Author's Note: This is at least a thousand times darker than anything I've ever written before. I tried my best.
Let's say there's a bird. Every thousand years, this little bird flies to a mountain made out of diamond, and sharpens its beak. Every thousand years, this tiny little bird flies and does the same thing over and over and over again. And by the time the mountain has been worn away to nothing, it will have been a second of eternity.
This was roughly the amount of time Jessica Jones spent in the back of her taxi, debating whether she would get out or not. She could stay inside, give the driver a new destination, and turn her back on her home at Birch Street and Higgins Drive. Forever. She could book the next flight to Punta Cana and never have to see Kilgrave again.
Except in her nightmares.
But then, of course, Hope would be locked away for a crime that she hadn't committed. Jessica couldn't let that happen.
Gritting her teeth and cursing whatever conscience she still had, Jessica handed some money to the driver and got out of the cab, holding the Chinese takeout in front of her like a shield. In the window, she could see the poor souls that Kilgrave was holding hostage, saying something, relief spreading over their faces like spilled wine on a white table cloth.
Kilgrave opened the door before she could finish knocking.
"You came back," he said, disbelief written all over his face and then underlined several times.
"I brought dinner," she replied and pushed past him to put it on the table. The servants had more than earned a break, she figured.
"You came back," he said again and Jessica rolled her eyes. It was a classic eye roll. Jessica had had a lot of practise being derisive, and it showed. This was an eye roll that would make other expressions feel embarrassed. Kilgrave fell silent.
When Jessica had finished setting out the food, she motioned for the servants, who were still blinking furiously, to sit. A look of distaste flitted across Kilgrave's face before coming back and setting up camp there.
"Do they have to eat with us?" he asked.
"First rule of heroism; don't be a prick," Jessica said, shoveling food into her mouth. Kilgrave pulled a face, and then took another look down at his food. Jessica looked up from her plate.
"You can't ingest sufentanil, idiot," she said. Kilgrave arched an eyebrow and still didn't move to eat. With an exasperated sigh, Jessica took some food from his plate and pointedly swallowed it. When she didn't keel over, Kilgrave began to eat as well.
It would've been so easy. So, so easy to drug him then, with his guard down. But she didn't. There was too much good to be achieved with his powers, or something like that. Jessica ate in silence, as Kilgrave began to jabber on about the wonderful costumes they would get made, and how they should start thinking about superhero names, and how good it had felt to save those people earlier. Jessica tuned him out, and found herself wondering, not for the last time, what exactly she had gotten herself into.
She got up while Kilgrave was still talking and stomped upstairs, taking care to slam her door loud enough for him to hear it. It splintered.
All at once, Jessica realized that she was trapped, in this house, with Kilgrave. That she had chosen to stay here, and that she couldn't leave. The walls began to close in around her. She sunk down on the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. The room was spinning, and she was dimly aware that she was hyperventilating.
"Birch Street, Higgins Drive, Cobalt Lane…" she muttered to herself, but it was no good. Because he there. He was there now, and nowhere was safe. There was nowhere to hide from him, not even her home.
"Jessica?"
His voice, for once tentative instead of demanding, came from the other side of the door.
"Go away," she spit out, barely holding herself together.
"I wanted to ask why you back," he said, and for a moment Jessica had a very clear vision of a young Kevin Thompson, lost and alone in the world.
"I didn't do it for you," she said. There was silence from the other side of the door, and Jessica's head cleared ever so slightly. Slowly, she took off her boots and climbed under her covers. Sleep was slow in coming, and when it did come it was restless and full to the brim with nightmares. One moment she was crashing in the car with her family, the next she was locked in a windowless room, and then again with her family. There was blood and pain everywhere she turned. She woke up drenched in sweat.
She reached for the bottle of whiskey on her nightstand and groped around for a few minutes before remembering that she'd left it in her apartment, and that she was definitely not there. She pushed the hair from her eyes and dragged herself out of bed.
Kilgrave was eating outside again, and his hostages were joining him, for once. That is to say, they were sitting about five feet away and kept glancing over to make sure he wasn't going to have them murder each other, but they were eating with him all the same.
When it came to Jessica telling him how things should be done, Kilgrave was like a toddler. He never quite knew what the boundary line was, so he took everything that extra step too far.
"I think," he said as Jessica sat down, "that we should get proper costumes." There was a look of intense concentration on his face; he was obviously phrasing everything so that he wouldn't be commanding her. It was almost cute.
"I already have one," Jessica said nonchalantly, grabbing food and piling it onto her plate. If Kilgrave's eyebrows had gone any higher they would've been declared their own sovereign nation.
"Can I see it?" he asked, like a child who has been informed that it's Christmas morning. Jessica snorted.
"That'd be a no," she said. Kilgrave sighed exasperatedly.
"Please?" he whined. Jessica rolled her eyes and mumbled that there was a photo of it on her phone. Kilgrave almost dropped the phone in his excitement. He scrolled through the photos she had sent him; he had already had those laminated and framed. Near the very end, amongst photos of Trish and Jessica that made him almost intolerably jealous, was a picture of Jessica pulling a face. She was wearing a tight, spandex suit with a jewel at the top.
"I know I look like a stripper," Jessica muttered, viciously stabbing at her pancake. She'd never liked the costume; it was too bright for her taste.
Kilgrave had gone very quiet.
"I think," he said at last, "that this costume will do quite nicely." He continued staring at the photo for a moment, before shaking himself and smiling. "So who are we going to save today?" he asked.