The emergency lights on a rooftop near Theresa's restaurant were already painted in blue and red when the SHIELD agents arrived.
Two dark SUVs had pulled up to the building twenty minutes earlier. Four agents in tactical gear, followed by two more in dark suits. The kind of people who moved with the casual authority of a government organization that didn't bother explaining itself to local law enforcement. They'd cordoned off the area, secured the perimeter, and begun the methodical work of collecting a body.
The body of Zebediah Kilgrave, also known as the Purple Man, who'd been missing from SHIELD's radar for the better part of six months.
Agent Phil Coulson stood at the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the corpse with the expression of a man who'd seen too many bodies to be properly shocked by one more. The fall had done significant damage—Kilgrave's frame was too fragile to survive a thirty-foot drop intact. His skin was now just the pale color of the recently deceased. One arm bent at an impossible angle. His head...
Coulson had seen worse. Not often, but he'd seen worse.
"Agent Coulson." One of the tactical team members approached, tablet in hand. "The woman is still here. Still in shock, but she's conscious. We've secured her position."
Coulson nodded without taking his eyes off the body. "Identity?"
"Jessica Jones. Twenty-eight years old. Public record shows she was reported missing six months ago. Found alive, no apparent physical injuries, though she's showing signs of severe trauma. No weapons on her. No defensive wounds. Just..." The agent paused, unsure how to describe the scene. "Just standing there, looking at the body."
"Where's she now?"
"Over there." The agent pointed to a section of the rooftop where Jessica Jones sat on the edge, her legs dangling over the city below. Another SHIELD agent stood nearby, maintaining distance but not letting her out of sight.
Coulson began to walk toward her, his footsteps echoing across the concrete. Behind him, his team continued the work of photographing the scene, collecting evidence, doing the thousand small tasks that came with a death that needed explaining.
Jessica didn't look up as he approached. She was staring out at the city, her expression somewhere between blank and broken.
"Jessica," Coulson said, keeping his voice gentle. The tone of someone used to talking to trauma victims. "I'm Agent Phil Coulson. I'd like to ask you some questions, if you're feeling up to it."
It took a moment for her to respond. When she did, her voice was hoarse, damaged by hours of screaming under someone else's control.
"He's dead," she said flatly. "The man in the purple suit. He's dead."
"Yes. He is." Coulson settled onto the rooftop beside her, maintaining a respectful distance. "His name was Zebediah Kilgrave. We've been looking for him for quite some time. Can you tell me what happened here?"
Jessica was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Coulson began to wonder if she'd heard him. But then she started speaking, her words coming in fragments, disjointed, sometimes contradicting themselves.
"He... he controlled me. For six months. I don't... I don't remember all of it. It's like there's a gap in my head. Like I was asleep, but I was awake the whole time." She finally looked at Coulson, and her eyes were the color of drowning. "I did things. Bad things. He made me do things. Hurt people. I... there was a woman. I think her name was Reva. I think I..."
She couldn't finish. Her voice broke, and for a moment, Coulson thought she might cry. But she didn't. She just sat there, hollow-eyed, staring back out at the city.
"What happened tonight?" Coulson asked gently.
"He brought me to a restaurant. I think, I can't remember, the names are getting jumbled." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "He ordered food. We were sitting. And then... someone came out of the kitchen. A server, maybe. I don't know. Everything was foggy. The control, it was always foggy when he was close, like my mind was underwater. But I remember... I remember he tried to grab Kilgrave. By the throat."
"This server?" Coulson leaned forward slightly. "Can you describe him?"
"No. I don't... my head is full of Kilgrave's voice. All his commands, all the things he made me do. The memory is buried under that. Kilgrave ordered me to kill the man. And I tried. I wanted to. But..." She paused, confusion crossing her face. "But then he was fast. Faster than anyone should be. He did something. Magic? That's not possible. That's not... there's no such thing as magic."
"What did he do?" Coulson's tone had shifted slightly—not much, but Jessica caught it. This part mattered.
"He threw me. With his hands. I went through the window. Fell onto the street. It should have killed me, but..." She looked down at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. "I don't break easy. I never have. Even before Kilgrave, I didn't break easy. So I got back up. He was ordering me to come back, to protect him, to kill the man. And I did. I went back through the window, and I was fighting this person, and he was using... I don't know what he was using. Spells? Words? He'd say something, and things would happen."
"What kind of things?"
"The air would move. I'd be pushed back. It felt like someone was hitting me with a truck, but there was nothing there. Just... force. Magic." She shook her head. "This doesn't make sense. I'm not making sense."
"You're doing fine," Coulson said, and he meant it. "Continue."
"The man—the server, whoever he was—he was fighting Kilgrave, and Kilgrave realized he couldn't win. He was scared. I'd never seen him scared before. He was always so sure of himself, so certain that he could control everything. But this man, he was different. So Kilgrave... he told me to protect him. To get him to safety. And we ran. We went up to the roof. And the man followed us."
She paused, her hands clenching into fists.
"Kilgrave had a gun. They were... they were fighting, but Kilgrave was losing. And then the man did something else. He grabbed the steel beam from the construction crane and used it to hit us. "
"What happened to Kilgrave?" Coulson asked, though he could probably guess.
"The man threw him. Off the roof. From very high. I watched him fall." She looked directly at Coulson now, and there was something almost accusatory in her gaze. "I watched him fall, and he didn't get back up. And I should have been happy. I should have felt relief. But all I felt was empty. Because I remember doing things for him. Killing people for him. And I can't even remember their names. I can't remember their faces. It's all just... fog."
Coulson was quiet for a moment. "This man who killed Kilgrave. Did you get a good look at him?"
"No. He wore a hood. A mask, maybe. He covered his face. I remember being confused, even through the fog. And then everything was chaos and pain, and by the time I might have figured it out, he was gone."
"He escaped?"
"After he dropped Kilgrave, he... he did something to me. Said words. My body froze. I couldn't move. And then I was free again, and he was just gone. I looked for him on the rooftop, but there was nothing. Just the body, and the city, and the sirens starting in the distance."
Coulson nodded slowly. He stood, brushing concrete dust from his suit. "Thank you, Ms. Jones. You've been very helpful."
"Did I kill anyone?" she asked suddenly. "While he was controlling me. Did I actually kill anyone?"
It was the question that mattered. The one that would haunt her.
"We'll need to investigate," Coulson said carefully. "But yes. According to our preliminary reports, there were several deaths that appear to have been connected to Kilgrave's activities. Deaths that might not have occurred without his influence."
Jessica's face went even more hollow.
"I didn't want to," she whispered. "I wouldn't have. If I'd had a choice, I never would have chosen to hurt anyone."
"I know," Coulson said, and he did. He'd seen enough of Kilgrave's work to understand that Jessica Jones was a victim, not a perpetrator. But he also knew that the legal system rarely made that distinction. "We're going to take you somewhere safe. A facility where you can get medical attention, psychological support. What happened to you is... it's not your fault, but we need to make sure you're okay."
Jessica didn't argue. She was too broken to argue.
Coulson turned away and walked back toward his team. Behind him, he could hear one of his agents approaching with a blanket, preparing to offer what small comfort they could.
The body of Zebediah Kilgrave was being loaded into a containment unit. Another mystery would be going into the SHIELD files: who was the man in the hood? Who had the power to move objects with his hands, to speak words that bent reality? Who had the ability to kill someone as dangerous as the Purple Man?
Coulson made a note to himself: they would need to find that answer. Because men—or women—with that kind of power didn't disappear. They appeared again. They always appeared again.
And when they did, SHIELD needed to be ready.
But for tonight, Jessica Jones sat on the edge of a rooftop in a destroyed restaurant district, wrapped in a SHIELD blanket, and tried to remember the names of people she'd hurt while someone else wore her body like a puppet.
The city lights spread out below her, indifferent to her pain, and somewhere in the darkness, a young man with magical powers was finally, finally heading home to sleep.
Neither of them knew it yet, but their lives had just become infinitely more complicated.
END CHAPTER 5