Chapter 20

The world dropped from under Jessica's feet, leaving her scrabbling for some sort of purchase.

"You-what-Luke, look at him!" she exclaimed. "Who else-"

"He's not human," Luke interjected. He sounded shaken. Jessica opened her mouth, though she had no idea what the fuck she was meant to say, but Luke started off again before she could make a sound. "The drug wore off too fast, that was our first clue that something was wrong. And the fact that its effects were different from what you saw in other people. We noticed, but we didn't know what to do with the information we had. We didn't pay enough attention. More than anything else, though, he should have broken when you hit him like you did," he began. "My wife died because of a hit like that, Jessica." The room fell silent. That old, familiar guilt pierced Jessica's chest, for a moment halting her breathing. Although she knew Luke would deny it, she still found some residual anger in his eyes. That hurt more than anything else. "You punched him," Luke continued, slightly more calmly, "into the floor. Full strength, or nearly. I thought I saw dents there. But he's bruised, and nothing more."

"Might have broken a rib or two," Kilgrave muttered. Jessica hardly heard him over the rush of blood in her ears.

"Doctor!" Jack cried. "What the hell?" He started searching through Claire's small bag. "We have to tape those, you-"

Jessica shook her head. What at, she wasn't sure. She sucked in a breath, fought to ignore the spots in her vision. She was exhausted. Maybe she was imagining this. Maybe she'd collapsed the moment she'd entered Trish's apartment and this was all a weird dream.

"He knew how to talk to those aliens," Luke went on. "He was spouting off all these terms I've never heard before in my life, but they knew exactly what he meant. And they were afraid of him. Not to mention that Jack should be dead, too."

"I was dead," Jack put in. "Didn't stick."

"Maybe his powers turned into something else," Jessica tried, throwing her hands into the air for a lack of anything better. "Look at him, Luke. Please."

"I am," Luke insisted, voice going deep and gruff. "And yes, he looks like Kilgrave. I want to believe it's him, that's what my eyes are telling me. But I-" He cut himself off. Swallowed.

Although Jack was attempting to get at Kilgrave's midsection, attempting to remove his suit jacket, Kilgrave wasn't moving. Just sat with his head in his hands, entirely still.

"I have two hearts," he said, eventually. Jessica closed her eyes. Emotion bled from her, at once, leaving her shaky and cold and hollow. "I'm not human."

"Why did you pretend?" Trish asked. Her voice cracked as she continued. "Why let us keep you locked up in Jessica's apartment for so long? You could have just lead with that. What you just said. Why did you-why do that to us?"

Jack gave up on his task, leaning back. His lips thinned, right before Kilgrave said, "I'm a coward, Trish. That's all there is to it."

"I guess so," Jessica whispered. The words didn't feel like her own.

"There was a chance, anyway," Kilgrave went on. "There's still a chance that he's me."

Jack sighed. "Doctor."

"Just because she didn't see a Chameleon Arch doesn't mean it wasn't there," he said, louder. "I do look like him, Jack. We all know I do."

"You look like you," Jack replied.

"That doesn't mean anything," Kilgrave said. "I can look like anybody."

"Jessica, come sit down," Trish invited, in a voice that sounded almost pleading. But Jessica found that her feet wouldn't move until Trish came over and pulled her to a chair herself. She did feel better with some support under her, but her heart wouldn't settle.

Jack scrubbed a hand down his face. He was still bloody, Jessica noted. "If you're set to believe that you're a rapist-murderer-whatever else then I guess I can't stop you," he growled. "God forbid you be wrong, Doctor. Even about this."

Kilgrave sat up straight, and then stood, in one clean motion. His face was expressionless, but his eyes burned. "I'm hardly a saint, Jack," he said, entirely too calmly. Jessica clenched a hand around the arm of Trish's chair, and the wood crunched in her grip. "You don't know what happened on Mars," the Doctor said. "I used to doubt the reach of what I could do, but I don't anymore." Jessica tasted bile.

He sounded like Kilgrave. He sounded exactly like Kilgrave. Everyone seemed to have stopped breathing, frozen in place.

"I learned my lesson on Bowie Base One," he continued, with a finality that clenched around Jessica's chest. "I started off here wanting to figure out who Kilgrave was and what he did, and if I was responsible, but that turned into me hiding from that lesson." He paused. Jessica watched him clench a hand into a fist, then slowly release it. "Like I told Beran. I have to do what I have to do. Unless I want to destroy Time itself, I'm beholden to it. No matter how dark the path it leads me down is."

He looked up, locked eyes with Jessica. The burning was still there, but joined now by a pain as dark and helpless and furious as Jessica felt herself. "I'm sorry, Jessica Jones," he said. "I'm so, so sorry."

Jack stood, grabbing the Doctor by the lapels. "No," he snarled, "Doctor, don't even suggest that you really-"

"This is the last time you'll see me, I think," the Doctor interrupted. Jack stopped cold. His hands fell down, though they stayed wound in the suit jacket. "This me," the Doctor clarified. Jessica tried to make sense of that, and couldn't. She stood, preparing herself to hold him back, but froze in her tracks as he reached up, grabbed Jack's face, and kissed him.

It ended quickly, with the Doctor pulling back within seconds with something like pain on his face. "For old time's sake," he whispered. Jack's jaw clenched, and his throat worked.

"Thank you," he said back, finally.

The Doctor smiled a dead-eyed smile, winked, and then vaulted over the back of the couch and out the door, only barely escaping the grasping arms attempting to stop him.

In the two seconds it took Jessica to barrel into the hallway, he had already gone.

There was a lot of yelling. At Jack, mostly, who bore the brunt of their anger with remarkably good grace, although he was clearly upset himself.

He explained, enough so that they'd understand. When they asked questions, he answered. The water became both less muddy, and incredibly more so.

"The Doctor is a Time Lord," Jack said. "A time traveller. He didn't do the things Kilgrave did, and I don't think he ever will. I can't think that. But there is - to him, at least - the possibility that he could. Your past, his future."

Meaning he could be off to go become Kilgrave right now. And do the things he'd done to Jessica, and Malcolm, and Luke, and everyone else his voice had reached.

Jessica threw up, around that time.

She'd let him go. He was gone. He was going to do it to her again, and this time it really was her fault.

She kept that part to herself, though, knowing Trish in particular would freak out if she were to voice it. Jack took a shower, and changed back into his collar-less shirt. Trish and Luke cleaned up the apartment together, for a lack of anything else. Jessica brushed her teeth and numbly gathered her things.

She wanted to ask Jack how he wasn't dead, but in the aftermath of everything else she couldn't think about it anymore. It wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever seen, anyway.

The sun was starting to rise by the time she headed back home. Jack walked beside her, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the sidewalk.

"If he's thorough," he said, right when she was about to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, following her, "he'll have come back for anything he left at your place. But I should probably still check."

It made enough sense. She suspected that he didn't want to go back to wherever he'd come from either, and put an end to this entire fucked up thing. Ending it meant there was nothing more to do. She wasn't sure she was ready to accept that herself. It felt too much like letting Kilgrave win, and that was a feeling she was keen to avoid if at all possible.

So maybe she didn't want him to leave yet, either.

"Fine," she said. They continued walking, absorbed by the sounds of the city bustling around them. Jessica tried to feel something besides frustration and fear and sadness, but the only other option was apathy, and she didn't want that either. She was tired of it all.

She glanced up, hoping for some break in the clouds, some hint of blue sky to offer up a little bit of hope, but she found nothing but gray.

Maybe she expected her apartment building to look inviting - it didn't. It was as dark and dingy as ever, with the same shady characters hovering around in their same shady spots. She tried to enjoy the familiarity, if nothing else, but couldn't.

The stairs creaked with every step as she and Jack climbed them. She heard shouting down the hall. Normal, everyday things that now did nothing but scrape at her. She thought about turning back now, but they were already here.

They were already approaching her door.

"Alias Investigations," Jack read. "I don't think you told me you were a PI."

"Yeah," Jessica replied. "Well. I am."

He huffed something of a laugh. "A good one, I assume?"

"The best in Hell's Kitchen," Jessica promised, though the words felt wooden in her mouth. They didn't feel quite as true as they had before. She should have known about the Doctor. She shouldn't have been so blinded by her own terror and anger that she forgot how to do her goddamn job. She forcefully swallowed down the poisonous thoughts, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

A giant blue box sat in her living room, over by her desk, which had somehow lost its lamp to the floor, and a majority of the papers on it. The windows of the box glowed with a warm, yellowed light. Over the doors Jessica read the words POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX.

The kitchen light was on. A tea kettle whistled.

Whew. Fair warning, this is going to be a long AN lol.

Thank you all sososo much for making writing and posting this story so fun and amazing. I really think the process of doing this has made me a better writer, and the feedback and support you've all given was of course a huge part of that. I hope the end result is as rewarding to you as it is to me.

There is still one more update to go, the epilogue. However, this chapter here is pretty much the end of Gray, for all intents and purposes.

The epilogue does provide some more closure than this chapter, and it could easily be viewed as the end of this story as well. But, er...it's not. It leads directly into something else.

That is to say, there's a sequel. Whoops!

I just enjoyed writing this story so much that I couldn't let it end here. There was too much left to say by the end, and too many loose ends between all the characters for me to tie up as neatly as I wanted without doing weird stuff with pacing and cramming too much into a last chapter or two. It would have been a lot, and probably not very good. I thought about it, but it didn't feel right for the characters or the story.

So if any of you are interested in that...I'll be posting the epilogue later today or tomorrow, because both this chapter and the epilogue are too short for me to feel good about posting them a week apart lol. And I'm way too excited for you guys to read the epilogue to wait that long if I'm being honest!

There was some interest in seeing the songs I talked about last week, so here are the major ones: Stockholm Syndrome by Muse (this was a huge one. lyrics are A+), Let it Happen by Tame Impala (just a good writing song tbh, but also lyrically it works p well also), and Miracle Mile by Cold War Kids (for pretty much the same reason). :)

I'll talk more about the sequel in the AN when I post the epilogue, but for now I'll just tell you that it's called Gold. :)

Thanks for reading!