"Come in. He's all yours."
Jones enters elegantly through a skylight I opened onto the roof of the top floor, mid hanging up the call, superhero landing, and pulls a face at me that clearly suggests that she detested my methods. "Halfway through, I was going to abort and storm in. You killed a man, Hart." I cut her off with tutting.
"I didn't kill him, Jones. Or rather, I wouldn't have done had it been of my own accord."
Her frown deepens. "Neither would you have dry-fucked Kilgrave on a couch."
"Consensual, Jones. He didn't ask me to do anything except 'come closer' and 'kill him'." I mimic the British accent, see her face knit into confusion, shock and disgust.
"He raped me, Hart. He raped Hope, and god knows how many more women he's neglected!" she looks at me disbelievingly again. Jessica really isn't getting the point.
"Exactly. So think of what a shock it is when you've always had to compel yourself a date, that a woman would want you of her own volition." As the motive sank in, Jones ended up shaking her head and giving a dry, unattractive snort.
"You're a sick bastard, Hart. You both deserve each other, but at least you got the job done." Jessica steps carefully around the blood, and I make that same ineloquent snort when I think about how she probably doesn't even care if her combat boots redden around the heels. I allow her a moment of victory, acting out the scene as gracefully as she arrived in the room, and punching him as cruely as she'd imagined. She stares at him, bruised and helpless, before turning back to me.
"I work alone. No favours, no meet-up calls, no tag-team duo, no Batman and Robin." She nods as I do. I've understood the situation perfectly so far, and have no intention of disregarding it now. I don't want to follow the bickering meta-humans from cell to confession booth. I've had my fun, and now it's over. I can go back to writing books that have little chance of ever getting published, listening to sluts discuss their flavour of the week on the metro and five dollar coffee... Right? God, I hope not. "And by the way, Hart. That is a nasty purple hickey."
"Are you sure you don't want to indulge him again, Jones? The things he could do with that mou-" I duck to narrowly avoid a shuriken that smashes some kind of abstract art's picture frame, and imbeds itself in the wall. "Oooh, where'd you find that, Jonesy?"
"Hallway. Decoration." I have another one thrown that skims my ear, slices the shell with the effect of a paper-cut and jams into the wall ahead of me with strands of my hair still attached. I move to inspect them. Nice, but not authentic weapons. "This is all a game to you Hart, but it sure as hell isn't one to me." I turn to face her now, and try to keep my face as serious as hers. It's hard, considering that I just nearly single-handedly took down a very powerful man. And almost got laid out of it as well.
"That man, who I'm now going to have to constantly pump with sedatives for the next hour, is a murderer of many. All the lives that you have taken are on him. You're too exhilarated right now to care, but Hope isn't. You've observed trials before when you dabbled with law, you know they don't test a rapist's 'between the sheets' ability, Hart. Whatever you did to him to get him to me is over. Say bye to your price charming, and leave."
Half temped to dance around the room and sing a sleeping beauty theme, I resisted for the sake of the sharp, and incredibly dangerous, shurikens and walked over to her. "No hard feelings, Jones. But you've got the guy. I mean he's right..." I turn around and gesture to the empty couch. "There..." Oh bullocks.
