His voice isn't very soothing, Matt thinks. It's sharp, crisp. The vowels are elongated by his accent.

Something warm drips down his neck and into the front of his shirt. It itches, it's a weird sensation. It smells like copper, and oh- that's blood. His right hand is shaking due to his tight grip on the cold metal blade that cuts into the top layers of his skin.

It stings.

A door slams open at the other end of the room. How had he gotten here? What is this place? And then the person—Jessica—says, "Let him go, Kilgrave."

Right. That's the man's name. Wasn't he dead?

Well, it's not like Matt can check. For all he knows the man with an invisible noose around Matt's neck could be a ghost, or probably a demon. This wouldn't have happened if he'd been at church, Matt thinks hysterically.

"Why should I?" Kilgrave asks theatrically.

"Your problem's with me. Not him. Not Trish or Malcolm or anyone else. Just me."

"My my Jessica, you overestimate your importance."

"I thought I was the most important to you?" Jessica asks acidly.

Kilgrave laughs, a cold and dangerous sound, but it cannot compare to the ice of the blade still in Matt's hand. He'd almost forgotten about it. His fingers can't seem to uncurl. "That was before," Kilgrave says. "I care about your friends, too, particularly this one. Three new friends you've made in the course of a few months. I didn't think you had it in you."

"You didn't—"

"Oh please, I only needed this one for you to come here. Easiest target, you know. A bit blind."

Matt almost wants to laugh. Just a bit blind.

"Well, I'm here now. What do you want?" Jessica says, stepping forward. Her voice is closer now. Matt could maybe reach out to touch her, or maybe not. His left arm feels like lead. His right arm is stiff. His right hand is still holding the knife.

Kilgrave laughs again. Matt shivers, just a little. "You killed me, Jessica. How could you?"

"Well obviously it's not like it stuck!" Jessica says, angrier. "You're still here!"

"I want you to suffer," Kilgrave says simply. "I failed last time, but maybe with this one..."

Matt does not like the sound of any of this. He wishes he was at home, with Foggy and Karen who are safe and definitively not here. He still doesn't remember how he'd gotten here.

Jessica moves in Matt's direction again, but abruptly stops when Kilgrave says, "Won't you dig that knife just a little deeper, Matthew?"

Matt's right hand tightens its grip and obeys him without question. A fresh wave of warm and sticky blood drips down, staining his shirt and the floor. He wants to wash it off. He can't.

"Let him go," Jessica says again. Matt has never heard her like this. To be fair, they've only been working together against Fisk for a few months, but still, it is unusual. Her demeanor in front of Kilgrave is almost unfamiliar.

Jessica had said very little about her time under him, and Matt had never pushed even when he'd wondered.

He had never wanted to truly know.

"Come towards me, Matthew," Kilgrave says, voice hardening.

Matt walks, in the direction of his voice (he never wants to hear that man's voice ever again). He walks, all the while a small portion of his mind wonders where the hell his cane went and another small portion screams at his legs not to listen and—

He trips over what seems to be the back legs of a chair and slams into the ground. His head knocks into a table and his left hand flails around, trying to soften his fall but ultimately failing by quite a bit. His right hand stays clenched around the handle of the knife that has mercifully not dug into his skin any deeper because his body's still obeying that damn voice.

There's a fight going on in the room. Matt doesn't care enough to try to piece it together. He'd barely get even half of the picture, anyways.

And- oh, he's standing, or trying to. His left hand presses to the hard ground, trying to lever himself up enough to get his scrambling legs underneath his body. He slips, tries again, and eventually straightens up to the sound of glass breaking.

He walks towards it. Kilgrave must be around that area, or maybe—

"Hey, stop!" Jessica says, suddenly there in front of him, blocking his way, but he had to get to Kilgrave. Where is he? Why isn't Jessica letting him—

"You're okay," Jessica says, calm, like she's trying to calm someone else down. Kilgrave? No, it's Matt, she's trying to calm Matt down, but Matt is calm, he is.

"Where's Kilgrave?" he asks her. She must know. "I need to get to him."

"No, you don't," she says, voice tense. "You only needed to walk towards him, remember? You did that, you did."

"Oh," Matt says, or maybe his mouth does. "Okay then."

And then there's a calloused hand gripping his own, trying to pry his fingers from their firm grip around- around the knife, right. It's still there.

The smell of copper is stronger now.

"No!" he says, fighting the hand. "I can't, I can't." His chest heaves, like he's been running. Why can't he? What is he-

"Hey, you can, Matt, you can," Jessica says, voice so much warmer than Kilgrave's, so soothing compared to his.

"I can't," Matt says, voice breaking. He feels a wave of embarrassment. His hand clenches tighter around the handle of the dagger.

"He told you to hold it to your neck, right?" Jessica asks. Matt's body nods, no, Matt nods. He's getting there. "And he told you to dig it- dig it into your skin, but you've already done that, right?" Matt nods again.

"I'm doing it," he says, as if to prove to someone that he's listening, that he's doing his best.

"You're doing it," Jessica confirms. "But you don't have to keep doing it. Why don't you hold the knife like an inch away from your neck. Close enough, right?"

Matt does. "Right," he says. He registers, belatedly, that his hand is shaking.

"How long did he tell you to hold it?" she asks, a hand around his wrist, not restraining, just holding, comforting.

Matt shakes his head, swallows. It stings. "He didn't say."

"That means he didn't say you can't drop the knife after you hold it."

"I suppose," Matt says shakily. It makes sense, at least. He has half a mind to think that Jessica could be a phenomenal lawyer, what with the way she'd used logic to guide him to this conclusion.

"Great. Drop the knife," Jessica says.

He does. It does not clatter onto the floor, but falls into her hand. And then it feels like his body has been freed, his arms and legs weak without tension. He collapses to the ground for the second time this day—this hour—but this time Jessica catches him. She starts talking rapidly into her phone while Matt blinks listlessly, staring up at what he assumes to be the ceiling.

"Jessica?" he croaks out.

"I'm here. I'm sorry," she says, gently pressing a tissue or some kind of cloth to his neck.

"Where...?"

"He may have fallen out of a window."

"Is he...?"

"I don't know. I didn't check," she says. "I was more worried about you."

"Aww...you care," Matt says with a small smile. He ignores the absurd scream of guilt in his head about a possible death. Kilgrave was a bad guy, sure, but a death is still a death.

Sometimes, though, there's no other way. Matt would never want to be put into that kind of situation. He wishes Jessica never was.

"Shut up, Murdock," Jessica says, pressing into his neck a little more, but not enough to block off his airway or anything like that. He trusts her, anyways.

"I thought he was dead?" Matt says after a few seconds of silence. He can feel her stiffen a little, and winces not at the pain in his neck but her discomfort.

"I thought he was too," she says quietly. Then, "Isn't resurrection what all of you Catholics are always talking about?"

Matt wrinkles his nose. "For Jesus, maybe."

"Maybe he's Jesus."

Matt grimaces in horror but bursts out laughing anyways, even as pain strikes through his neck. That had probably been her intention. The laughing, not the pain. "Blasphemy," he says, still smiling.

Jessica just ruffles his hair, and his smile turns into a scowl, just as the sound of sirens comes from down the street.

"I really am sorry," Jessica says to him, sounding slightly uncomfortable but sincere. "He must have seen us working together on the case, must have targeted you because of me."

"It's not your fault," Matt says automatically, though he knows, deep down, that it won't do much good. "You couldn't have possibly known he was alive, let alone looking for you. Honestly, I'm just glad he didn't get Foggy and Karen, too."

"You wouldn't have gotten hurt if it wasn't for me," Jessica says stubbornly.

Matt sighs. Time to change tactics. "It's been nice working with you against Fisk," he tells her. "I'd rather have known you than not at all."

"Nice?" Jessica asks, scoffing. "We argue all the time."

"The true mark of friendship."

"Shut up. Coworkers, at most."

"Friends," Matt says, grinning at her. The sirens are closer now. "Also, when did you call the police?"

"Earlier," she says vaguely. "I called for an ambulance, actually."

"I don't need an ambulance."

"Calling ambulances is what friends are for," Jessica says, voice deceptively sweet. "And yes you do. You're literally bleeding. I'm starting to think you should stop talking so the skin can heal or whatever."

"That's stupid," Matt says, then winces as it pulls on the damaged skin at his neck. Maybe she has a point. "I don't like hospitals," he says anyways.

"You need stitches," she says stubbornly. "They're going to give you stitches." Matt frowns up at her. "Don't give me that look."

He sighs. "When's the last time you went to the hospital?" he asks. He knows Jessica's not fond of hospitals, either.

Silence.

"Exactly," he says. Small mercies.


I feel like Matt would actually be more sympathetic to Jessica killing Kilgrave in this universe because he's never been put into that kind of situation. Like, as Daredevil, he literally has people's lives in his hands, and he chooses to restrain himself from making the killing blow, so he knows that he can and will make the right choice, in his eyes. But here, he has absolutely no idea what he'd do if he had to choose to kill a bad guy or not, and he just doesn't know if he'd be able to stop himself. He doesn't want to know. He can't know. While I firmly believe canon Matt would never judge Jessica for her actions, I think maybe AU Matt would try to understand more.

Anyways, random thoughts.