Hope you're all doing well on the lead-up to the holidays! And hope you enjoy the chapter - pls leave some feedback if you enjoy, it really helps!

His Friends Call Him Sneaky

As alarming as it had been to realise how fortified Trish had made her apartment, Jessica definitely feels a hell of a lot more comfortable leaving her only family there alone than in a standard apartment. A steel-reinforced door with a camera for checking visitors and bullet-proof windows to prevent any particularly talented puppets - she's pretty sure nobody Kilgrave sends will make it through. Ever since she deposited Trish there, a weight feels like it has lifted from her lungs. She can breathe again - or, well, as much as she can when she knows her worst nightmare is still alive and kicking and definitely gunning for her.

Kurata has disappeared. He played his part in convincing Hogarth to represent Hope, at least, but Jessica was really relying on him speaking up in court as well to back Hope's claims, to stand as an additional victim to corroborate the truth. A different kind of victim, with a different story, but Jessica thinks it would have only helped the case. God knows society finds it all too easy to dismiss the claims of several women coming forward; but stick a man in there and suddenly it's a public issue instead of hearsay.

There has been a backup plan, or an additional plan - something brewing in the back of Jessica's mind that she didn't really want to broach with anyone because she knows they'll write it off immediately; but this dick move by Kurata looks like it's going to force her hand. Initially, the Sufentanil was protection. It was a means of self-defense if Kilgrave did personally come after her. It was also a way to subdue him, maybe get him over to the cops so they could witness firsthand what Hope was saying all along.

But, now.. Now she thinks it needs to be something more extreme. Get to Kilgrave, administer the Sufentanil, and then get him somewhere he can't escape so she can pull a confession or demonstration out of him. It means getting close to him and risking her autonomy. It means kidnapping a person and holding them prisoner - not that he's much of a person, but it's still a crime, technically. It then means spending a prolonged amount of time with him trying to get him to do something that will prove Hope right and save her life. The plan feels like a humongous if, a big, fuck-off question mark. Because she doesn't know if she has it in her.

But it might be the only chance they have.

Either way, she needs to get the Sufentanil first. Then she can start worrying about giving him the Sufentanil. And then worry about finding somewhere to hold him. And then working out how to make him confess.

It feels pretty fucking insurmountable.

The elevator door slides open at the bottom of the hallway stretching on from Jessica's open doorway, and two figures stumble out. Ruben, the weird kid from upstairs, struggling to support a lethargic, pale, dishevelled Malcolm.

Malcolm, who follows Jessica and takes pictures of her. Malcolm, who Kilgrave has chosen as another of his victims. Malcolm, who's probably too high to ever realise that something isn't right. Half of Jessica wants to help him, break him free from Kilgrave and get him on the right track. The other half recoils at the thought of him following her around without her knowing, telling her she's a good person even though he spies on her for some guy every day.

Everything feels insurmountable. Especially helping someone who's helping Kilgrave against her.

"Right foot, then left foot." Ruben groans loudly. "You have to use your knees."

Jessica drags herself over to her doorway and leans against the frame, watching the two of them struggle.

"That's it. Oh, hey, Jessica," Ruben calls cheerfully, if strained, when he spots her. "Uh, he's heavier than he looks."

She isn't sure if it's a way to ask for her help without actually asking or a way to salvage his dignity without actually having any.

He lets out a small, awkward chuckle. "And he keeps listing to the right." They're making very slow progress. "He came into our apartment by mistake. Guess I forgot to lock the door after I took out the trash."

Being near Malcolm puts her on edge. She had thought that the most harm he could do would be to himself, when she first met him. She had really felt for him. She had to talk herself down from helping him come off drugs. She let him come inside her apartment.

And now he takes pictures of her for a psycho creep. She doesn't know whether he's being controlled or if he's doing it as a transaction - in which case, is he doing it for money, drugs? A favour? The uncertainty is eating away at her, poking at her paranoia.

She knows he leaves the building at the same time every morning - she's listened out for his activity ever since Tony revealed him as a stalker. She would follow him, but there's a stupidly high chance that he's leaving to go meet Kilgrave, and she won't risk getting near the bastard without Sufentanil. She can't just straight-up confront Malcolm either, because who knows what kind of contingencies Kilgrave has in place; and them not knowing that she knows something is a small advantage, but an advantage all the same. She'll take what she can get.

Malcolm and Ruben shuffle forward another step, and Jessica rolls her eyes. At the end of the day, Malcolm is a vulnerable person that Kilgrave is manipulating for his own gain - and the prick would have just found someone else to do his dirty work if he hadn't picked Malcolm. As long as Kilgrave is free and alive, he'll be watching Jessica, somehow. Malcolm's just a pawn.

Besides, they'll be shuffling and grunting in her hallway for another ten minutes with the rate Ruben's pulling them along.

With a sigh, Jessica pushes off the doorframe and starts walking towards them.

"The elevator went too high," Malcolm complains, his head lolling backwards.

"You're too high," Jessica retorts.

He brings a hand up to his face as she approaches. "Hey, am I bleeding?"

Jessica spots the small nose bleed. "You're fine."

As she takes a hold of Malcolm's other arm to take half - or more than half - of Malcolm's weight, Ruben decides to keep chatting. "Robyn was asleep. I was in the other room with my beetle collection and I heard the door, and then there he was. Eating our peanut butter."

Jessica ignores the stench of Malcolm's sweat and god-knows what else, looking across him with barely-concealed judgement at Ruben. If Malcolm wasn't so out of it, she would've just thrown him over her shoulder and carried him into his apartment.

When they reach his door, Jessica sighs and turns to rifle through Malcolm's jacket pockets.

"Robyn was so scared," Ruben rambles on. "She thought he was a rapist or something, til I turned the light on."

Jessica pulls Malcolm's keys out and frowns at Ruben. "It's broad daylight."

She starts unlocking the door as Ruben explains, "We have foil over the windows."

Jesus, they're weirder than she thought. "Why? No, I don't wanna know," she decides, shaking her head.

"She hit me with a little man," Malcolm says.

"It was a trophy," Ruben corrects him.

"Of a little man," Malcolm insists, sniffing as his nose continues to bleed.

"It was a little woman, actually. Bowling trophy. She bowls like a dream."

Jessica's relief is unsurprisingly immense when she unlocks the door and opens it wide, sighing loudly.

"Am I bleeding now?" Malcolm asks her, his fingers loosely searching his nostrils.

"No, you're still fine," she answers, grabbing him to start guiding him into the apartment.

"I mean, I guess he is kinda scary if you just wake up and you don't know him, and maybe you're a bit racist," Ruben says, ineffectually helping to keep Malcolm upright.

Jessica moves Malcolm into the darkness of his apartment. "Go," she instructs, gently pushing him forward. "Lie down." As he stumbles inside, she tosses his keys at his back. "Keys!"

Ruben steps back when she turns to enter the hallway again, pulling the door closed behind her. "They say everyone is a little.." he trails off.

"Everyone's a little what?" she scowls.

"Everyone's a little racist? Like, if you see someone like Malcolm, you make a snap judgement, you know? It's something to overcome."

Jessica shakes her head and turns away from him. "Bye," she grunts, walking back towards her apartment.

"Oh, uh, I'll see you later? I'll see you around the building?"

She ignores him and slams her door closed behind her - her new door with the broken new lock. Shit. Another thing to add to the list. And probably not a good thing to have wrong with her door when she has a stalker next door and a mind-controller looming in the background.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she pulls it out to find a text from Tony.

"Sufentanil's arrived but I've got a couple busybodies following me around the Tower. Should meet somewhere else. Was thinking of getting somewhere with a view."

He's attached a location to the message - a random building on a random street corner. Jessica frowns.

And then another text comes in: "Btw I can show you every single person who's spoken to me since I left you at Trish's if that'd make you feel better."

Jessica tries the lever to open the heavy-duty door to the roof but it seems as though the door is locked. Checking the stairwell quickly to make sure she's definitely alone, she pushes the lever down again and shoulders the door open, breaking the lock with a sharp clang. A rush of air hits her, sending her hair flying, and she winces at the force of it as she steps out onto the rooftop.

In the middle of the roof, there's an Iron Man suit; but different to the ones the world is used to. Jessica thinks she recognises the silhouette from the multitude of blueprints Tony had had lying around in his lab, but the colour is a surprise. Charcoal-grey, blue-grey, and silver panels line the suit with the bulky shoulders and forearms.

And, over one of the bulky shoulder pads, Tony's face pops up, an eyebrow raised questioningly. "Wow, we took very different approaches to this meeting."

Jessica frowns at the suit's back when Tony pulls his head out of view again. "What d'you mean?"

"Well, you made as much noise as possible, and I flew Sneaky, here."

"Do you just expect everyone to be able to fly everywhere like you do?" she scowls, trudging over to him.

"Not everyone," he corrects. "In your case, is it 'can't' or 'won't'?"

She resists the urge to kick his suit over. "It's none of your business."

When she skirts around the side of the suit, she finds Tony pulling feathers from between the panels. "Figured I'd take the stealth suit out for a run when I was about to make my grand debut as a drug dealer; turns out I was a little too stealthy. Live and learn, I guess."

Jessica clocks the container on the ground behind him. "That the Sufentanil?" she asks, walking by him.

Tony hums an affirmative. "Enough to knock someone out for a couple hours."

"Multiple times?" she checks, looking over her shoulder at him to find him watching her.

"Ten," he nods grimly. "There's syringes and darts in there, too. I got a little dart gun so you can stick him from a reasonable distance instead of needing to get up close and personal."

Jessica squats to reach down to the container and unclips the lid to open it up. Everything is there, gleaming up at her like something from a spy movie. She takes out a syringe and grits her teeth, imagining using it against Kilgrave. Then she picks up a tiny jar of the liquid, skimming over the technical wording on the label that she'd never understand.

"Do drug dealers usually get a 'thank you' from their clientele? I'm not exactly sure what the etiquette is."

Jessica sighs and packs the syringe and jar back into the container, clicking the lid shut again. "Thanks," she says, pushing back to her full height. She meets his eyes, looking at him blankly while he plasters a self-satisfied smile across his face. "Dick."

He sighs and clicks his fingers. "There it is. Listen, silences just really don't work for me sometimes, alright? I have to do something about it before I implode."

"So why the peaceful meet-up point?" she challenges. "Not exactly bustling with life up here."

His head tilts as his expression morphs into severe disappointment. "It's not the kinda goods you can push on the street, Jones."

"Plenty of people manage."

"And none of them are Tony Stark. It doesn't matter," he rants, waving a dismissive hand as he turns away from her. He slips both hands into his pockets when he starts to meander closer to the edge of the building. "I just," he pauses, shrugging, "Needed some air."

Jessica looks back at the container for a moment, her jaw clenching. But then she sighs, licks her lips, and turns to follow him.

"So, who were the busybodies?"

He glances over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised as if a little surprised by her engagement. Then he tilts his head and walks to the edge of the roof, looking out at the nearby buildings and the city life down below.

"Banner and Rogers. The one-two-therapy-crew."

Jessica moves to the lip on the edge of the roof and sits down, her back facing the view. It's still windy up here, but it's quieter than the streets and feels like somewhere different - and she's pretty sure Malcolm wouldn't be able to take any pictures of her here if he'd suddenly gotten himself out of his lethargic state and followed her.

"I hate people with good intentions," she mutters.

Tony huffs a laugh and scuffs the toe of his shoe on the roof. "Just makes you feel worse when you turn 'em away."

Jessica smiles bitterly at the concrete beneath her feet. She had spent a long time feeling like an asshole when Trish had her staying in her apartment, and that was on top of feeling like a murderer, an inanimate weapon. Trying to ignore it and distract herself was the only way she could see to deal with it, for a long time.

"Took me a while to tell Trish everything that had happened," she says, turning her head away from him. "It had its pros and cons."

Tony sniffs. "Everybody's got baggage. It builds character, right?"

Jessica rubs at her knuckles, staring down at her hands. Telling Trish hadn't felt like a weight off her shoulders, or an absolvement of her sins. It had merely made the baggage feel.. different. There wasn't a sharp moment of clarity where she realised the meaning of it all or the meaning of life or how destiny or fate had chosen her for some higher purpose and was testing her to make sure she had the strength. Nothing that made the memories any quieter, any easier. She still felt like a murderer.

But telling Trish meant that someone understood why.

Jessica just wasn't in a place to be able to handle the sympathy, the empathy. She didn't feel like she deserved it. If she's honest, she still feels that she doesn't deserve it. Why else would she have run from Trish and kept her at such a distance for so long? The understanding hurt because, at the end of the day, her hands had still murdered an innocent woman and left a good man widowed. And she can't ever forget that.

Jessica sighs and runs a hand through her hair. "You got any whiskey?"

Tony scoffs and turns to sit next to her, keeping a respectable distance between them. "I think alcoholism might be one problem too many, right now."

She wonders if Tony doesn't open up to the other Avengers because he's still plagued by the blood on his hands, and he thinks he doesn't deserve the empathy either.

"So, which suit is this?" she intones, nodding towards the grey metal body standing a few feet away, staring out over the edge of the roof. It's kind of creepy how it stands there as if he's in it.

"Mark fifteen," he answers. "His friends call him Sneaky."

Jessica scoffs an amused sound and glances at him, watching an answering look of feigned offence scrunch his face.

"He's the first model built to fulfil a specific purpose, other than lookin' badass and fuckin' up bad guys. He's a pretty cool dude. Just needs to watch himself when he enters bird territory."

Jessica hums a sarcastic noise of understanding. "And what model are you on now?"

"None of your business," he snips indignantly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Jessica leans into the playfulness without thought. "Jeez, no need to be so snippy about-"

"Uh, excuse me, if you have the right to withhold information, then I also have the right to-"

"You know you're actually in a massively privileged position and I'm broke as shit, so you have a moral obligation-"

"Oh, wow, really? You're gonna play that card? Don't be ridiculous. You could easily leave those humble beginnings behind."

"Yeah? How?" she scoffs. "By joining the circus?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

Jessica's smirk fades when she looks at him and sees the genuine expression on his face. He's being serious. He's being fucking serious.

Her face curls angrily. "Don't be an idiot, Stark," she mutters, pushing up off the lip of the roof to put some distance between them.

"What part of that is idiotic? You already fought with us, you're basically an honorary-"

"I'm not a goddamn hero!" she snaps, whispers tracing the skin of her neck and setting the tension and paranoia aflame.

"I'm not a hero!" he counters, swinging his arms out wide.

"I only joined that fight because I was pissed they destroyed my building and my work."

"I joined the circus 'cos of my ego and insecurities."

Jessica glares at him, and he stares back at her, his eyes burning through to her soul. The tension under her skin is humming so loud she wonders if he can hear it.

She knows they both have examples for each other that will be far too confronting to be comfortable. Bringing it up will just make them more agitated, more defensive. She already wants to lash out with her example for him, but she knows it'll just immediately bring his example back onto her. As much as her defensive, survivalist, isolating instincts are trying to kick in, she doesn't think she has it in her to be confronted with that right now.

Tony sighs and stands up from the lip, approaching her slowly as he stares off into a point past her head. She can see him debating it. Debating the same thing she was - whether it's worth noting an example of how the other person has been heroic in order to try and make them see, when they know they'll be faced with the exact same thing immediately after, when they know it will hurt.

He sniffs and brings his gaze back to hers. The brown of his eyes has calmed now to something soft and melancholy. Jessica's body seizes in preparation.

"You're trying to save a girl from the man who traumatised you," he murmurs. He shakes his head, shrugging, with a sad, apologetic smile on his face.

Jessica closes her eyes for a moment, her jaw working stiffly. It's impressive how quickly her mind works to invalidate what he said. When she opens her eyes again, his mouth is pinched and his forehead is pulled downwards, clearly bracing himself, too.

"You sacrificed yourself to save the city from a nuclear missile."

His jaw clenches and he turns to look away from her, his lips pursed. The tension washes out of Jessica and leaves her feeling so drained.

"I've got my own shit to worry about, Tony," she says quietly.

He nods and turns back to her, then cocks his head questioningly. "You know if he goes for anything bigger than what he has, he could wind up being an Avengers-level threat. I'm willing to bet you'd fight with us again, if it came to that. You might as well be a part of the team."

"Hard pass," she scowls.

"How about being in a reserve? A substitute?"

"Why do you care?" she snaps.

He slips his hands into his pockets and shrugs. "Maybe it'd just be nice to have another non-busybody on the team."

He's lying, and he knows she knows he's lying. But she doesn't want to think about it.

With a roll of her eyes, Jessica turns and stoops to pick up the container.

"Where you goin'?" he asks, confused.

"I've got a psychopath to stop and an impossible case to win," she retorts, walking away.

"Jones, wait," he sighs.

Jessica purses her lips agitatedly and grits her teeth, but she stops walking.

"I wanna help lighten your load. You're obviously worried about Trish, after what happened today."

Jessica turns to look at him side-on, dreading what he's going to come up with next.

"I'm just sayin' I could keep an eye on her, that's all. JARVIS detected a bunch of security measures in her apartment. I could get him hooked into them to monitor them and let you know if anything happened."

Jessica turns her gaze skywards with a heavy sigh. "She's got a camera in her bedroom, Tony."

"Alright, I know I have a certain reputation; but I'm not a pervert," he retorts, affronted.

Jessica closes her eyes and thinks for a moment. She has already installed a tracker app on Trish's phone, and she knows the apartment has better security measures than some prisons, but having Tony effectively spy on Trish is a whole other ball game.

"Obviously, I'd wanna make sure we got her consent first," he adds. "Look, here. J, call Trish Walker."

"What?" Jessica scowls, turning to look at him again. "What are you doing?"

"It's called not being a pervert."

"Tony-"

"She's a grown woman, she can make her own decisions," he dismisses. He frowns, tutting, but then slowly begins to look more serious. "She's not picking up."

Jessica's heart beats painfully. "She's staying in her apartment, there's no reason for her not to."

Tony meets her gaze and lifts his eyebrows at her.

"Shit," Jessica hisses, her face scrunching with distress. "Fine, check on her. Please."

He pulls his phone from his pocket, displaying a video from what Jessica recognises to be Trish's hall camera. The moment they hear the sound of a fight, Tony is running for his suit.

"I can get you there in twenty seconds," he calls. The suit opens up for him and he turns to step into it backwards, the panels closing around him at a pace too fast to follow.

"We don't know who's there," Jessica says, her voice shaking suddenly.

"Then take a syringe. One of 'em is already full."

She pops the lid of the container open again and snatches the syringe while Tony's suit stomps towards her. "If Kilgrave's there-"

"You good for me to carry you?" he cuts her off, opening his hands before her.

"Goddamn it, fine!" she snaps.

She turns her back to him and his metal hands slide under her armpits, lifting her up into the air with him when the thrusters in his feet blast him off the roof.

Jessica closes her eyes against the wind and the sight of the city flying by underneath them, gripping the syringe in one hand while the other arm clutches the container to her chest. "You need to drop me off and then get outta there!" she shouts over the wind to him.

"Sounded like he wouldn't be able to control me through the suit," he responds, his voice projected by some kind of speaker above her head.

"I don't know what his capabilities are now! And it's better he doesn't realise how involved you are, anyway!"

"I'm not just gonna piss off when you might need my help, Jones."

Jessica groans but the noise gets lost in the sound of the wind tearing past them. She opens her eyes again to see them fast-approaching Trish's building. "Drop me on the balcony and stay out of sight!" she concedes.

"Copy that, boss."

He pulls up straight above Trish's building and extends his arm under her armpit with an open palm, obviously waiting for her to transfer the container to him.

"Gimme that while you go in there. J's only picking up one intruder," he says.

Jessica places the container in his metal hand and uses her now-free hand to hold onto his arm, his other hand slipping out from under her armpit so that she can hang from him freely. Her heart is beating erratically in her chest, terrified of what state Trish is going to be in.

She lets go of Tony's arm and falls, her stomach lurching uneasily at the sensation. The impact jars her a little, but she's lunging for the door as soon as her feet touch the balcony and trying to open it. Trish has left it unlocked - stupid for security, but a convenience for Jessica right now.

She sprints into the living room, tucking the syringe into her pocket when she sees that the intruder isn't Kilgrave. He's a cop, and he has Trish on her back on the floor as he attempts to strangle her. Jessica's vision wobbles with fury and terror.

"Get off her!" she yells, shoving the cop hard enough to send him flying over Trish's table.

She falls to her knees at Trish's side, grabbing a hold of her arms to try and steady her as she rolls around, coughing painfully. Her face has gone purple.

"Trish, talk to me," Jessica says shakily, watching as Trish's eyes meet hers, even if she can't speak yet through the gasping and coughing. "It'll be alright."

"I have to kill her," the cop announces, getting back to his feet behind them.

"Not gonna happen," Jessica grits out, stomping to meet him.

"I have to."

She grabs him by his jacket and flips him onto his back.

"He's waiting for me!" he grunts.

"Where?" she demands, watching him get back to his feet.

"I can't tell you," he says darkly, glaring at her.

She prepares for an attack, but he turns and kneels to Trish again, his hands going back around her neck. Jessica pulls him off and punches him hard in the stomach, hard enough to send him flying again into the next room and against a set of bookshelves.

He's the strongest lead she has to finding Kilgrave and making a move; but he's not going to stop unless he kills Trish. And Jessica can't stop him from killing Trish unless she loses the lead - there might be a time limit on the debrief; it's a lot to risk.

"Trish, Trish," she breathes, kneeling down again.

Trish looks like she's barely holding onto consciousness, but she is still alive. Jessica looks over at the cop, still lying on the floor, and decides to go with the idea that suddenly comes to her.

Her hand fumbles desperately at her pocket and pulls out the syringe. Keeping it low so the cop can't see, she moves Trish's clothes out of the way and injects her with the Sufentanil. Trish's eyes slowly close, her head lolling to the side.

Jessica's adrenaline is through the fucking roof, having almost seen Trish die, and knowing she might face her abuser next. She uses it to fuel her performance as she gasps Trish's name, playing the heartbroken sister.

"You killed her!" she yells at the cop when he starts to get back to his feet. He stumbles over, groaning, and she keeps it going, shaking Trish's shoulders. She pants her name a few more times, letting the hysteria seep into her voice, the fear and distress.

And the cop walks away.

Jessica pulls the syringe from Trish's side and deposits it back in her pocket. She glances behind her to find a pillow, and lifts Trish's head to put it down underneath her.

"Okay, you're gonna feel better in a few hours," she says quietly. "I'm sorry."

A quick pat of Trish's hip finds the phone in her pocket. Jessica pulls it out, starts a call to her own phone, and runs out of the apartment for the cop.

"You son of a bitch!" she shouts, shoving him against the elevator doors so she can mask slipping the phone into his pocket.

He's quick to pull his gun on her. "I don't wanna shoot you."

Jessica retreats, letting him believe he's scared her away.

"He said it's not your time," he tells her, dropping the gun and backing off to the doorway to the stairwell.

Jessica pulls out her phone once the door closes behind him and accepts the call from Trish, then finds the tracker app she'd installed.

"Jones?" a voice shouts from inside the apartment.

She jogs back to poke her head into the living room, finding Tony still inside his suit kneeling on one leg at Trish's side. "You wanna help, you can stay here and watch over her," she says firmly.

Tony's helmet swivels to look over at her as she plugs her earphones into her phone. "You need more juice?"

She shakes her head.

"Call me if you need backup. I'm serious."

"Yeah, dude, I get it," she mutters, turning to run from the apartment when she hears the ding of the elevator's arrival.

She makes it down to the lobby faster than the cop, and hides herself until she sees him come out of the stairwell door. And then it's just a simple matter of following him back to where he's waiting.

Jessica's heart is still hammering in her chest. The terror for Trish is dissipating, at least, now that she has dealt with the threat and has Tony and his fancy-ass tech watching over things; but a new panic is swelling inside her. For weeks, the ominous, looming feeling was just that - a feeling. Then it was oh-fuck-the-monster-who-traumatised-me-is-still-alive-and-wants-revenge. And now the feeling and the realisation are all rising to the surface like a volcano about to explode into the sky and it's all become so real so fast that she isn't sure she'll ever recover from this whole fucking ordeal for the rest of her life.

The first stint with Kilgrave, sure, maybe, if there'd been some kind of therapist who deals with powered people, maybe Jessica could have found some kind of peace with it and moved on. Dealt with the trauma and lasting damages in some disgustingly healthy way. But the fact that she was paranoid and mistrustful and riddled with guilt and her paranoia turned out to be fucking justified… how does she ever rationalise that fear from here on? If it was warranted once, who's to say it wouldn't be warranted again?

She needs to figure out what the best outcome of this scenario is for herself, but mostly for Hope. For Trish and Malcolm and Tony, too. She has a feeling the best outcome might differ from person to person.

But she doesn't have time to think about that now. The cop is going into an apartment building.

Jessica needs to stay a decent distance behind him, but that gets kind of tricky when she needs to know what floor Kilgrave's on. Although, a look at the building reminds her of every place he took her to - it was always the top floor; probably a factor of his whole power-hungry, superiority schtick.

The door to the building is open, at least, so she hurries in towards the elevator, knowing the cop went on one since the call struggles a little with the lack of service. But since he's in the elevator, Jessica won't get it for a while and she can't risk the lost time. With a sigh, she moves instead to the door to the stairwell and pulls it open to run through.

She bolts up the stairs, two steps at a time, as the call quality goes back to normal and she hears knocking on a door.

"He's waiting for you," a woman says.

Jessica's arms swing at her sides, her face hardened with the effort of running up the stairs on an empty stomach. For a moment, her mind wanders, and she tries to remember when she last ate properly. She supposes her appetite hasn't exactly been thriving since she found out Kilgrave was back, since Hope shot her parents, since she found out Malcolm was spying on her, since she found a weakness - the list goes on. She almost wonders how the Avengers do it, but then she remembers Tony's implication that they're all on a payroll. Maybe they can afford to hire people to worry about eating for them, so they don't have to. Someone to just shove some food in their mouths as they run to the latest tragedy.

"Trish Walker is dead."

The cop's voice brings the adrenaline back into Jessica's awareness, and she pushes herself even harder up the stairs.

"Is Jessica aware of Patsy's death?"

Jessica's boots slap against the stairs, her rage punching at her chest.

"She saw everything."

Jessica reaches the door to the roof and hauls it open.

"Was she upset?"

Sick fuck.

"Very."

She spots a glass structure, shaped like a prism, and jogs over to it.

"Well, a lot of people will be. Patsy was such an icon. Personally, I always thought her television show was shite."

Jessica slows as she skirts along the edge of the structure, squinting to see past the glare on the glass. She's pretty sure she can make out some silhouettes.

"Honestly, Patsy was a grating teenage do-gooder. So sanctimonious."

Hearing his voice was one thing. It was only this morning that she heard it for the first time - as a real thing and not just in her head - since that night everything changed. But now she can see him. There's only the roof of a building separating them. He's right there, lounging on some poor sod's couch with the cop hovering nearby. And he's watching football.

She feels physical pain in her chest. The memory of Reva and his unanswered calls is buzzing at the edges of her awareness, just waiting to zip to the forefront of her mind and take over.

"Why Jessica was so attached to her, I'll never understand."

"Here's your lunch, sir," the same woman from before says, leaving a meal for him on the coffee table.

"Don't just kick it all the time, you ginger twat!"

Jessica scoffs quietly to herself. It might all look domestic, but he's keeping the owner of this apartment around for a reason. She doesn't quite trust herself to figure it out, this time round - not after her failure with Hope's situation. But she knows she needs to be careful and catch Kilgrave by surprise before he can do anything to or with the woman. The cop too, she supposes.

Kilgrave's head turns to look over at the cop. "Oh, you're done here. Leave."

Jessica waits, glad to be rid of one bystander, at least. But her adrenaline is hitting a level she's never hit before. It's making her entire body shake, making her focus razor-sharp but her vision wobble with anxiety and stress. And the fury - she's never felt a loathing like this before.

The bastard tried to have Trish killed.

"I see you, asshole" she hisses.

She pulls the syringe out of her pocket and pulls the safety cap off.

"Not that way, officer," Kilgrave calls.

Jessica frowns and looks back down into the room, and watches Kilgrave raise a finger towards the opposite side of the apartment.

"That way," he instructs.

Jessica watches the cop turn to obey him. She ducks her head to see what's on that wall, and finds nothing but glass. Glass doors leading onto a balcony.

"No, no, no," she groans desperately, running for the edge of the roof.

"What? That was a spear tackle! He should have a red for that!" Kilgrave goes on, as callous and ruthless as ever.

Jessica stops at the edge and looks down to the balcony. The cop is looking down at the street below. If she wants to commit to saving him, she'll risk losing this chance to get Kilgrave.

When he lifts his foot to step onto the railing, she knows she has no choice.

The syringe is stuffed back into her pocket. She clambers over the edge of the roof and jumps to the balcony, reaching with both hands to grab the cop's jacket and throw him back to the ground.

Still hoping for a chance at the element of surprise, Jessica runs to the glass door to look for Kilgrave. And she finds him looking straight back at her, slowly rising from the couch.

Her body goes cold all over. A thousand memories, whispers, shouts rush past her consciousness, leaving her mind reeling with nothing to ground her but her rage.

He had made her kill someone. He had taken her when she was trying to do good, to be good, and he turned her into a goddamn monster. Something she can't fucking come back from.

She had heard him and she had ignored him. But what victory had that been when the damage had already been done? The blood already spilled? Too little, too late.

So she stands there, glaring at him, caught in a moment of memory and surrealism, with her rage keeping her tethered to the here and now. The last time she looked at him, he was milliseconds from being hit by a bus. He looks almost exactly the same - no visible damage, no lasting effects. Just clinical neatness and a superiority complex she can feel from this distance.

Then he nods at something behind her, his eyebrows lifted expectantly.

Jessica frowns and turns to follow his gaze. The cop's trying again.

"Shit," she grinds out, running forward to haul him away from the edge and toss him against the windowed wall.

She hurries to turn him round to face her, then grabs his head and smacks it hard enough against the wall to knock him out. When he collapses to her feet, she looks for Kilgrave again. But the room is empty.

She moves inside quietly and slowly, her eyes constantly scanning the surroundings for movement. It doesn't help that he has such pretentious taste and had to find an apartment that looks like it is nothing but fucking hallways.

There's a sudden noise that she registers as coming from downstairs, and she moves a little quicker, nervous now for the innocent woman he's commandeered. The railings for the stairs are all glass, and the reflections are really getting on her nerves when she's trying to see through the panels to watch out for any surprises.

But the surprise comes from underneath her.

A hand slips between the steps and grabs at her ankle, tripping her over to roll down the last of the steps to the ground. Her hair is everywhere, but through the strands she spots a kid with a bat coming at her, yelling.

Jessica rolls to dodge the first blow and gets to her feet as quickly as she can.

"You can't follow him!" he shouts, swinging at her again but hitting the pillar next to her.

"Shit!" she gasps, watching him psych himself up for a charge.

She sees him coming, sees the lift of the bat in the air, and readies herself to catch it on the downward swing.

"Look, I don't want to hurt you!"

Using his momentum against him, she pushes the grip of the bat into his stomach and then swings it back up to hit him in the face, shoving him away from her.

"That prick is making you do this!"

He advances on her again and swings at her head. She ducks to avoid the blow and catches the bat when he spins full-circle from his momentum. Using the grip on his bat, she tosses him to the ground, separating the weapon from his hands, and stomps over to him to wrap an arm around his throat.

He struggles against her, his legs kicking uselessly at nothing.

"Go to sleep," she grunts, trying to manoeuvre herself into a better position. "Go to sleep," she repeats, quieter, when he begins to slow in her grip, and finally goes limp.

Well, it's clearly a fucking family in this apartment, and not just the woman she'd heard and seen. And the apartment seems to have another fucking floor under this one, so who knows how many civilian soldiers he's got set up as an obstacle.

She moves more quietly down the next set of stairs and pulls the syringe out again, all-too-eager to stab it into Kilgrave's fucking neck. It's deathly silent, now, and it sets her nerves on edge. It's dark, too, with the only light coming from the glass in the ceiling two floors above.

She hears a door close.

She moves carefully, trying to keep her fear in check. Behind any corner, Kilgrave could be waiting. He could be in the next room over, waiting for her, ready with a command to pull her back under his control. She's surprised he hasn't tried already.

She hears the footsteps just in time and spins round while simultaneously backing away from the man she suddenly finds swinging at her. His knife whistles through the air as she dodges it, and her impatience flares.

She grabs his weapon-arm and throws him to the floor, stumbling past the arm of a couch.

"I know the drill. I'm not gonna follow him. I just want to know where he is," she tries, tucking the syringe away again.

The man lunges and slashes again at her face, but Jessica pulls away to dodge, bringing the edge of a bed against the back of her legs. The man takes the opportunity and charges, pushing her to fall back onto the mattress while he tries to use his weight to pin her down.

"I'm not the enemy!" Jessica strains, trying to get a grip of him while dodging his plunging stabs.

She manages to push his torso away enough to bring her legs up and kick him, sending him flying backwards into the wall and knocking him out.

She gets back to her feet and skirts around him, moving out into the hallway again.

Only to be ambushed by the woman.

"You can't follow him!" the woman screeches, tackling Jessica into a dresser.

She tries to hold her down, but Jessica grunts and pushes up against her. Reaching above her head, Jessica grabs the woman and hauls her into a front-flip over Jessica's body and onto the couch in front of her. The woman gets back to her feet and charges again, shoving her against a pillar this time.

Jessica grits her teeth and grabs the woman by the hair to toss her away. She follows quickly before the woman can recover again and grabs her by her clothes.

"I'm sorry about this," she says, and she throws the woman hard across the room to hit the wall in the hallway.

She pulls the doors closed quickly and grabs a cable from the dresser, winding it around the door handles and tying it in a knot. Then she turns her back to the door and takes a moment to get her breath back, trying to ignore the pain in her body.

"God, I hope this is only a three-person family," she pants.

When she notices a whirring sound coming from a room in front of her, she tries to get back into her stealthy mindset and, once again, pulls the syringe out, readying it for an attack. Hesitation halts her for a moment, and she takes the chance to try and pinpoint the exact room before forcing her feet forward again. It feels like walking to her death.

No further surprises ambush her before the room. She pushes the door open and takes a few steps inside, her brain too focused on watching out for Kilgrave that it sticks a little on processing what the fuck the room is covered in.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A biting, freezing shiver shoots down her spine. Her stomach lurches and she fights against an involuntary retch.

Knowing Malcolm was stalking her and taking pictures of her is one thing. Seeing those pictures for herself, printed out on A4, or on multiple A4 pages to make a fucking mural, is something else entirely. And knowing that Kilgrave has done this, has made this room, has stood in it and looked at her…

He violates people at every possible level.

There are pictures of her from across the city, on different days, in different outfits, different moods. Some where she looks panicked, others where she looks furious.

Some of her by the Tower. One of which has the name "TONY?" written and underlined on it, another which reads "DOESN'T KNOW THE REAL YOU".

And, then, on the centre table where the printer is still spitting out images of her, Jessica finds one with "SEE YOU LATER" scrawled across it.

Hope you guys enjoyed! Time for review replies!

Hearteyesmf: thank you so much for the kind words and i'm so glad you enjoyed the chapter that much! Yeah, meeting Trish was definitely meeting the family, and Steve and Bruce will absolutely be curious as to what is managing to take Tony out of the Tower!We'll have to wait and see what happens there! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :)

kenriot1214: ooo that's a very cool idea! I think, at that point, he was still kind of sussing out how exactly Kilgrave's power works so he wouldn't have gotten to preventative measures yet, but that is an interesting idea.. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

EmyEnna: Yeeess it was actually another reader who drew my attention to the Clint-Jessica parallel and I'll definitely need to have them talking about that at some point! But yeah I figured if Jessica's going to have any kind of relationship with this group of nerds, they'd need to not write off Hope's (and thereby Jessica's) story about Kilgrave like the rest of New York does. I'm glad you're liking Trish - I like that the show made her complicated and flawed by the end, but I think I'll maybe keep her a bit more humble in this and, y'know, maybe not going mental for Simpson's power lmao. I am very interested in the Tony-JARVIS who-can-do-what sort of questions, and it'll absolutely come into play later on! We'll just need to wait and see! Thanks for always leaving such great reviews, it means so much to me! Hope you enjoyed this chapter :)