ii. we made a promise, we owed it to each other

It wasn't the first time Jessica had woken up in someone else's house with a stranger. It was the first time that the house didn't belong to the stranger in question.

Kilgrave was awake and dressed already, sitting on the edge of the bed with a breakfast tray in his lap. "Rise and shine," he crooned.

"Ugh," she said, sitting up. God, the pillows were soft. "What time is it?"

"Almost nine. I brought you breakfast in bed."

She blinked, her mind still foggy. On the tray was a coffee pot, a glass of orange juice, toast, butter, marmalade, a croissant, grapes and a fruits of the forest yoghurt. The smell of it drifted over to her nose and her stomach rumbled. Was she in a hotel? Large bed, soft, quality sheets, the walls painted in a tasteful shade of eggshell grey. Definitely not home.

She'd had a few drinks. Saved a man. Met a stranger with mysterious powers. Then…

Jessica scrunched up her nose. "Did you steal this?"

Christ, she was in someone else's house. She'd slept in someone else's bed and she was being given someone else's breakfast. She hadn't even been drunk. Tipsy at best.

Kilgrave looked affronted at the very idea. "I made this for you. Thought we'd have a bit of everything. What do you usually have for breakfast?"

"Whiskey," she said, but she took the tray anyway. Kilgrave grinned and popped one of the grapes into his mouth.

Somewhere down the hall, a door opened, footsteps following through. Kilgrave glanced over at the bedroom door. "Sounds like they're back. I'll go check on them."

She caught his sleeve before he could stand up. "Will you pay them for us staying here? Call it expenses."

She didn't know why she said it. A sudden bout of morning guilt. Kind of like a hangover, only less easy to get over.

Kilgrave met her eyes and nodded. "Sure."

He asked her if she had somewhere to be. A big part of her wanted to disappear, get him to drop her off near Hell's Kitchen, call it a one night stand and be done with it. But she couldn't shake the image of how easy it had been for him to make that couple let them spend the night. Like he'd said, his power literally opened doors.

She had no job. No money. No place of her own. She'd quit everything she'd ever tried.

"I still have questions," she told him brusquely, and he grinned.

They went to a little café and she watched him go to the front of the line, silencing any objections. She felt – God, it was so stupid but she felt good – seeing his power and knowing she wasn't affected by it. Like she was better than all those other weak-willed morons. He returned with cappuccino for himself and a black coffee for her.

The coffee scalded her tongue. She fixed Kilgrave with a level gaze. "Ever robbed a bank?"

He laughed. "Well, there's a conversation opener. Can't say I have. That would attract quite a lot of attention." He raised his eyebrows. "Have you ever robbed a bank?"

She shook her head. "Maybe when I'm homeless, I'll give it a shot. Until then I can't really justify it."

He must have read something in her face because he took the comment seriously and not as the crack she meant it to be. "Is that likely to happen?"

"No," she said. "The friend I'm staying with, Trish, she wouldn't let that happen. I'm between jobs, you know how it is."

"Not really," he said, and for a moment they looked at each other, the truth of his statement hanging in the air, and then he took a sip of his cappuccino which left him with a frothy moustache and Jessica had to control herself from breaking into a fit of laughter. "What?" he said.

She pointed.

He wiped his mouth with good humour and then leaned forward. "How is it that someone with your gifts doesn't have a job? You could do anything you wanted."

She could, huh. Trish said that too. Jessica shrugged. "I thought about pimping myself out, super strength for hire and all, but they'd probably put me on some government register. I'm not too big on that."

He nodded. "Nor me."

"Trish wants me to do the hero thing full-time. I considered it, but then I looked at my credit statement. Turns out the pay is shitty. You can't be poor and a hero."

There was some bitterness in her tone. She'd blame the coffee, but he'd made her think of Trish and everything that Trish had done for her. Financial support, a place to live, an endless list of contacts for potential jobs or set-ups for dates. She was the strong one, literally, so how had she ended up relying on Trish for everything?

Kilgrave wasn't buying her self-pity. He shook his head at her. "Come on, that's not true. You stopped a crime last night, I call that heroic."

"Yeah, well. I do some good every once in a while. Haven't made a career out of it. What do you do?"

"In general?"

"No, for a living. You probably don't need a job, do you?"

She was curious. What did a man with mind control powers do with his time? There were so many doors to open. He could go anywhere, do anything. What sort of life did he lead?

Kilgrave smiled, sipping his cappuccino. "I do whatever I want."

"So what do you want? You can tell people what to do… You could take over the world."

She was joking. Half-joking. If he wanted to abuse his powers like that, then presumably he would have done it by now.

He wrinkled his nose. "Christ, no. Think of how much work that would be. You'd have people constantly trying to take you down, and for what? Wasted effort."

"So you're too lazy to be a super villain. Good to know."

He laughed. "Be grateful for that. Like you, I prefer to stay under the radar. I try to live a normal life, as much as possible anyway."

Like her. But not like her, she thought. Not if what she'd seen so far of him was typical.

She finished off her coffee, placing it down on the table-top where there was a ring of spilled liquid on the surface. Someone would have to come and clean that up. She'd worked in a place like this before, back when she was in college. Back then she'd expected to move on to something better.

She looked up at him. "Normal life is shitty. Normal life is washing dishes and taking out the trash and buying toilet paper. Three things I bet you've never done."

"Touché. Is there a point you're trying to make here?"

"I don't know. You seem like you have your shit together. Makes me wonder where I went wrong."

"That bad, huh?"

He was sympathetic. He listened. She told him things that she'd only told Trish – and Trish was a sympathetic listener too but she'd heard it a million times before and she wouldn't shut up with her superhero idea. Kilgrave didn't push her to be a better person. He didn't say, yes, you should do it, you should wear a cape and fight crime. He made doing whatever the hell she wanted sound like the easiest and most natural thing in the world. He could get her anything she wanted too, he didn't say, but she was thinking it the entire time.

God, she was selfish.

"How's the job hunt going?" was the first thing out of Trish's mouth when Jessica returned home. "Did you find something?"

Jessica wanted to punch her. She rolled her eyes, took the cup of coffee that Trish offered her and slumped down on Trish's couch.

"No, I… I wanted to talk to you about something else."

"Oh?" Trish sat down too, manicured hands clasped in her lap. She'd been a hot mess only a few years ago. Child star turned drug addict. Rehab. The works. But she'd turned her life around and suddenly Jessica was the dead weight dragging her down. "What is it?"

"I met a guy."

That got Trish's interest. She raised her eyebrows. "I take it that's why you didn't come home last night."

There was no surprise in Trish's voice. Jessica had done it before and Trish hadn't bothered her about it or gotten unduly worried. That was one thing Jessica did appreciate about being a lodger here: they both recognised that they were grown-ass adults and they didn't have to constantly check in on each other. The only thing Trish asked was that Jessica didn't bring a guy home without prior warning – hence the occasional nights spent at a motel.

"So what about him?" Trish continued. "Is he cute?"

"No," she said honestly. "Cute is not the word I would use. He's… he's like me. Gifted."

Trish's eyes widened. "Someone else with abilities? You mean, he's strong like you?"

"No, his power is different. He… controls minds. Literally, people do what he says. I saw it happen."

"Mind control." Trish shifted in her seat, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Wow. That would make me nervous."

Jessica shook her head. "It doesn't work on me. He thinks because I have powers, I don't know. We talked and I asked him to…"

She stopped. Her insides constricted. The prospect of saying it out loud suddenly felt awful. Morally awful.

Trish looked concerned. "What?"

How was she going to explain this? Jessica exhaled, took another gulp of her coffee and then stared down at its contents as if that would give her some insight.

"Do you remember when that asshole was being an asshole at the bar? The one I beat at the stupid strength tester game." She looked up at Trish, who nodded. "I enjoyed that. I used my ability to get one over someone who deserved to be humiliated and it felt good. I was having fun with my powers and I wanted to feel that again. So I told this guy I wanted to go to a private pool. We broke into someone's house and had sex on their bed."

There. She'd said it. Trish blinked. Obviously that wasn't where she had expected the story to go.

"Wow," she said again. Then she frowned. "But this is a guy who controls minds. Jess, are you sure…?"

Jessica cut her off. "I'm sure. I asked him to do it – it was my idea. I stopped a mugging right before I decided to celebrate by breaking into someone's home." Good deed, bad deed. If there was karma in the universe, she'd fucked that one up fast. She let out a breath and looked up at Trish. "You can tell me I'm stupid. Irresponsible, whatever. Go on, I'll take it."

There was a pause. Trish held her gaze and then sighed, shaking her head. "You're not stupid. Irresponsible, a little, but I know you'll always do the right thing."

"I just told you that I didn't."

"You said you stopped a mugging. That's a good thing. You're not a bad person, Jess."

It wasn't the first time Trish had said that. It wasn't the first time Jessica had wobbled about shit like this either. She hadn't always stayed on the right side of the law.

She shook her head. "I've had these powers for thirteen years and in all that time I've probably done more harm than good. I was thinking he could get me an apartment. He'd solve a lot of my problems."

Trish bit her lip. "Jess… That's a lot to ask of a guy you just met. You don't need to rely on him for financial help – you know I can–"

"No," she said. "I'm not taking any more of your money. I don't want handouts. I want to get my shit together."

Trish was smart enough not to press the issue. This was a familiar conversation, complete with the familiar uncomfortable sensation prickling her skin, as if the room was shrinking and pressing down on them, or she was losing air. Neither of them wanted to go down that particular rabbit hole.

Trish put down her cup on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch. "Do you want to see him again?"

There was the question.

He'd given her his phone number. The ball was in her court and she stewed for a couple of days. Let him stew. One or the other.

Trish was right. Trish was always fucking right. Mind control in itself should be enough to make anyone nervous. People were nothing without free will and Kilgrave was awfully casual about taking it away. But he wasn't controlling her. She had free will, she could do anything she wanted, and it didn't sit right with her to write someone off because they had abilities. He was like her, he was the first gifted person she had ever met and he wasn't at all like the ones she saw on the news all the time. He wasn't a celebrity or a vigilante. He wasn't a superhero. He was just living.

Oh, boy, was he living. She met him at a five star hotel. This, she gathered, was normal for him.

"Took your time," he said.

"I was overthinking," she told him. "Overcomplicating."

He cocked his head. "How so?"

"Don't worry about it. I don't want to. Does this place have a bar?"

Did it matter that she'd enjoyed it, those early days and nights? Did it make a difference?

"You didn't know," Trish said. "You couldn't have known."

She shook her head. "I knew what he could do. I saw. I just didn't care."

Attraction was a spark, lightning in a bottle. Her skin lit up with the memory of it. Goosebumps. There was what he did to others and there was what he did with her. Two compartments, easy to separate.

Easy at first.

In the morning they ate scrambled eggs and waffles drizzled in maple syrup. It was fucking great.

She threw her head back on the ridiculously plump pillow and burped her contentment. "I could stay here all day."

He stretched out beside her, skinny-limbed and tousle-haired, and she thought he looked better like that, without the trappings that turned him into a prick in a suit. He had brown eyes. Expressive eyes. They gleamed with interest as he looked at her.

"I could too," he said, reaching out to brush his fingertips over hers.

A pleasant shiver ran through her skin. "Can you last that long?"

He smiled. "Try me."

She rolled him over, pinning him to the bed, and the way his eyes widened in surprise was almost comical. But he kissed her like she wanted, and she took hold of his hands and put them where she wanted, and later on she tried to work out whether he enjoyed it so much because he was giving up control or because she was a novelty. Maybe a little of column A, a little of column B.

She liked it too. Flexing her muscles a little. Not enough to hurt him. But enough to make it fun.

Decadence was a word that Jessica knew but had never expected to describe her life. It crossed her mind that evening when they were lounging on the bed drinking champagne and eating grapes, like Roman lords and ladies wearing fluffy bathrobes instead of togas.

They finished the bottle and to her surprise Kilgrave refused to order another.

"You can get anything you want, what's another bottle?"

"I don't get drunk," he said.

This seemed an absurd notion. "Why?"

"Because being drunk means not being in control. It means potentially doing something stupid. I can't turn my power off. If I tell someone to do something, they do it, so if I slip…"

He left the thought unfinished, and with it many horrible possibilities crowded into her mind. "Oh. Shit."

"Yeah," he said grimly. "Shit."

She drained the last of her champagne before setting the glass aside. "That's… tough. I didn't think anything in your life would be tough."

He sat up, looking over at her. "Most people don't understand, but I think you do. With your power, you could… Well, you could break things. People."

"I've broken a few things in my time." She gave him a look, smiling back. "And the occasional person, but only if they deserved it."

That got a chuckle. "Of course." Then he snapped his fingers. "That reminds me! Your other power – flying. I wanna see."

"It's not flying," she protested, though half-heartedly. "It's more like I tell gravity to go jump off a bridge."

"Well, either way, I look forward to it. Come on, show me."

He reached for her hand, pulled her to her feet. "Where?" she grumbled, but she was already pulling on her vest top, searching around for her jeans.

"The balcony," he said.

They were on one of the higher floors, the traffic forty storeys below. Dressed just enough to go out in public, she allowed Kilgrave to take her hand and stepped out to the balcony with him. The breeze skimmed over her and she breathed in the fresher air, taking in the view over the Manhattan skyline. The sun was setting. The sky was inky blue.

"Plenty of skyscrapers," Kilgrave went on, leaning over the railing to have a look too. "How far can you go?"

She considered. The nearest building was immediately opposite them on the street and there was enough light to see across to the roof. If she took a running leap…

She tapped Kilgrave on the shoulder, nudging him aside to give her space. "Watch."

Doors to the balcony flung wide open, check. Table and chairs shoved aside, check. Now she had all the space she needed. Jessica steeled herself, fixed her eyes on the target – the distant rooftop – and charged. A sprint from the bedroom to the balcony, a quick hop on to the railing, knees bent, getting a good spring – and then up, up, launching into the air and her stomach leapt in exhilaration as she jumped the gap with ease and rolled over to land with a thump on the rooftop.

Landings. She'd never quite managed to stick those properly.

From the hotel building: cheering and applause. She felt her cheeks heat up and smiled to herself. His enthusiasm was infectious.

"Look at you go!" he said when she made the leap back. "You're amazing, Jessica. That was beautiful."

It was hard to overstate how gratifying that was to hear. The praise felt like it meant more, somehow, coming from someone else with gifts.

She was smiling more than she could remember in a long time. "Thanks."

He cupped her cheeks in his hands. "You're beautiful."

She looked up at his face silhouetted in the dying light, the genuine appreciation in his eyes. She felt her heart flutter. It was a sensation not unlike flying.

Maybe he wasn't a prick after all.

Later, after she'd pretty much exhausted him and they'd turned the lights out, cocooned in the warm dark, he turned over to face her and she made out his eyes in the twilight.

"I have to ask," he said. "How did you get your powers? Were you born with them?"

They hadn't talked about it. A whole day together and the obvious topic hadn't come up. Jessica had been avoiding it; she surmised by his lack of mention that he'd been avoiding it too.

She met his gaze. "No. It was an accident."

"What happened?"

"If I tell you, it might give you nightmares." He didn't say anything and she exhaled. "Car crash. I was fourteen. I was with my brother and my parents, but they didn't make it. I found out about my powers after I left the hospital."

"I'm sorry," he said. "Losing your family… That must have been tough. Did something happen at the hospital?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know. There are gaps in my memory. I was missing for weeks before I turned up at the hospital. I think I was experimented on, but the assholes that did it didn't think to give me an explanation."

"How mysterious."

Yeah, she thought. Mysterious. She'd had nightmares about it before. Not so much now. Now she didn't think about it – it was a fact of her life, pointless to dwell on. Whoever had done this to her hadn't bothered to get in touch, so as far as she was concerned she owed them nothing.

Losing her family was harder to get over. She never really had.

"What about you?" she asked. "Same question."

She watched his face close off, a mirror image of herself. "I don't like to talk about it either. Long story short, I was experimented on as a child. One day the experiment worked and I used my powers to escape. I suppose I've been running ever since."

She frowned. "Running?"

"Well, staying under the radar. A power like mine is something people want to exploit. I don't want that to happen and I don't want to be experimented on again."

He was right, she thought. If he was ever coerced by some evil organisation, like whoever had experimented on her, he could do terrible damage.

She wondered if he could make people kill themselves. Was his ability that absolute?

"So we were both lab rats," she mused. "Maybe your scientists were the same as mine."

"Mine were in England," he said, "so maybe not, but who knows."

Who knew? The similarities were striking, but then she supposed that there were only so many ways to acquire super powers. He had been a child, she had been a teenager… She remembered the confusion, the sense of utter bewilderment, not understanding why or how she had been given these abilities. Had there ever been a purpose? Was she meant to use these powers for something?

It appeared that Kilgrave's thoughts had gone in quite a different direction: his face lit up and he reached out under the covers to take her hand, distracting her.

"I have an idea. Let's make a pact."

She looked at him. "A pact?"

"We both escaped from the people that made us. I think we'd like to keep it that way. So let's help each other. We'll protect each other from anyone who wants to take advantage of our powers. If they get you, I'll come rescue you. And if they get me, you'll do the same. Do you promise?"

She blinked at him. He was older than she was but his face looked so boyish at times. He had this expression that was excited and hopeful and affectionate all at once, like kids making pinky promises or drawing hearts on each other's notebooks or whatever kids did these days.

Still, it wasn't a bad idea. It made sense. Jessica had never considered herself one to team up with anyone else – not that she'd had any offers before. But the idea that someone else might have her back, someone who actually did have considerable power of their own... Yeah, it made sense.

And she liked him. She liked the idea of having him on her side.

"Okay," she said. "I promise."