A/N: Hey all, sorry this took a while! I decided to in fact go ahead and split this last part in two. This takes place almost immediately after Kilgrave has been disposed of. The canon events of the show have played out.

Kilgrave had been dead almost forty-six hours.

Neither Jessica nor Trish had gotten a moment's sleep since.

They had been sitting on Trish's couch in silence for almost an hour, just watching TV and not really paying attention. It was a show on the Discovery Channel about crab fishing or something. Loud, dramatic, ridiculous. Jessica noticed that every time she shifted her position, even just to brush her hair behind her ear, Trish's eyes would flick towards her.

She's waiting for something.

The remote was lying right next to Jessica. With as little movement as possible, she hit the power button and said, "Hey."

Trish abruptly turned to look at her. "Yeah?"

The courteous thing to do would be to meet her gaze, but Jessica's stare was glued to the now-blank television screen. "It occurred to me that I never really thanked you for what you did. I know you'll say it goes without saying, and normally that's more than fine enough for me, but I should've thanked you. I know I kept trying to keep you out of this, but what you did at the end… that was more than you ever should've been exposed to and I should've thanked you for it."

"Well, I'm not gonna act like it wasn't terrifying," Trish sighed. "I mean at first, with the headphones, I felt totally fine. Confident, even. It was only when they fell off that it really scared me, really hit me. But I knew the risks going in, Jess. I was prepared to take those risks. You have to believe that."

"I did believe it, that's why I was okay with you doing it," Jessica grumbled.

"Oh, you were not okay with it," Trish scoffed, and Jessica looked over, surprised to see she was laughing a little. "But you knew Kilgrave could only get to you through me or Luke. You needed me. And it's okay to need people."

"You already were put under his control once. I hate that he got you again, that he—that he made you kiss him," Jessica groaned. "I should've ripped his head off right then. I could've gotten to him in time."

"Only if you've recently added the ability to fly to your superpower repertoire and didn't tell me. You had to make sure you got him; you had one chance. You made the right call."

"Geez, you're making me feel like an asshole for trying to thank you. This is why it's so hard for me to have these goddamn conversations, Trish."

Although Jessica's voice was starting to rise, Trish kept hers calm: "This started as a thank you, but spiraled into a guilt-ridden apology."

"I'm not allowed to feel guilt?"

"Yes, of course you are," Trish continued in the sort of patient tone that Jessica found patronizing from most other people. "But when you do that, you need to remember that you're not Kilgrave. You're not him. You did not make me do anything; you did not force my hand. I knew the risks. It was my choice."

Jessica studied her face for what felt like a very long time. Particularly in recent weeks, she had seen Trish's countenance overcome too often with fear, anger, or sadness. She was always impressed with how calm Trish's face could be most of the time, though. Maybe it was all the years of experience in front of a camera—maybe you just learned how to keep a lid on your emotions, your expressions, for the sake of appearances. Or maybe Trish really did belong to the dying breed of people who could be sincere in their calmness.

Trish had always been sincere.

"Well, I guess you finally got your wish, sort of," Jessica drawled. "Wanted to save the world, right? By helping get rid of Kilgrave, you at least saved a pretty good part of it."

"Nice perk, but I didn't do it to save the world. I did it to help you."

There was a pause, and then Jessica laughed. It was not a cruel or mocking sound, but more of a laugh of disbelief. "How the hell do we work? How do you put up with all my messed-up shit?"

It'd been meant as a rhetorical question, which Jessica had assumed would be met with an eye roll or a laugh. But of course Trish had a response: "I don't mean to make this sound like I'm minimizing your pain, or prioritizing anything before your feelings, but here's my answer: my love for you is bigger than your hurt."

At that moment, Jessica instinctively felt that she could not suffer another moment without touching Trish in some way. She inched closer and as soon as she indicated that the space was available, Trish practically fell forward into her arms. For the most part Jessica was still sitting; Trish had spread out the whole length of the couch, her head placed in a position where she could hear Jessica's heartbeat. She closed her eyes and listened.

After a long but comfortable silence, Jessica remarked, "I feel like we should be listening to Boyz II Men."

"What?"

"Lying together like this. It's like when we were kids. I'd try to get you into Nirvana and the Clash, but you were all Shania Twain and Boyz II Men."

"Which, if you think about it, reflects a pretty mature range of musical taste."

Jessica snorted, and it came out sounding like a laugh. "Range, sure. Mature, I don't think so."

It was a few moments before Trish said, "You pulled up that recollection pretty quick."

The reflex normally might've been a would-be casual shrug, but that was difficult to do with Trish lying on top of her. "It's like muscle memory, holding you like this."

"So…do you remember the other stuff we used to do?"

And the impulse here was to say something snarky, but Jessica buried it. Besides, she knew the real question Trish was getting at wasn't one of remembrance; she just wanted to talk about it. "Yeah, I remember."

Trish could both feel and hear Jessica's heartbeat quicken, and she wondered whether that was a good or a bad thing. She sat up so she could better look Jessica in the eye. "Do you ever think about it?"

Jessica's voice was flat and her expression neutral. "I used to, when we were younger."

"And…you've done that with other women, right? What we did?"

"No."

"No? But you've told me—"

"I've told you about messing around with other women. Dating a few. But I never did what we did. You know, all the emotional crap and the cuddling and whatever the hell else. Come to think of it, I never did that much with men, either, until…" Luke, goddamn him. "Never mind. That kinda stuff can't be forced, y'know? And I didn't have to force it with you. Maybe I just got high standards after that. Maybe I was just sabotaging myself the whole time, caught up with my own bullshit. Held onto that first love a little too long."

Trish raised her eyebrows. "First love?"

"Oh, hell yeah. I didn't really realize it until your mother got us to stop sleeping together, but yeah. It dawned on me that I totally had a crush on you, maybe more than a crush. It was pretty confusing, to be honest."

This was something she had never planned on admitting, especially so casually. But now it somehow felt like very pertinent information to share, and what's more, something she could say without a trace of self-consciousness or embarrassment—a general hallmark of her relationship with Trish, except perhaps for that six-month stretch after her first round of Kilgrave. Maybe this meant normality—whatever the hell that was—had been re-established in some way. Jessica never could have or would have admitted to her crush when it'd first occurred to her, but so many years later, it wasn't so awful to talk about it.

Maybe we've been ships passing in the night all this time since. Maybe the time is now.

"So…that's all in the past, huh?" Trish ventured.

You sly little shit. You're gonna make me say it first, huh? Fine. "There was one other time I almost blew my cover on that dock with Kilgrave."

Not sure where this was going, Trish tentatively asked, "When?"

Jessica sighed. "Way back when your mother confronted me about, uh, my feelings for you, she tried to pull that sister card with me. Like, think how disgusted people would be to find out you wanted to bone your sister. And I laughed in her face. I laughed because she'd never intended to raise us as or let us feel like sisters in any way. For a long time we just existed under the same roof, but then we became friends. That's how I always saw you. So when Kilgrave came along the other night and was the first person in however many goddamn years to refer to you as my sister—my beloved sister, no less—my first impulse was to laugh. I might've laughed, too, if I hadn't been scared out of my damn mind for you."

"Well, he likes to be dramatic, right?" Trish reasoned. "Maybe he didn't think referring to me as your BFF would have the same gravitas." When Jessica grimaced a the word "BFF," Trish smiled and asked, "Okay, what should he have called me, then?"

My savior. My friend. My angel. My love. My dearest.

My God, when did I get so sappy?

"Somethin' else," Jessica whispered. "Because sisters are not supposed to want each other the way I want you."

Some nervous laughter escaped Trish. She rubbed the back of her neck, and Jessica steeled herself for some form of rejection. "You know what's kind of funny?" Trish asked. "I feel like if we were kids now, if Patsy was on now, my mother might've been thrilled that we were fooling around. She'd probably see it as some great publicity stunt we could use to show how liberal and cool—"

"Trish."

"What?"

"Your mom's not here. Patsy is gone. I kinda just came on to you, and now the question is, what're you gonna do about it?"

Trish swallowed. Rip your clothes off. Touch you anywhere I can reach. Feel your hands on me.

"Sorry," Jessica sighed. "You're probably used to big romantic overtures and all that, aren't you?"

"Eh. Those can get kinda tiresome," Trish said with a shrug and a smirk.

"Okay, so…" Jessica offered a cheesy wink. "You got nice tits."

"A little nicer than that, you asshole. You'd level a guy if that was his opener with me!"

"You know I'm no good at all that romantic bullshit, Trish."

With faux innocence, Trish batted her eyelashes and asked, "What romantic bullshit?"

"Ugh…"

Trish took a short breath. "Look, Jess? I'm going to be honest with you. Learning how to go back to just being friends with you was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. When you slipped that letter under my door—I mean, I know it was for the best at the time, but it was like I could feel my heart splitting in two. Obviously we were able to make it work eventually, and thank God we did, but …I don't know what I'll do if I have to face that a second time."

Jessica could feel the tension creeping back in, and she did not like it. "So are you giving me an ultimatum? Make a lifelong commitment or nothing?"

"The way I see it, we already have a lifelong commitment. You are my closest friend, Jess, which means you can bet your ass that I'm going to be in your life until one of us dies—hopefully way, way in the future. I just want to make sure that we're on the same page."

Shit, was I not clear enough? Does she think I just want this to be a friends with benefits kind of thing?

"You don't know if I'm serious about you," Jessica realized. It looked like Trish was trying to come up with a better way to articulate it, but when she failed to do so, Jessica figured she'd pretty much gotten the gist. "Okay. You know what I think Kilgrave should've called you when he was taunting me? I think he should've stopped before he said sister."

Your beloved sister.

Your beloved.

Oh.

If the lighting in the room hadn't been so dim, Jessica would've seen Trish's cheeks starting to tinge red. "Sorry," Jessica mumbled. "I'm usually better at showing than telling."

"I know, I know." Trish's voice was patient, soft like a caress. Her voice lowered even more, her tone indicating a casual suggestion rather than a command: "So show me."