building is there to remind her of it every day. But he was never really gone, lurking in the shadows, hiding behind her own silhouette, whispering words into her ears through the cold crisp air of her room, lost in the labyrinth of her brain, taunting her as he moves through the folds in her grey matter, staining them purple.
Do you know what it is like to live when the sound of your own breath makes your heart speed up, and that speeding of the heart is mistaken for the predator's footsteps, and that in turn makes your breath more ragged, and the cycle never fucking ends? Have you ever been startled by mundane sounds like the beeping of a phone, the sound of a car-horn, the voice of a stranger, or the pulse of music? If you haven't experienced it first hand, how the fuck is she supposed to break it down for you so you can understand?
How does she feel? She feels like she's dangling from the precipice of paranoia. She expects to see him at every bend of the road, at the sound of every car-door opening, at the shrill bell ringing in a cafe when a new costumer enters. She sees him in the thick of a crowd and the emptiness of alleyways, his reflection taunts her in the glass windows of stores and the mirror in her own bathroom. And she wonders if she does meet him, will she be able to tell if he's real, or if it's just her traumatized mind hallucinating him?
How does she feel? She feels like the earth's liquid core- hot molten anger flowing through her veins that she keeps buried inside her so deep that it exerts pressure on her from the inside and threatens to explode. She hopes she will, but of course she doesn't. Sometimes she lets it out though, packs her anger into punches for the ones who deserve it.
In the aftermath of which she remembers that fatal punch delivered to Reba. Suddenly, she's angry with herself. What had she become? How could she let him turn her into this? Or is that who she always has been deep inside? A murderer without remorse?
No, there is remorse. The bloody thing hits her in the gut every time she sees Luke Cage. She feels disgusted with herself every time she spreads her legs for him and then sees the picture of his dead wife in his medicine cabinet. Maybe Kilgrave was right- she really is a whore.
Do you know what it is like to step under the shower and feel the water wash over you and feel absolutely filthy? Every time she washes a body part, every time the wash cloth touches her skin, she remembers him doing it to her, again and again and again and again. She remembers her body betraying her, heating up and responding to the bastard's forced ministrations. She wants to rip her skin apart, inch by tainted inch, until her flesh is stripped bare and she stops feeling so exposed. Instead, she washes her hair and takes great care to ensure that her nails scrap her scalp sharp enough for it to bleed.
Of course, there are those times when she flashes back to how he joined her in showers, and her mind cannot differentiate the present from the memory. Her eyes stay wide-open, or sometimes tightly shut, and all she sees in that dazed stupor is that monster touching her, taunting her, making her beg for him, over and over again. She cries so much that her eyes hurt. But she never screams. She bites her lips and keeps it buried within. She will fight it, she will fight him.
Somehow, some day, she will. She pictures it in her head again and again, her fist the sword of justice as it punches his face. Oh, how she would love to do just that. He deserves it for what he did to her, for what he did to everyone. He doesn't deserve the life he has- that perfect little world he has built for his own twisted self, a world where nobody knows of his existence and he gets away with anything he bloody wants, where people passing him by on the street cannot see the monster behind the mask- are fortunate to not see the monster behind the mask.
Sometimes she wishes she could undo meeting him too. Why her? All the billions of goddamn people in the world, and he picked her to do his bidding? Couldn't he have just killed her when he found her? Or even made her kill herself? What kind of life was it, being his slave, his play-thing, the puppet that did his dirty work and got blood on her hands? Isn't death better than this imprisonment, this burial alive inside a facade of happiness? "Smile", he would tell her, and she did. Sometimes she feels so bloody mad at everyone for not seeing through the hollowness of her smile. How could they not see the silent pleas in her eyes? How could they not know that something wasn't alright?
She knows it's not their fault, or hers. He is the only one to blame. She hates him so much that she doesn't even want to feel this hate for him- he isn't worthy of any emotion. But she's only human, and she feels this intense fear and rage inside the strands of her DNA every single day. She will fight it, she will fight him.
How does she feel? She feels tired of her miserable existence. She has to drink herself to sleep on the few nights when she is brave enough to sleep, because the world behind her closed eyes is even darker than the world she is trapped in. He's always in there, just waiting for her, and she's always running. But he catches her every time, and she feels his hands on her. By the time she wakes up, she's sweaty and trembling. But months of experience has taught her to repeat her mantra, take deep breaths, dress up and hit the road. If she stays in her room too long after waking up, she might just go insane.
It's a good thing she has superhuman strength, or her exhaustion would have caught up to her ages ago. Or maybe it's the adrenaline. Fear is sometimes the golden cage you are trapped in, and at other times, it's the thread that anchors a kite to the ground so a storm can't sweep it away. The fear grows inside of her, and so does her determination.
The first time she sees him is when she has to stop that bloody cop from jumping off the terrace. She freezes, all instincts of self-preservation gone the moment their eyes meet. A part of her is afraid of falling under his control and living that nightmare again- another part is angry and wants to lash out, hit him till he is bleeding and broken, show him what it is like to be in so much pain that death feels like a welcome change. But the biggest part of it all is that nagging uncertainty. "He made me do it" is her defence, and she knows he really did. But the line between who she is and who he told her she is has blurred so much, that when she looks at him for that first time, she sees a shadow of herself pass over his face for a split second.
When she finds out he's been spying on her, having her photos taken, she feels so threatened, so violated. Is anywhere safe? Is anyone trust-worthy? How is she going to stop him?
The next time she sees him is with Malcolm, and this time, even in her panic, she can think straight. That's good. She is fighting it, she is fighting him. She has a plan, she has allies, and even when it all goes wrong, she's so proud of the punch that left a bruise and the taste of blood on his tongue.
He makes her send him pictures. It makes her feel sick, filthy, helpless. He's closing in on her as she is closing in on him, and in this game of chess, she is currently the trophy, showing herself off to that prick. She wonders if he jerks off to them, and the disgusting thought itself fuels her rage and her determination to stop him.
There's no point in drowning in self-pity. She has a past and she has redemption to earn, but all that for later. Right now, what she needs to do is break free, take back control of her life, get rid of him so he can never hurt her or make her hurt someone ever again. There's no guy in a cape with laser eyes who would swoop in and save her- she has to be the one who saves herself, and everyone else. Her bones and muscles aren't the only thing that's strong- her psyche might be damaged, but it is still bloody strong. Strong enough to take down that asshole.
She may be a piece of shit- but she's the piece of shit that will end that abomination called Kilgrave. She is the storm, so you just wait.
A/N: I hope you like this. Reviews would be lovely. Have a great day. :)