Niccola Hiromi Thomas

~*~ PC Background and Mobile Banner courtesy of Bad Wolf Girl I Could Kiss You ~*~ * Open RP Blog of Niccola Hiromi Thomas ** Multi-verse and Multi-Muse *** 20+ years of RP experience dating back to the 'Yahoo Chat' RP Days. Mun is 40 years old. **** Status: Active (Semi-Selective)

[niccolahiromithomas]

*looks around at all the dust and cobwebs surrounding her rules and other pages*

I...desperately need to do some spring cleaning if I am going to get this place back up and running to actually seek out mutuals again.

If you are reading this, thanks for either 1) staying followed to me during YEARS of absence or 2) You are coming to check out my page for the first time for whatever reason. So, to you, I say hello for the first time.

I promise I'm usually better at keeping things updated than this but life has been CRAZY and I am finally in a spot where I can work on and properly update things here.

Sooooo...if you want to start something, you can send me a prompt that I've posted since Jan 2026 or DM me for plotting. Until then, Imma work on getting this place cleaned up. Bit by Bit!

[velvetcompulsion]

The laboratory erupted into motion. Technicians crowded around terminals. Scientists began shouting readings across the room. Carter was already leaning over the central console, rapidly pulling diagnostic logs as red warning indicators flashed across every available screen.

Kilgrave ignored all of them.

His attention remained fixed on Niccola. He didn't move toward the vault. Every instinct in him wanted to. His body had already chosen the direction before his mind caught up: one step toward the glass, shoulders tense, breath caught sharp behind his ribs.

Then he stopped.

Niccola's order still rang too clearly in his head.

Keep the shield up.

His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. Through the glass, she sat frozen in the chair, her hands lowered from her temples, her wide amethyst eyes fixed on him with a dread he recognised far too well.

Something about the image of her felt wrong. Not frightening, but just... wrong.

His eyes narrowed behind the lenses. He had watched Niccola sick before. He had watched her exhausted. He had watched her injured. He had watched her concussed. He had watched her fight through broken bones, sleep deprivation, blood loss and enough stress to kill a lesser person.

This wasn't any of those things.

She wasn't clutching her chest. She wasn't struggling for air. She wasn't displaying any of the symptoms she'd shown while the pathogen was actively destroying her body.

Instead, her hands had gone straight to her temples. Like she was trying to block something out... Or hold something in.

Kilgrave's blood went cold.

"Draw a line on me."

The nearest technician blinked. "What?"

Kilgrave didn't look away from Niccola. "Fresh sample. Now."

His voice snapped with enough force to send the technician moving before they had fully processed the command.

This time, he was careful. No power, no push. Just urgency. He slid his glasses back onto his face and the room snapped into focus. "Give me that."

Before the scientist beside him could protest, Kilgrave snatched the tablet from their hands and pulled up the last thirty seconds of Niccola's telemetry.

Pulse spike.

Metabolic surge.

Neurological interference.

Sensor failure.

Digital gibberish.

Then back to Niccola.

Then back to the readings.

His eyes narrowed behind the lenses.

"No."

The single word cut cleanly through the room. Kilgrave scrolled back, replaying the anomaly. He glanced pointedly at Carter. "You're measuring systemic collapse." His thumb moved across the screen. "Metabolic stress. Cardiac response. Oxygen saturation. Blood toxicity."

He looked up toward the vault. Toward Niccola.

"That's not what this is."

The technician returned with the sampling kit, hands shaking slightly as they prepared his arm. Kilgrave barely noticed. His gaze moved between the tablet and the woman behind the glass.

"You're looking at the wrong thing. These..." He turned the screen towards Carter. "These aren't causing the event." His finger moved lower. "They're reacting to it." He zoomed back through the timeline.

Thirty seconds.

Twenty.

Ten.

The moment Niccola's hands reached her head. The moment she stumbled. The moment the readings exploded. "Look at the sequence." His voice had become frighteningly focused. "The physiological response occurs after the onset."

Kilgrave continued before anyone could interrupt.

"You're treating this like a medical collapse."

His gaze flicked toward the vault. Toward Niccola, still staring back at him. Still looking deeply unsettled. "She's not collapsing."

The needle slid into his arm. He didn't flinch.

"She's experiencing something."

Kilgrave's amber eyes sharpened on Niccola. His mind raced. He knew that look. Not the cause. The look. The disorientation. The internal overwhelm. The sense that something was happening behind her eyes. Something nobody else could see. He'd seen variations of it before.

When a personality surfaced unexpectedly. When the internal voices became too loud. When Niccola's mind was fighting itself. This felt similar.

Only bigger.

Much bigger.

"Pull cortical activity." He pointed at the monitors. "Electromagnetic deviation..."

"But the neurological spike is a symptom," argued a scientist.

Kilgrave looked pointedly at them. "Of what?" When he didn't get a solid response, he continued. "Because she wasn't reacting like someone in physical distress." He gestured towards the glass. "She was reacting like someone trying to process too much information." He took the blood bag that he was drawn to and paced slowly.

"When Katriana surfaces unexpectedly, where does the disruption happen?"

Nobody answered. Kilgrave didn't seem to care.

"When Tamiko pushes too hard?"

His gaze swept across the room.

"When Alexandra panics?"

Silence.

Then he tapped two fingers sharply against the sides of his own head. "Here." He tapped his chest. "Not her lungs. Not her heart."

He stopped pacing.

"The pathogen attacked her body."

His gaze returned to Niccola. Still frozen. Still staring back at him. Still looking like she had just experienced something nobody else in the room could see.

His jaw tightened.

"Whatever just happened..."

A pause.

"I don't think you're going to find it in the air first."

His eyes flicked toward the neurological data. Then back to her.

"I think you're looking at the aftermath of something that started in her mind."

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola sat completely frozen in the leather chair, her fingers dug so deeply into the armrests that her knuckles turned stark white. Her mind was a chaotic vortex, desperately trying to process the violent vertigo that had just shattered her reality. A cold, creeping terror settled behind her ribs. Was the bio-engineered pathogen finally causing her to lose her mind?

Through the thick glass of the isolation vault, she could hear Kilgrave’s voice cutting through the laboratory, his tone sharp and frighteningly focused as he analyzed her malfunctioning telemetry data. He was arguing with Dr. Carter, fiercely asserting that her physiological explosion wasn't a standard medical collapse, but rather the aftermath of something that had originated entirely within her mind.

She desperately wanted to call out to him through the open intercom. She wanted to tell him that he was on the right track, that he had mapped the anomaly perfectly. But her body flatly refused to cooperate. Her jaw was entirely locked, her muscles frozen rigid as a terrifying paralysis gripped her frame.

Then, the voices came back.

This time it was a torrential, deafening flood of hundreds of overlapping consciousnesses, screaming and whispering all at once, tearing across all of her senses with absolute, agonizing volume. The sheer, crushing noise forced her hands up to her head, her fingers clutching at her temples as she curled in on herself in agony. Deep within, she could feel the reinforced walls of her Mind Palace fracturing and fraying under the immense, unnatural pressure.

But the psychological torment was only the beginning. Abruptly, the suffocating pressure inside her skull transformed into a scorching, localized fire. It didn't feel like the cellular necrosis of the plague fever; it was something infinitely more volatile. It felt as though thousands of microscopic explosions were violently detonating beneath her skin, radiating from the core of her mind and burning all the way down to her toes. She gasped, her body twisting in the chair as the agonizing heat concentrated heavily along her spine and across her back.

GODS! Everything hurt.

A primal, claustrophobic panic set in. She desperately needed to get out of her clothes. She needed the suffocating fabric off her skin, and more than anything, she needed the additional, deafening voices in her head to stop. Within her fracturing mind, Katriana and Tamiko instantly recognized the escalating danger. Sensing that the physical and neurological trauma was only going to get worse, the ladies violently overrode Niccola's paralyzed motor functions. They forced her trembling, sweating body out of the chair and dragged her over to the vault's main environmental terminal, where the digital logs were still rapidly updating. With a desperate, uncoordinated lunge, her hand slammed onto the toggle, throwing the heavy, steel privacy shutters down to seal the glass window.

They couldn't cut off the active intercom system, meaning Kilgrave and the medical team would still have to listen to whatever horror unfolded next...but they could, at least, save him from the brutal visual of her destruction.

The very instant the metal shutters slammed shut and blocked the lab's view, a blood-curdling, primal scream tore from her raw throat. Driven by an overwhelming, burning agony, she violently ripped her soaked shirt and bra away from her skin. As the fabric tore, she felt heavy strips of flesh from her upper back pull completely loose, tearing away from her spine and dropping onto the sterile steel floor with a sickening, wet thud. The sheer, unimaginable wave of somatic pain completely broke her, causing her stomach to violently and uncontrollably empty its contents onto the floor as she collapsed to her knees, gasping and retching for a clean breath of air.

On the other side of the darkened shutters, the lab's environmental and medical monitors completely errored out. The telemetry terminal could barely gather coherent data, but what little information flashed across Carter's screens showed a profile that defied human biology. Her white blood cell count had skyrocketed past impossible, astronomical margins. The localized electromagnetic field radiating outward from her body was measured at three times that of a normal human being, and her brainwaves had spiked into a lethal, hyper-accelerated baseline where any ordinary mind would have instantly fried.

For several long, torturous minutes, the intercom line remained an absolute nightmare of sound. Violent beating, heavy banging against the reinforced walls, and agonizing, throat-shredding screams echoed clearly into the silent lab before everything abruptly went quiet.

As quickly as the cataclysmic event had ignited, the environmental sensors snapped back to a perfectly normal baseline. The only sound left carrying over the open mic was the faint, pathetic sound of Niccola’s fragile whimpers and ragged, exhausted breathing.

Dr. Carter, entirely unable to endure the suffocating darkness and the terrifying silence a second longer, stepped forward with a trembling hand. Utilizing his high-clearance executive override key, he forcefully struck the control pad to lift the privacy shutters.

As the heavy steel plates slowly ground upward, the flashing warning indicators illuminated the vault. Standing directly in the center of the room was Niccola. She was entirely topless, her back turned completely toward the glass. Her caramel skin was heavily splattered with fresh blood and lingering, hanging shreds of destroyed flesh, but as the light caught her skin, the team realized the truth. The deep, jagged scars that had marred her back for most of her adulthood were entirely gone, replaced by smooth tissue.

The Director slowly turned her head, her amethyst eyes flashing with a terrifying, unearthly power as she glared at the window.

"I didn't tell...you to...open the gates!" she screamed out.

At the exact same millisecond the words left her lips, every single light inside the isolation vault violently blew out in a shower of sparks, plunging her into the shadows as the facility's low, blood-red emergency lighting kicked in.

[velvetcompulsion]

Kilgrave stilled reflexively. The soft kiss at the corner of his mouth lingered, and so did her words.

You are safe here in the quiet.

The sentence settled heavily somewhere beneath his ribs. A strange thing happened then. The instinct to argue never arrived. Normally it would have. Normally he would have found a flaw. A loophole. A reason she was mistaken. A reason to keep the armour on. Instead, he found himself exhausted. Exhausted from carrying the same doubt for so long.

His eyes drifted closed. The pressure behind them remained. The victim, the shoreline, his childhood, the endless uncertainty... None of it had vanished. But for the first time, it didn't feel like he was carrying it alone. The realisation was almost frightening.

His forehead remained against hers. The contact felt absurdly precious and grounding. His fingers tightened around her hand once more, not seeking reassurance this time, but holding onto something he'd finally decided he didn't want to lose.

A slow breath escaped him. Then another...

When he finally opened his eyes again, the resistance was still there. He could feel it. The old instinct whispering that this would end eventually. That everyone left eventually. That happiness was temporary. The difference was that he no longer sounded convinced. A faint, tired smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"You know..." His voice emerged quietly, almost thoughtful. "I think that's the problem." His thumb brushed slowly across her knuckles. "I've spent so long waiting for people to leave..." His gaze held hers. "...that I never really learned what to do when they stay."

The confession settled softly between them. The sort that arrived after years of fighting a battle you suddenly realised might be over. For a moment, Kilgrave simply looked at her, the woman who had seen the monster. The woman who had met the frightened little boy beneath it. And somehow remained.

A shaky laugh escaped him, warmer this time. "I suspect you're going to find me an exceptionally frustrating student."

The humour was faint, but it was there. The first genuine hint of light returning.

"But..." His throat tightened briefly. The vulnerability remained. The fear remained. Yet beneath both of them, something stronger had begun to take root.

Trust.

"I'd like to try."

And this time, for the first time all evening, he sounded like he believed it.

The faint smile remained for only a moment before it disappeared again. Not because the warmth had gone, but because something deeper had taken its place.

Kilgrave looked at her once more. The city lights moved silently beyond the glass. The soft hum of the Royce continued around them. Yet all of it felt impossibly far away. His attention remained fixed entirely on Niccola.

The realisation settled heavily in his chest. For once, he didn't try to analyse it. He was tired of questioning. Tired of doubting. Tired of searching for reasons people would eventually leave. For a brief moment, he simply allowed himself to feel what was in front of him.

The safety.

The warmth.

Her.

His hand lifted slowly. The backs of his fingers brushed gently against her cheek. The touch lingered, almost reverent. As though some part of him still couldn't quite believe she was real. His gaze drifted briefly to her lips, then back to her eyes.

Then, slowly, Kilgrave closed the distance. The kiss was gentle. Not because he lacked certainty. He trusted her enough to stop hiding behind confidence. Every kiss earlier that evening had carried some element of performance. Teasing, flirting, games. This one carried none of them. Only gratitude, relief and trust. For a few seconds he allowed himself to disappear into it. To stop carrying the weight. To stop fighting. To stop preparing for loss before it had happened.

When he finally pulled back, he didn't go far. His forehead settled lightly against hers once more. A breath escaped him, steadier than before.

His eyes remained closed.

For the first time since seeing the woman on the pavement, the quiet didn't feel empty.

It felt safe.

The realisation arrived embarrassingly late: He was calm. Actually calm. Not composed. Not performing calm. Just...

Calm.

The distinction felt significant. Dangerously significant. A faint laugh escaped him. His forehead remained resting lightly against hers.

"You know..." His voice was quieter than before. "If somebody had described this evening to me a year ago..."

The corner of his mouth twitched.

"They'd have sounded completely insane." The warmth returned briefly. "I'd probably have had them committed."

For a moment, the old humour surfaced. Gentler now. Less armour and more light.

His eyes finally opened, meeting hers. The gratitude there remained impossible to hide. And for perhaps the first time in his life, Kilgrave didn't immediately try to.

[niccolahiromithomas]

The absolute lack of performance in Kilgrave’s kiss sent a profound, quiet wave of relief straight through Niccola. For a man whose entire existence had been a carefully orchestrated act of survival, the raw, unfiltered honesty of his touch was nothing short of a miracle. She felt the mechanical rigidity finally melt out of his shoulders, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm that she hadn't felt all evening. When he pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers again, she simply closed her eyes, letting the rare, sacred quiet of the luxury vehicle wrap around them like a fortress.

He was calm. Not the cold, calculating composure of a strategist preparing for a threat, but a deep, genuine tranquility that settled heavily into the space between them.

A soft, breathless laugh bubbled up from her throat at his quiet remark about committing anyone who would have predicted this a year ago. The waves of her hair brushed against his cheek as she tilted her head, her lips curling into that cat-like smirk of hers that held absolutely none of her usual operational distance.

Within her mind, a profound, reverent stillness settled over them as they witnessed the complete de-escalation of his lifelong defense mechanisms.

“Biometric indicators confirm a complete stabilization of the subject's autonomic nervous system, Director,” Katriana reported within their shared thoughts, her clinical tone carrying quiet awe. “The chronic hyper-vigilance has entirely subsided. He is no longer calculating an exit strategy or anticipating abandonment. This is a monumental shift in his psychological baseline.”

“Let him crack his jokes, Nickie,” Tamiko chimed in softly, her fierce, protective energy humming with immense satisfaction. “The fact that he can find his humor right now means the ghosts lost. We held the perimeter, and he’s finally breathing without a knife in his hand. Tell him we're ready for whatever frustrating mess he thinks he's going to be.”

She opened her amethyst eyes, locking her gaze onto his open, grateful amber eyes. Her hand lifted gently, covering his fingers where they lingered reverently against her cheek.

"Frustrating? Please," the Irishwoman murmured, her voice a low, teasing vibration that filled the quiet space of the Royce. "I direct Interpol Black Operations for a living, Kaven. I manage highly volatile, catastrophic global variables before my morning coffee. A brilliant, stubborn man learning how to accept that he is genuinely loved is well within my capabilities."

Her thumb lightly stroked the edge of his jaw, her touch radiating an intense, unconditional warmth. "If someone had told me a year ago that I would be sitting in the back of a luxury transport, completely disregarding protocol because I was too busy holding onto the world's most infamous ghost story, I would have had them court-martialed. So, I suppose we are both entirely insane."

Niccola leaned in fractionally, her breath warm against his lips. "But I have always preferred a complex grid over a boring one. Take all the time you need to try...I'll be right here to catch you every single time you trip over a little bit of kindness."

The soft, lingering warmth of her promise hung in the air for only a heartbeat before she decided it was time to change the gravity of the room entirely. She didn't wait for him to overthink her words or let his brilliant mind search for another invisible trap. Instead, she closed the remaining fraction of space between them, her short, curvy frame shifting effortlessly across the plush leather of the Royce to eliminate any lingering distance.

When her dark lips met his this time, it wasn't just a continuation of the gentle, fragile relief they had been sharing. She deliberately changed the rhythm. It began with the familiar sweetness of his surrender, but as she tilted her chin, she let her lips part slightly, infusing the kiss with a sudden, unmistakable flicker of passion.

It was a calculated, beautifully deliberate strike to his emotional state. She was intentionally pulling him completely out of the somber, heavy gray of his past and dragging him back into the vibrant, electrified present they had owned just minutes ago inside the restaurant. She wanted to remind his body and soul of the heat that belonged strictly to them: the sharp, teasing banter over a plate of cheesecake, the possessive glances, and the intoxicating, magnetic pull that existed when they were operating at full strength.

Her fingers slid effortlessly from his jawline down to the collar of his coat, her grip tightening on the expensive fabric to pull his lean frame firmly against the lush contours of her breasts.

The sudden reintroduction of their baseline fire sent a ripple of absolute alignment through to the ladies.

“Endorphin and dopamine synthesis is spiking rapidly, overriding the residual cortisol from the high street trigger,” Katriana evaluated, her internal voice humming with a profound, satisfied logic. “The trauma loop has been effectively disrupted. Emotional homeostasis is returning to the primary relational baseline.”

“Now we're talking, Nickie,” Tamiko purred fiercely, her energetic presence flaring with a triumphant, protective heat. “Show him the fire didn't burn out just because a few old ghosts tried to blow on it on the pavement. Remind him of exactly what he's fighting for. Bring our man all the way back to life.”

When she finally broke the contact, she didn't retreat. She stayed close enough that her breath brushed warm against his mouth, her eyes searching his face under the dim neon lighting of the luxury vehicle.

A slow smirk graced Niccola’s painted lips, her velvet voice dropping into a smoky, teasing murmur that belonged strictly to the Director who always got exactly what she wanted.

"There," she whispered, her thumb tracing the warm line of his lower lip. "Just a friendly reminder of who you were before we stepped out onto that pavement. The infuriating strategist who fought me for the last bite of dessert is still in there...and I fully expect him to make a full recovery by the time we reach the estate."

[velvetcompulsion]

For a moment, Kilgrave simply stared.

First at Niccola. Then at Katriana's unmistakable expression looking back at him through the glass. Then at Carter.

The laboratory continued moving around them. Data streamed across monitors. Technicians rushed between stations. Someone was speaking somewhere behind him.

He heard none of it.

You did beautifully.

Your intervention was exactly what this crisis required.

A strange, uncomfortable and dangerously warm feeling settled somewhere beneath his ribs. His fingers tightened slightly around the folded glasses in his hand. For perhaps the first time that day, he found himself entirely without a response.

Which was deeply irritating.

Eventually his gaze dropped toward the floor. A rare occurrence in itself.

"Well." The word emerged quieter than intended. "I should like it formally noted that this has been an extraordinarily confusing afternoon."

His eyes lifted again. The familiar sarcasm returned. Softer this time, less defensive.

For a moment after Carter finished his scolding, Kilgrave said nothing. His gaze drifted from the doctor to the isolation vault. To Niccola still standing, still alive and still somehow managing to look apologetic after terrifying half the facility.

The corner of his mouth twitched faintly. Then his eyes returned to Carter. The older man's voice had recovered. His composure had mostly returned. But Kilgrave had seen the tears. He had seen the shaking hand. He had seen the fear. And unfortunately, he understood it perfectly.

A long silence stretched between them.

"In fairness, Doctor..." Several people glanced up. Kilgrave's eyes remained fixed on the isolation vault. "I also told her not to die." His gaze shifted briefly toward Niccola through the glass. "She appears to be selectively ignoring both of us."

A few exhausted technicians let out quiet, startled laughs. The tension in the laboratory eased fractionally at his words. Only fractionally. Kilgrave folded his arms loosely across his chest. His expression remained unusually subdued. "I suspect you'll find that being Director has convinced her she's immortal." His eyes narrowed slightly. "Personally, I believe the evidence gathered today strongly suggests otherwise."

The sarcasm was there. But beneath it sat something rarer.

Relief.

The kind that only appeared after terror. His gaze flicked toward Carter once more. The humour faded slightly.

"I know."

Just two words, quiet and simple.

I know what that felt like.

I know why you're angry.

I know why you're frightened.

The rest remained unspoken.

Kilgrave looked away first. Because saying even that much felt dangerously close to sincerity.

While the laboratory had found its rhythm again, Kilgrave remained silent. Technicians moved between workstations, containment specialists monitored environmental data, scientists argued quietly over emerging projections.

At the centre of it all, Carter had reclaimed command of the operation with the calm authority of someone who had spent an entire career managing disasters.

Kilgrave simply watched. His folded glasses rested loosely in one hand. Every few moments, his gaze drifted back toward Niccola. The sight of her remained reassuring in a way he found difficult to articulate.

Eventually, however, a familiar restlessness began to settle beneath his skin.

Your intervention was exactly what this crisis required.

He suddenly understood why the praise suddenly didn't sit well with him.

"Let's not start engraving commemorative plaques just yet." His fingers tightened briefly around the folded glasses in his hand as he focused on Dr. Carter. "The Director may be alive, but we are still attempting to determine whether my blood has accidentally become an airborne event."

Several technicians glanced up. Kilgrave ignored them. His eyes now remained fixed on the data. For a moment, he looked tired. Not physically. Burdened. "The containment risk is mine."

The laboratory fell slightly quieter.

"If the antigens are interacting with the pathogen, if there has been a mutation, if there is a secondary transmission vector..."

He paused suddenly and his jaw tightened. "Then it originated with me." Just a simple statement of fact. His gaze flicked briefly toward the isolation vault. Toward Niccola, still trapped behind the glass because of uncertainties surrounding his biology. That fact was not lost on him.

"Whatever testing you require, do it." His attention returned to Carter. "Additional samples. Sequencing. Monitoring. I don't particularly care."

The words felt strangely unfamiliar. Not because he didn't mean them, but because asking the question used to be unimaginable. For most of his life, Kilgrave had simply taken control. Now he was offering it instead.

And somehow, that felt far more difficult.

"If I'm about to become the source of a highly concerning airborne mutation event, I'd prefer to be useful while doing it."

The attempt at humour was weak. His attention remained on the work unfolding around them. Then, with more sincerely, he continued. "Tell me where I can help."

For several seconds, nobody spoke. The words lacked the theatricality people had once expected from him. There was no attempt to defend himself. No attempt to minimise the danger. Only accountability.

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola rested her forehead against the cool, reinforced glass, her short frame anchoring itself heavily against the steel terminal as her ragged breathing gradually steadied. Her caramel-toned skin still flushed with residual heat, she watched Kilgrave absorb the weight of Katriana’s praise and Carter’s raw, tearful fury.

For a man who usually commanded every room with loud, theatrical arrogance, his sudden, subdued silence was absolutely deafening. She saw his fingers tighten around his folded tortoiseshell glasses, his gaze dropping to the laboratory floor in a rare display of genuine vulnerability that sent a profound, aching warmth through her newly restarted heart.

When his eyes finally lifted to meet hers again, the soft, defensive sarcasm that returned felt like a familiar shield. Through the intercom speaker, she listened to him dryly point out to Dr. Carter that he had explicitly told her not to die, and that she appeared to be selectively ignoring both of them because her role as Director had convinced her she was immortal.

A faint, genuine smile broke across her pale lips, her eyes crinkling with exhausted amusement. She tapped her knuckles against the glass, her voice cutting through the open channel with a weak but steady warmth. "The day I start listening to either of you without offering a counter-argument first is the day you should worry," she murmured..

But the momentary levity evaporated as Kilgrave pivoted back to the grim metrics of the containment crisis, offering his own biology up for whatever grueling sequencing Carter required.

"He's right, Doctor," she stated into the intercom, her gaze locking onto Carter. "Draw a fresh line for comparative sequencing from Kilgrave immediately. If his antigen template is interacting with the residual plague in my atmosphere, we must map the mutation vector before the ventilation seals are compromised. You aren't the source of a disaster, Kilgrave. You're the answer to it. Help Carter map the projection models, stand your ground, and let's get us out of this mess alive."

The moment the final syllable left her lips, a sudden, brutal wave of vertigo slammed into her system like a physical blow. The secure vault tilted violently on its axis, nearly throwing her off her feet. Gasping, her hands lost their grip on the steel console, and she stumbled blindly backward, her knees buckling until she crashed heavily into the leather chair she had been sitting in before the pathogen had initially taken her. She pressed the heels of her palms hard against her temples, desperately trying to shake the thick, suffocating feeling of cotton out of her head.

Before she could clear it, a deafening explosion of sound erupted inside her mind. It wasn't the distinct, familiar voices of Katriana or Tamiko; instead, her head was suddenly flooded with hundreds of different voices, all speaking, screaming, and whispering simultaneously in a chaotic, overlapping cacophony that practically deafened her internal consciousness. For several terrifying seconds, the roar was absolute. Then, just as abruptly as it had ignited, the noise vanished, leaving her trapped in her exhaustion.

Outside the glass, the laboratory monitors suddenly went wild. Her metabolic chart registered a spike so massive, so completely off the known charts, that the medical sensors flatlined into a chaotic loop of digital gibberish, throwing flashing red error codes across Carter's screens for thirty agonizing seconds.

Breathing heavily, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, Niccola slowly lowered her hands. Her raven black waves fell around her face as she sat frozen in the chair, staring wide-eyed through the biohazard shield at Kilgrave. A cold dread settled deep in her chest as the truth hit her: mutations in the vault's air might not be the only place they should be looking.

[kakashimultimuses]

@niccolahiromithomas [PLOTTED STARTER]

"Don't you think we're drinking too much, ma'am?" Even saying that, he downed the bottle of liquor into his companion's glass on that strange night. It was rare for him to have a day off, and when he did, one of his favorite outings was to go to the bar to drink and relax a bit. What he didn't expect was to have such interesting company this time.

"But I have to admit, it's the first time someone has been able to drink with me. Most of my mates end up collapsing too soon. You're stronger than you look. You've got guts, ma'am." He raised his own glass of neat whiskey in respect for the other.

"However, I sense a bit of competition here?" A chuckling sound could be heard beneath the skull balaclava.

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola swirled the amber liquor in her glass, a sharp, knowing smirk playing on her lips. She wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, especially not from a massive stranger hiding behind a painted skull balaclava on a random night out. Looking up at him, standing around five feet tall herself, she didn't let his imposing size or masked mystique intimidate her in the slightest. Instead, her amethyst eyes gleamed with an undeniable competitive spark under the low neon lights of the tavern.

"Too much?" she countered, her voice smooth and entirely unbothered as she raised her glass to mirror his gesture. "I didn't peg a man as yourself as someone who worried about keeping count. And you shouldn't underestimate me. I have plenty of stamina to back up these guts."

She took a slow, deliberate sip, letting the burning warmth of the neat whiskey settle before fixing him with an unwavering gaze. Her raven black waves shifted over her shoulders as she leaned her curvy frame forward, resting an elbow on the worn wooden table to close the distance between them. His low, muffled chuckle vibrating from beneath his mask only fueled her amusement.

"As for competition, you're damn right you sense it," she said, a playful edge to her tone. "Your usual mates might collapse early but I don't break that easily. If you think you're going to out-drink me tonight, big guy, you've severely miscalculated what I can handle."

The Irishwoman set her glass down with a firm, decisive click against the wood and gestured toward the bottle. "So, less talking. Let's see if you can actually keep up when the bottles start running empty." She offered him a provocative nod, waiting for his next move.

[velvetcompulsion]

For one reckless, desperate heartbeat, Kilgrave considered ignoring her. The moment her trembling hand touched the glass opposite his, every instinct he possessed screamed at him to get through that door.

To hell with the protocols.

To hell with the scientists.

To hell with the world.

She was alive.

That should have been enough. Instead, she had somehow returned from the dead only to start giving orders again. His eyes closed briefly. A strained laugh escaped him.

Of course she had...

When they finally reopened, the terror was still there, lingering stubbornly behind the amber, but something else had settled alongside it:

Reluctant acceptance. Because she was right. Damn her.

She was always right at the most inconvenient moments.

His blood still stained the rolled sleeve of his shirt. The puncture marks in his arm throbbed dully, almost forgotten beneath the adrenaline still coursing through his system.

Slowly, he lifted his hand and pressed it more firmly against the glass, matching hers. Not separated by inches. Separated by an entire world. "Do you have any idea," he said quietly into the intercom, "how much I dislike you at this moment?"

A few exhausted technicians stared at him, entirely unsure whether Kilgrave was joking or not. The answer, naturally, was both.

His gaze never left Niccola. "You collapse. You stop breathing. Your heart gives up entirely." His voice tightened. "You make me complete an absurdly complicated biochemical sequence while every alarm in this facility is trying to rupture my eardrums."

Another breath.

"And then, having returned from clinical death, your first act is to inform everyone that they are standing incorrectly."

For a moment, he simply stood there with his hand against the glass, watching her breathe. Watching her remain stubbornly, infuriatingly alive.

Then Niccola spoke about the pathogen still being active. About the airborne contamination. About the unknown interaction between the virus, the antigens, and the environment.

And something clicked. Not emotionally. Intellectually.

You did it, love... Keep the shield up.

Something shifted behind his eyes.

Not calm. It was never calm.

A tiny, cold mechanism somewhere deep in his mind abruptly engaged. The fear didn't lessen. It sharpened. Focused.

His gaze broke away from her for the first time. Slowly, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Several technicians watched with visible confusion as he withdrew a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses.

Kilgrave slid them onto his face. The laboratory snapped into sharp focus.

Environmental monitors.

Containment readouts.

Ventilation systems.

Data streams.

His eyes flicked across them with startling speed.

Information. Variables. Problems... Problems could be solved. There was still work to do and work was infinitely preferable to panic. The helplessness that had been crushing his chest moments earlier suddenly found somewhere else to go.

His hand slipped from the glass. His shoulders straightened. The trembling in his fingers vanished beneath purpose.

When he turned away from the vault, his gaze swept across the laboratory. Scientists stood frozen. Technicians hesitated. Nobody was moving quickly enough. A flash of irritation crossed his face. Not at them, but at the situation. At the uncertainty. At the fact that there were still problems left unsolved.

His voice cracked through the room like a whip.

"Why is nobody collecting samples?"

Several people visibly jumped.

"She just handed you a containment assessment and half this room is standing here gawping at the glass."

His amber eyes landed on the nearest monitoring station. "You." A technician straightened instinctively. "I want atmospheric sampling from every ventilation branch connected to that chamber. Not assumptions. Samples."

The technician immediately hurried toward the terminal.

Kilgrave had already moved on.

"Run comparative analysis against the original pathogen profile and the synthesized vaccine sequence."

His gaze flicked toward another workstation.

"And somebody isolate the antigen markers from my blood before they contaminate the rest of your data set."

The room finally began moving, fast. He strode toward the central monitoring console, eyes racing over the streams of information flashing across the displays.

Warning alerts.

Containment data.

Environmental metrics.

The numbers settled into place with alarming familiarity. Months ago, most of it would have been meaningless. Now he could practically hear Katriana lecturing in the back of his mind.

His jaw tightened.

Damn woman.

He'd absorbed more from her than he'd ever intended.

"Increase surveillance on the vault ventilation system," he ordered. "If the Director is correct and airborne antigen interaction is occurring, we need trend analysis before we start making decisions."

A scientist hesitated. "But we don't know if airborne transmission is even possible."

Kilgrave's gaze snapped toward him. "No." His voice was cold and measured. "We don't." He paused. "Which is why we test it before somebody opens a door and discovers the answer experimentally."

The scientist immediately looked away.

Satisfied, Kilgrave turned back toward the isolation chamber. Toward Niccola. His expression softened almost imperceptibly. Only for a second. Then it was gone. Replaced by sharp concentration.

She was still trapped in there.

She was still vulnerable.

The situation was still dangerous.

And if there was one thing his time beside Niccola had taught him, it was this:

Panic never solved a crisis.

Information did.

His eyes drifted to the environmental readings once more. "Get me a projection model," he said quietly. "Every possible interaction between the pathogen, the antigens, and the existing atmospheric compounds."

The laboratory erupted into motion around him. Kilgrave's eyes flicked across another stream of environmental data before abruptly narrowing.

Silence.

The room continued moving around him.

Waiting. Expecting another instruction.

For the first time since Niccola's revival, he actually looked up from the monitors. His gaze landed on Dr. Carter. Then the containment team. Then the technicians. Then back to Carter again.

A strange expression crossed his face.

Realisation.

"Ah."

The single syllable carried an unusual amount of discomfort. Several people blinked. His shoulders sagged slightly. Without another word, he reached up and removed his glasses. The laboratory immediately softened at the edges once more. Data streams became less distinct. Warning indicators became harder to read, but not impossible. Just no longer demanding his attention. Kilgrave folded the glasses carefully in one hand.

The adrenaline was finally beginning to recede. Which, unfortunately, meant self-awareness was returning.

"Right."

Another pause.

"I appear to have accidentally commandeered your laboratory."

The confession hung awkwardly in the air. A few technicians exchanged uncertain glances. Kilgrave looked genuinely annoyed with himself.

"To be clear, I am aware that you possess multiple degrees." His hand made a vague gesture toward Carter. "And I possess... none."

A beat.

"Officially."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Let's not dwell on that."

For the first time all afternoon, the corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite smug. Not quite embarrassed. An uncomfortable combination of both. He stepped away from the central console. "You are the expert, Doctor." The words were sincere, which somehow made them sound even stranger coming from him. "I merely happen to be uniquely qualified to identify when my own biology is attempting to create fresh disasters."

His gaze drifted briefly toward the isolation vault. Toward Niccola. The sight visibly steadied him. When he looked back at Carter, some of the sharpness had faded from his voice.

"Proceed." A pause. "And..." Then, quietly, "... thank you."

The gratitude escaped before he could stop it. Gratitude for the blood extraction, for the vaccine, for saving her, for helping save her. Kilgrave immediately looked as though he regretted saying it aloud.

[niccolahiromithomas]

"Do you have any idea," his quiet voice rasped through the speaker, "how much I dislike you at this moment?"

A faint, microscopic twitch of amusement tugged at the corner of Niccola’s lips. She didn't have the lung capacity to offer a scathing retort nor did she want to interrupt the sheer comfort of hearing him breathe. She simply watched him, absorbing the sight of his blood-stained shirt sleeve and the raw puncture marks on his arm. He had literally torn his own biology apart to pull her out of the dark, and yet here he was, complaining that her first act after returning from clinical death was to correct everyone's posture and protocols.

It was quintessential him; a beautiful, defensive mechanism wrapped in exasperation and it grounded her far better than any chemical stabilizer could.

She watched through the reinforced glass as he slid the tortoiseshell glasses onto his face, his entire demeanor instantly sharpening from fractured panic into a cold, calculated focus. The laboratory around him had frozen, the scientists and containment technicians completely paralyzed by the sheer whiplash of her sudden revival. When his voice cracked through the room like a whip, demanding to know why nobody was collecting atmospheric samples, a few technicians visibly jumped. They hesitated, glancing uncertainly between the erratic data streams and the arrogant man who possessed absolutely no official credentials to run a high-level hot-zone containment protocol.

Sensing their hesitation, the Irishwoman leaned heavily against the steel terminal and slammed her sweat-slicked palm onto the primary communications intercom once more.

"Don't just stand there staring at him!" she rasped into the open channel, her voice weak and scraping against her throat like broken glass, but carrying the unyielding weight of the Director. "The containment assessment he just handed you is entirely accurate. Isolate the antigen markers from his blood and pull the trend analysis from the ventilation branches immediately. He is tracking the variables perfectly. Move!"

Her definitive confirmation acted as the final catalyst the staff needed. The remaining technicians broke out of their stupor and scrambled back to their stations, their fingers flying across consoles as the central system began updating the active logging sequence for the hot zone.

As he turned back toward the vault, his amber eyes burning with a focused, silent intensity, she felt a profound, familiar shift ripple through her own mind. The chaotic static of her near-death experience receded completely as Katriana stepped forward within their shared consciousness, ready to anchor their erratic biology with clinical precision.

Niccola’s posture straightened, the raven black hair falling away from her face as her violet eyes locked onto his through the glass with a sudden, chilling clarity. When she spoke through the intercom again, her tone had entirely transformed, losing its ragged edge and adopting Katriana's hyper-specific, elegant cadence.

"Furthermore, Kilgrave," Katriana spoke directly through Niccola's lips, her expression softening into a look of profound respect. "I am thoroughly impressed. To recognize my specific structural grids under that level of environmental duress, and to perfectly execute the missing molecular sequence before our cardiac line flattened...it was an exceptional display of intellect. I am deeply proud of you for mastering the complex bio-engineering required to save our collective template. You did beautifully."

On the other side of the glass, the sudden wave of intense self-awareness hit Kilgrave as the adrenaline finally began to recede from his system. He awkwardly removed his glasses, his shoulders sagging slightly as he back-pedaled, mumbling a highly uncomfortable confession to Dr. Carter about accidentally commandeering the laboratory.

Dr. Carter, who had been leaning against a secondary console trying to recover from the absolute trauma of watching Niccola's near death, finally pulled himself back into order. He wiped a trembling hand across his face, straightening his rumpled lab coat as he stepped firmly up to the central monitor.

"Do not dare apologize for taking over when it was needed," Carter said, his voice thick but commanding as he intercepted the man's awkward retreat. "Your biology may or may not be attempting to create fresh disasters in the air system but your quick thinking is the only reason we still have the Director standing on her feet to argue with us. Your intervention was exactly what this crisis required."

Then, Carter turned his full attention to the isolation vault, his eyes visibly watering as he stared directly at her through the thick bio-hazard shield. The professional, clinical detachment he usually maintained publicly fractured completely, the tears welling up and spilling over his lashes as the sheer horror of almost losing her finally caught up to him. He pointed an angry, trembling finger at her through the glass.

"And as for you, Nickie...don't you ever play a reckless stunt like that again!" he scolded, his voice cracking with a mixture of raw grief and furious relief. "You are a Director, not a martyr. I genuinely thought I had lost you there for a second. If you ever decide to manually lock down a global catastrophe by surrendering your own heart to cellular necrosis again, I will personally revoke your lab privileges and lock you out of the mainframe!"

Niccola offered a soft, apologetic look through the glass, her amethyst eyes projecting a silent, deeply grateful understanding of the immense emotional burden they had all just carried. She gave a microscopic nod, accepting the reprimand without a single word of defiance.

Carter drew in a sharp, ragged breath, ruthlessly wiping the remaining moisture from his eyes with the back of his sleeve as he forcefully shoved his emotions back beneath his clinical mask. He turned his back to the vault with a newfound, rigid determination, facing his team.

"Right," the doctor muttered, the sharpness returning to his voice as he looked at the data streams. "We have an active hot zone to contain and a volatile atmospheric compound to map. Let's get to work."

[velvetcompulsion]

For several long, unbearable seconds, Kilgrave couldn't move. The world beyond the glass was reduced to a handful of impossible details. The sharp rise of her chest, the violent gasp that tore into the sterile silence, the flutter of amethyst eyes that should never have opened again...

Relief hit him so hard it was almost painful. His knees threatened to give way beneath him. He hadn't realised he was holding his breath until it escaped him in a ragged, shaking exhale.

"Director..."

The word barely left his lips. His trembling hand remained pressed against the reinforced glass, as though withdrawing it might somehow undo the miracle he was witnessing.

Moments earlier, he had watched her collapse. Watched her fingers slip from the keyboard. Watched the monitors scream warnings as her heart surrendered to the pathogen ravaging her body.

For one horrifying instant, he had genuinely believed he was seeing the last moments of Niccola Hiromi Thomas. And that terror had hollowed him out completely.

The laboratory around him erupted into motion. Doctor Carter barked orders. Technicians scrambled to verify the vaccine synthesis. Medical teams rushed toward the isolation chamber.

Kilgrave heard none of it. His entire world remained on the other side of the glass.

"You bloody idiot," he whispered hoarsely.

The words carried no anger. Only raw, exhausted affection. His amber eyes never left hers. "Could've delegated the apocalypse for five minutes."

A weak attempt at humour. A pathetic one.

His voice cracked halfway through. Because the truth sat heavily behind his ribs. If she had died in that room, there would have been no speech. No dramatic declaration. No grand confession.

There would only have been a terrible, empty silence stretching out across the rest of his life. His forehead slowly came to rest against the cool glass. For perhaps the first time in years, he made no effort to hide the fear still lingering in his expression.

No sarcasm. No arrogance. No carefully constructed mask.

Only a man who had come within seconds of losing the person he loved most.

When Niccola finally focused on him properly, he managed a faint, crooked smile.

It was fragile, unsteady, human...

"Hello, sweetheart." His voice was barely above a whisper. "You gave us all a rather unpleasant afternoon."

The smile faltered almost immediately. His eyes glistened. And despite every instinct screaming at him to regain his composure, he simply stood there with his hand against the glass, looking at her as though committing every detail of her existence to memory.

Because for one awful moment, he had thought there would be no more memories left to make.

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola’s amethyst eyes snapped open, a violent, desperate gasp tearing from her lungs as the rush of adrenaline and synthesized antigens shattered the darkness. Her chest heaved against the cold steel of the terminal, her caramel-toned skin slick with sweat as her system violently fought its way back to life. Through the smeared, reinforced glass of the isolation vault, the very first thing she saw was Kilgrave. His forehead was pressed against the window, his usual arrogant mask completely shattered to reveal a raw, breathless terror in his amber eyes.

But as her vision cleared of digital static, she spotted Dr. Carter and the containment technicians rushing toward the primary decontamination doors. They were preparing to breach the hot zone to reach her.

Panic flared, sharp and cold. Using every ounce of her barely restored strength, she slammed her palm onto the console's primary communications override and manually engaged the interior vault seals. The intercom shrieked to life, her voice cutting through the blaring alarms with the absolute, unyielding authority of the Director.

"Step back! Carter, do not touch that manual release!" she ordered, her voice scraping like broken glass against her throat. "Nobody opens this door. Nobody enters this room. Lock it down right now!"

The medical team froze in their tracks, staring through the bio-hazard shield in stunned silence. The Irishwoman leaned heavily against the steel terminal, her raven black hair falling into her face as she forced her ragged breathing to stabilize. She glanced down at the flashing monitor, where the active data log for air quality was painting the screen in warning reds.

"Listen to me carefully, all of you," she rasped into the open channel, her eyes locked onto the team on the other side. "I know what it looks like. But just because I am standing here breathing does not mean this room is safe. Yes, Kilgrave's vaccine neutralized the necrosis in my system but the isolation box itself is still an active hot zone. The bio-engineered pathogen I locked down is highly resilient, and there are active, lethal strains of the plague still swirling freely in this atmosphere. My internal cure didn't magically sanitize the air inside this vault."

She paused, drawing in a shallow, painful breath, her amethyst eyes shifting directly to Kilgrave.

"There is also a secondary factor we have to deal with now," she continued, her tone dropping into a deadly serious register. "Because of the rapid, desperate override Kilgrave just executed to crack the sequence, a massive concentration of his raw, antigen-rich biological template was forced into the vault's localized ventilation. His specific anti-gens are completely up in the air right now, floating loose inside this sealed space. We have absolutely zero data on how those airborne antigens are going to interact with the environment, or how they will react to the active pathogen outside of a human host. If you open that door, you risk a volatile biochemical reaction or a secondary airborne mutation that we cannot stop."

The lab fell into a heavy, sober silence as her words sank in. Niccola let out a weak exhale, her gaze softening as she looked at his pale face. She slowly raised her shaking hand, pressing her palm against the cool glass directly opposite his.

"You did it, love," she whispered through the intercom, a rare warmth breaking through her strict demeanor. "You brought me back. But if we open this door now, everything you just bled your own body for to save will be gone in an instant. Keep the shield up."

[velvetcompulsion]

The sheer impact of Niccola's words rendered Kilgrave silent for several seconds. Her words settled somewhere deep inside him past the guilt and shame. Past the endless layers of defence he had spent a lifetime constructing.

You just have to let me stay.

The dangerously simple and yet kind sentence echoed quietly through his thoughts. His gaze remained fixed on hers, searching. Not for flaws. Not for contradictions...

For the trap.

The catch.

The inevitable condition attached to it...

He didn't find one. And somehow that frightened him more than if he had. A shaky breath escaped him.

The doubt didn't disappear. That would have been too simple. Too convenient. A lifetime of uncertainty couldn't be dismantled by a single conversation, no matter how desperately he wanted it to be true.

The old voice remained, quiet and persistent. The same one that had followed him since childhood.

What if she's wrong?

What if she leaves?

What if one day she sees enough?

His jaw tightened briefly. The thoughts arrived automatically. The familiar shape of old scars. For years he had trusted that voice. It had protected him. Kept expectations low. Kept disappointment survivable. But for the first time, another thought pushed back. Not louder, but just steadier.

Niccola had stayed.

Not once.

Not twice.

Again.

And again.

And again...

The hand laced through hers tightened fractionally. Not enough to hurt, but just enough to confirm she was still there. Still real, still choosing him.

His eyes lowered briefly. The movement carried none of his usual calculation. Only exhaustion. Years of it. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded quietly rough.

"I don't know what to do when people are kind to me."

The confession emerged before he could stop it. His brow furrowed immediately. As though he regretted saying it the moment the words escaped. He didn't take them back though... Because they were true. Painfully true.

A faint laugh escaped him, broken around the edges. "When people are cruel..." His gaze drifted toward the passing city lights. "I understand that."

A pause.

"I know where I stand."

His thumb moved slowly across her knuckles. The smallest movement grounding him further.

"But this..."

His eyes returned to hers.

"This is considerably more terrifying."

The corner of his mouth twitched weakly. Not quite a smile, but something softer. Something younger. For a moment he looked less like a former monster and more like a man who had spent his entire life waiting for the door to close behind everyone he cared about. Then, slowly, he leaned forward. Not to kiss her this time. He simply rested his forehead lightly against hers.

As though he were trying to hold onto something fragile. Because he was. His eyes closed briefly in the quiet effort of allowing a possibility he had spent most of his life rejecting.

The movement was instinctive. Trusting even. The sort of thing he never would have done years ago. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, the tension in his shoulders eased fractionally. Just enough.

When he finally opened his eyes again, the resistance remained. The fear remained. The doubt remained... But something else existed beside them now.

Trust. It was small and fragile and absolutely terrifying.

His gaze lifted to hers. For several seconds he simply looked at her.

"You make it sound easy," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Then, quieter still, "I'd like to learn."

For perhaps the first time in his life, the statement wasn't about strategy or power or survival. It was about being loved. Allowing himself to believe it.

[niccolahiromithomas]

The soft, trembling touch of his forehead resting against her own sent a quiet shiver down Niccola’s spine. In the muted luxury of the Royal Royce, the Director of Interpol Black Operations completely melted away, leaving only a woman holding the fragile, terrifying dawn of a man's trust. She closed her eyes for a brief second, leaning into the contact, anchoring him with the steady rise and fall of her chest as his hand tightened fractionally around hers.

When he whispered his raw confession, that cruelty was a language he understood but kindness was a terrain that utterly terrified him, she felt a profound ache in her chest. He was looking at her not as a former monster calculating an escape but as a man desperately wishing to step out of a lifelong winter.

And then came the words that shifted the axis of their entire world: “I’d like to learn.”

The sudden shift in his psychological baseline sent a reverent hush through the system. This breakthrough was the living, breathing truth of the progress they had documented across their private logs.

“Subject is actively overriding decades of deeply ingrained maladaptive survival mechanisms,” Katriana observed, her internal voice carrying a rare, profound warmth that completely eclipsed her usual clinical detachment. “He is consenting to emotional reconditioning. The resistance is still present but the compliance threshold has shifted from forced to entirely voluntary. He is allowing you to guide him.”

“Then we protect this with everything we’ve got, Nickie,” Tamiko fiercely interjected, her sharp energy coiling like a shield around the fragile spark of his trust. “He spent his whole life waiting for the door to slam shut. Let’s show him we’ve locked the deadbolt from the inside. If he wants to learn how to be loved, we are going to be the best damn teachers he’s ever had.”

She opened her eyes, looking directly into his close, vulnerable gaze. Her fingers moved to gently cradle his cheek, her thumb wiping away the invisible weight of the decades he had spent hiding behind sarcasm and fear. A soft, incredibly tender expression graced her lips.

"Then I will teach you," she murmured, her velvet voice a low, unshakeable vow that filled the quiet space between their lips. "We will take it one day, one step, one breath at a time. You don't have to be fluent in kindness by tomorrow morning. You just have to keep showing up, exactly like this."

She tilted her head slightly, her raven waves shifting over her shoulder as she pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth; the very spot that had twitched with a fragile, youthful hope just moments before.

"Cruelty is easy because it requires nothing but armor," Niccola whispered against his skin, her grip on his hand steady and real. "But this? Trusting me? It's the bravest thing you've ever done. And I promise you, Kaven, you are safe here in the quiet."

[velvetcompulsion]

For a moment, Kilgrave forgot how to breathe. The city continued sliding past the windows. The soft hum of the engine remained constant. Yet everything else seemed to fall away.

I stay because I want to.

The words settled somewhere deep.

Dangerously deep.

His unwavering gaze remained fixed on her. As though he was trying to determine whether he had heard correctly. He didn't doubt her, but some part of him still struggled to believe such a thing could exist.

Choice. Real choice.

No commands. No influence. No fear.

Just her.

The pressure behind his eyes returned immediately. Worse than before. His jaw tightened. For a second he looked away. The movement was brief, almost instinctive. An old reflex. The urge to hide when something became too important.

It failed.

Because Niccola was still holding his hand. Still sitting beside him. Still choosing him... Her words had reached somewhere he normally kept buried beneath sarcasm and confidence and carefully maintained composure.

And somehow that terrified him more.

A dangerous silence settled over him. Not because he was withdrawing, but because he was thinking. The sort of thinking that happened when old wounds were touched unexpectedly.

His gaze remained fixed on their joined hands.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before. Smaller.

"You really mean that?"

The question escaped before he could stop it. His brow furrowed immediately, almost annoyed with himself. As though he recognised exactly how ridiculous it sounded after everything she had just said.

Yet the doubt remained stubbornly... childishly...

His eyes lifted to hers, searching. "All of it?" His throat tightened. "You actually choose this?" His gaze drifted briefly toward the darkened window. "I spent years trying to figure out what people wanted from me."

The confession emerged softly.

"I got quite good at it."

His fingers tightened slightly around hers. Then loosened again.

"But I've never been particularly good at understanding why somebody would stay."

There it was. The real wound. Not guilt. Not shame.

Abandonment.

The quiet terror that everybody eventually leaves once they see enough. His eyes lowered again. For a moment, he looked younger. Not physically. Emotionally. The sharp strategist disappearing briefly beneath decades of uncertainty. "I know what you've just told me." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I heard every word."

He hesitated. "I just..."

The sentence died in his throat. A flash of frustration crossed his face. Then, almost reluctantly, he murmured, "I just don't know how to make myself believe I deserve it."

The raw and unprotected admission hung heavily between them. The sort of truth he would normally bury beneath six layers of wit and sarcasm. For once, he made no attempt to hide it. And perhaps for the first time since Niccola had known him, Kilgrave wasn't asking her to fix anything.

He was simply handing her the truth.

The frightened little boy beneath the monster.

The one who had spent his entire life wondering whether anybody would still be there if given the freedom to leave.

"I want to."

The words slipped out unexpectedly. It was honest. Painfully honest.

"I just don't know how."

[niccolahiromithomas]

The interior of the Royal Royce seemed to shrink, the soft hum of the engine fading into a distant backdrop as Kilgrave’s raw, unprotected confession hung heavily in the air.

“I want to. I just don't know how.”

The absolute sincerity of his voice, stripped of all sarcasm, wit, and defensive armor, left the frightened little boy beneath the monster entirely exposed. He wasn't asking her to fix his fractured psyche; he was simply handing her the deepest, most agonizing wound he carried: a lifetime of abandonment and crippling doubt.

She didn't flinch from the weight of his truth. She kept her fingers securely laced through his, refusing to let him retreat into the isolating darkness of his own mind. The ladies immediately synchronized, moving with a quiet, reverent focus to help her navigate the fragile emotional architecture of the man beside her.

“Director, the subject is experiencing an acute existential crisis rooted in decades of conditioned abandonment,” Katriana analyzed, her clinical tone softened by an uncharacteristic layer of protective empathy. “A lifetime of believing he is inherently unlovable cannot be rewired in a single evening. Do not demand an immediate cognitive shift. Validate the complexity of his hesitation.”

“He thinks the rug is going to be pulled out from under him, Nickie,” Tamiko added softly, her usual fierce energy channeled into an unyielding, protective shield. “He’s terrified that if he lets himself believe you, the abandonment will hurt ten times worse when you eventually leave. Tell him he doesn't have to figure out the 'how' tonight. We are dug into his perimeter for the long haul. We'll teach him how to believe it, one day at a time.”

With their internal counsel anchoring her resolve, she shifted on the plush leather seat, closing the physical distance between them. She reached up with her free hand, her slender fingers gently cupping the back of his neck, her thumb brushing against the hairline of his rigid jaw to offer a steady, grounding warmth. Her brilliant amethyst eyes locked onto his searching, vulnerable amber gaze, refusing to let him look away.

"Then don't try to force it tonight," Niccola murmured, her voice carrying an absolute, unshakeable certainty that cut through his lingering doubt. "A lifetime of waiting for the world to turn its back on you doesn't dissolve because of a single conversation. You don't have to know how to believe you deserve this right now. You just have to let me stay."

A small, incredibly tender smile touched the corners of her dark lips.

"And let’s be entirely candid...neither of us operates on a ledger of what we 'deserve.' If the universe dealt in pure absolution, both of our files would have been burned to ash a long time ago. I am not here because you have a clean record, Kaven. I am here because your brilliant, chaotic, and deeply feeling soul matches the wreckage of my own. I choose this. All of it. And I have all the time in the world to prove it to you."

[fullcravings]

Mini Basque Cheesecakes with Oreo Crust

[velvetcompulsion]

For once, Kilgrave didn't interrupt. He didn't argue. Didn't deflect. Didn't point out the flaws in her reasoning. The familiar instincts never arrived. He simply listened.

The city lights drifted across the windows. Shadows moved across Niccola's face as she spoke. The Director disappeared. The strategist disappeared.

What remained was a woman sitting beside him in the half-light of a moving car, quietly handing him some of the worst parts of herself.

Kilgrave's gaze remained fixed on her. The details landed one by one. The loss. The abuse. The years. The overwhelming loneliness of it...

His chest tightened. Not from guilt, but from something else. Something older. Something painfully familiar.

For the first time since seeing the woman on the pavement, his thoughts stopped circling himself. Stopped circling the victim. Stopped circling the endless catalogue of mistakes.

Instead, he found himself looking at Niccola. Really looking. And suddenly all he could think was:

You were a child.

The realisation hit with surprising force.

A child.

Trying to survive things no child should ever have endured. The thought hollowed him out. Kilgrave swallowed. His jaw tightened once. Then again.

His thumb brushed absent-mindedly across the back of her hand. The movement was small. Protective.

When she finished speaking, silence settled between them. It wasn't uncomfortable. Not heavy. Just... quiet. For several seconds he stared at their joined hands. Then slowly lifted them, bringing her knuckles to his lips. The kiss lingered.

His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, something behind them looked wounded. Not for himself. For her.

"You were a child."

The words emerged quietly. As though he still couldn't quite believe it. His gaze found hers. The grief there was unmistakable.

"They were supposed to protect you." His throat tightened. "And they didn't."

For a moment he couldn't continue. The anger arrived unexpectedly. Not loudly. Not explosive. Just cold and ancient. The sort of anger reserved for people who hurt children. When he finally spoke again, his voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

"I'm sorry."

Not for himself.

Not for the evening.

Not for the victim.

For her. For the girl she had once been.

The apology sounded heartbreakingly sincere. Because for all his guilt, for all the darkness he carried...

This was one thing he knew with absolute certainty.

She had deserved better.

For a long moment, Kilgrave said nothing. His gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the passing city lights. The silence wasn't avoidance. It was memory. The kind that arrived without permission. A child's voice. A command. A stranger smiling... The sickening uncertainty that followed.

Did they want to?

Or had he made them?

The question had followed him for most of his life. Even now. Especially now. A faint breath escaped him. "You know what the worst part was?" The words emerged quietly, not expecting an answer. His thumb moved slowly across the back of her hand once more. "I never knew. I could never tell." His gaze dropped briefly. "If somebody smiled at me..." His throat tightened. "If they were kind..." Another pause. "They might have meant it."

The corner of his mouth twitched. A sad thing, not quite a smile. "Or they might have been terrified."

The city lights drifted across the glass. Kilgrave watched them without really seeing them.

"There were days when I genuinely didn't know whether anybody had ever chosen me."

The admission hurt. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was true. His fingers tightened gently around hers, the smallest movement. "The horrible thing about control isn't the power." His voice dropped lower. "It's the doubt."

A long silence followed. "I spent years wondering whether every good thing in my life belonged to me."

His gaze finally shifted to hers. Soft, unusually open. "And then I met you."

The words hung there. Simple. Dangerous. Because Niccola represented something nobody else ever had:

Choice. Real choice.

A shaky breath escaped him. "You stay." His eyes never left hers. "You argue with me." The corner of his mouth twitched again. This time, a little warmer. "You threaten me with desk audits... and somehow that's the first time in my life I've ever been completely certain somebody wants to be here."

[niccolahiromithomas]

The heavy silence that filled the plush interior of the luxury vehicle wasn't a barrier; it was a profound, shared sanctuary where their scars finally aligned. Niccola watched the passing city lights cast fluid shadows across Kilgrave’s sharp features, noting the rare, wounded grief in his amber eyes...not for his own fractured past, but for the ghost of the little girl she used to be. When he murmured his heartbreakingly sincere apology for the protectors who had failed her, something deeply buried within her core unlocked.

Then, he handed her his own ultimate vulnerability: the suffocating, lifelong paralyzing doubt of his power. As he confessed that control’s true horror wasn't the absolute dominance but the agonizing uncertainty of never knowing if a smile was genuine or born of pure terror, she felt the sheer weight of his isolation. He had spent an entire lifetime wondering if a single good thing in his life truly belonged to him.

The ladies resonated with a profound, unyielding solidarity.

“Subject is actively deconstructing his core existential defense mechanism,” Katriana observed, her internal voice stripping away all clinical distance, replaced by an immense reverence. “By identifying you as an agent of absolute autonomy, his psychological paradox is resolving. He is choosing reality over forced compliance.”

“He gets it, Nickie,” Tamiko purred with a tight, fiercely protective warmth. “He sees the child we were, and he sees the choice we’re making right now. Hold onto him. Let him know his doubt dies tonight.”

She didn't pull her hand away. Instead, she laced her fingers securely through his, her thumb rubbing against his knuckles with a deliberate, grounding pressure. She leaned in closer, the scent of expensive leather and the lingering warmth of the restaurant enveloping them both. When she spoke, her velvet voice held the absolute, unshakeable weight of a Director’s final decree.

"You are entirely right about one thing, Kaven," the Irishwoman murmured, her eyes blazing with an enduring, scorching devotion that left absolutely no room for his ghosts to breathe. "I am here by choice. Real, uncoerced, and deliberate choice."

A soft, smoky hum of amusement vibrated in her throat, a faint smirk gracing her lips as she leaned into his personal space.

"If I wanted to leave, there isn't a command in your arsenal that could override the operational perimeters my body has built. I stay because I want to. I argue with you because you are infuriatingly brilliant, and I threaten you with desk audits because someone has to keep your chaotic genius within administrative bounds."

Niccola lifted their joined hands, pressing her lips directly to the center of his palm, letting him feel the physical, scorching reality of her presence. "Every argument, every threat, and every single second I spend by your side belongs entirely to you. You don't ever have to doubt the ledger again. I chose the man who unknowingly was a monster, and I am not going anywhere."

[niccolahiromithomas]

Anonymous Asks: For Kilgrave and Niccola...

🌌 What’s their “we made it through hell” memory they’ll tell their grandkids?

-----

The alarms in the secure underground laboratory were a distant, rhythmic blare through the thick, reinforced glass of the isolation vault. Niccola leaned heavily against the steel terminal, her breath rattling painfully in her lungs. The bio-engineered pathogen she had just manually locked down to prevent a global catastrophe was already ravaging her system, sending a suffocating wave of heat and cellular degradation crashing through her body. On the other side of the bio-hazard shield, Kilgrave’s amber eyes were wide with a rare, unadulterated panic, his sleeve ruthlessly pushed up as Dr. Carter frantically extracted his resilient, antigen-rich blood to synthesize a cure.

She forced her trembling fingers to stay glued to the isolation keyboard, her vision blurring into a haze of digital static. She was the only one inside the hot zone who could input the necessary environmental variables to bind his blood data to a viable vaccine line.

Within the Mind Palace, the ladies were fighting a desperate, losing rearguard action to keep their shared consciousness anchored.

“Cellular necrosis is accelerating exponentially, Director,” Katriana reported, her usually cold, clinical voice fracturing under the sheer weight of the biometric data. “We are losing cognitive cohesion. You must finalize the stabilizing variables for the molecular sequence immediately or the antigen template will collapse before it can be synthesized.”

“Do not dare close your eyes, Nickie!” Tamiko screamed, her fierce, protective hunger coiling tightly against the encroaching darkness. “Look at him through the glass! He is ripping his own biology apart to pull us out of this. Hold the goddamn line!”

The Irishwoman used every ounce of her formidable willpower to blink away the creeping blackness at the edges of her sight. She stared through the glass at him, using the terrifyingly beautiful devotion in his panicked gaze to ground herself.

"Just one more algorithmic string," she told herself. Her sweating fingers hovered over the console, mapping out the final, highly complex biochemical coding. The monitors flashed a violent, warning red as her vitals plummeted. Three more characters...two...

Then, her body completely gave out. The strain proved too much for her failing heart, and the dark rushed in like a tidal wave. Niccola’s head dropped heavily against the console, her hands slipping from the keys as she collapsed into a profound, suffocating coma.

For what felt like an eternity, a frozen, hollow silence gripped her mindscape. But outside her prison of flesh, Kilgrave refused to let her leave this Earth.

Though he had always pretended to merely lounge around the laboratory as a disruptive nuisance, he had spent months acting as an omnipresent shadow to Niccola and Katriana. His brilliant intellect had quietly, meticulously embedded itself into the way they organized data.

Staring at the fractured, incomplete code on the screen, his quick wit ignited. He recognized the exact, hyper-specific molecular sequence Katriana always used to finalize structural grids. Bypassing a frozen Dr. Carter, he slammed his fingers onto the main terminal, perfectly executing the missing sequence just seconds before her cardiac line flattened.

A violent, freezing shock of pure adrenaline and synthesized antigens suddenly crashed straight into her failing system. The dark shattered. Her chest heaved as her lungs forcefully fought for oxygen, her amethyst eyes fluttering open with a sharp, gasping breath.

The toxic haze cleared just enough for her to look through the heavy glass. Kilgrave was pressing his trembling hand against the window, his chest heaving and his face pale, but his gaze burned into hers with a profound, breathless relief. He had looked straight into her darkness, cracked her mind's own code, and dragged her back into the light.

[velvetcompulsion]

For several seconds, Kilgrave couldn’t speak. The words settled heavily between them. Not because he disagreed. He truly didn’t know what to do with them. His gaze remained locked on hers. The steady certainty in her gaze, the complete absence of hesitation, the terrifying sincerity of it. Niccola wasn’t comforting him. She wasn’t making excuses for him. She wasn’t pretending the victim hadn’t existed.

The was what broke though…

A sharp breath caught somewhere in his chest. His eyes closed briefly. The pressure behind them burned. For a moment he simply stood there, her hand against his jaw, her fingers wrapped tightly around his own, grounding him, keeping him held down. She saw him. The feeling was almost unbearable.

When he finally opened his eyes again, something inside them had shifted. The confusion remained. The guilt remained. But the desperate need to argue had disappeared. Replaced by raw and profound exhaustion. His gaze dropped briefly. Not to escape her, but to gather himself. The attempt failed almost immediately.

“You make it sound simple.”

The words emerged quietly. His throat tightened.

“It wasn’t.” His jaw flexed beneath her hand.

“I wanted to." The admission came before he could stop it.

“There were days I wanted to be better.” His gaze drifted away for a second, toward nothing. Toward old memories

“There were also days I wanted to give up.”

The shoreline flashed briefly through his mind. The cold water, the exhaustion, the silence… His eyes closed again. Just for a second. Then he looked back at her. The vulnerability there was completely unguarded now. “I don’t think you understand how many times I almost did.”

The confession emerged barely above a whisper. Not for sympathy. Not even for reassurance. Just truth. His hand lifted slowly, covering hers where it rested against his jaw. Holding it there. A shaky breath escaped him.

For several seconds he couldn’t find a single clever thing to say.

Another rare occurrence.

Then again, some moments deserved better than cleverness.

Slowly, Kilgrave leaned down. The movement carried none of the confidence from earlier that evening. None of the teasing. None of the games. Only certainty. His forehead brushed hers briefly. A final moment. A final chance to pull away.

“Thank you.”

The words sounded inadequate. They were.

There was no combination of language capable of carrying what he meant so he didn’t try. Instead, he leaned fractionally into her touch. The smallest surrender imaginable.

For the first time since seeing the woman on the pavement, the weight eased.

Not gone. Never gone.

Just light enough to carry.

Then his lips met hers in a soft, tentative kiss. The kiss lingered. It wasn’t demanding nor desperate. Just honest. For a few precious seconds, he allowed himself to stop carrying everything. To stop fighting. To stop trying to hold the entire weight of his past alone.

When he finally pulled back, he remained close. His forehead resting lightly against hers once more. His eyes closed. The breath that escaped him trembled slightly.

Kilgrave felt something other than guilt.

Hope…

It was small and fragile. Terrifying even… but it was there all the same.

[niccolahiromithomas]

The heavy door of the luxury Royal Royce clicked shut with a muted, expensive thud, instantly severing them from the bustling high street and the lingering ghosts of the pavement outside. As the vehicle glided smoothly into the city traffic, the dim, ambient neon lights of the interior bathed the leather seats in soft shadows. Kilgrave sat beside her, the raw exhaustion and fragile threads of hope still vibrating clearly through his frame after his quiet confession. She turned slightly, her eyes fixed on his profile, ready to finally answer the spoken and unspoken questions that had been fracturing his composure.

"You told me I don't understand how many times you wanted to give up, Kaven," she began softly, her velvet voice grounding them both in the quiet sanctuary of the moving car. "But the truth is, I understand completely. Because at one point in my life, I was truly, entirely out of my mind."

She paused, letting the weight of her own vulnerability settle between them, matching the absolute honesty he had just handed her on the street.

"After my family was murdered, I couldn't cope with the reality of it," Niccola confessed, her gaze never wavering from his. "My mind shattered, and Tamiko was the one who took total control of our body for nearly three years. She wasn’t the manic, hyper-efficient killer that she is today. Back then, she was nothing more than a feral, desperate defense mechanism, clawing wildly against any overwhelming feeling of absolute helplessness."

A shadow crossed Niccola's features as she recalled the bleakest chapters of her history, stripping away her formidable Director persona to show him the scars beneath the armor.

"When I was made a ward of the Kingdom, the world didn't treat me with mercy. I was still molested and abused at times by the very people who were supposed to protect me," she stated, her voice tight but steady. "And as horrific as it was, it would have been five times worse if Tamiko hadn't absorbed the brunt of that cruelty with her teeth bared. I wanted to give up, too. More times than I can count, the silence of ending it felt entirely inviting."

She reached across the plush seats, her fingers gently sliding back into his hand, squeezing it with an unyielding warmth.

"But instead of fading away, my mind simply broke further under the pressure," she continued softly. "And from those shattered, broken pieces, Katriana rose. She became my logic, my strategist, calmly guiding me and teaching me how to analyze and understand the dangerous world around us so we could finally learn and grow. But sometimes, I did it at the cost of people who had done no wrong to me..."

Niccola leaned in closer to him. "My ledger is dirty, Kaven. Just like yours. We have both left a trail of wreckage and blood in our pasts. But at the end of the day, the past is immutable. It is the conscious choice we make every single day to rise above what broke us and chose to be better that actually matters at the end of the day. That is why I am here."

[velvetcompulsion]

The kiss against his knuckles almost undid him. Such a small thing. So impossibly small. Yet it landed somewhere beneath the weight. Beneath the guilt. Beneath the endless procession of thoughts he could no longer seem to stop.

Kilgrave stared at their joined hands. The warmth of her lips lingered against his skin.

I'm right here, Kaven.

The words echoed quietly. He heard them. The problem was that he heard everything else too. The victim's silence. The fear in her eyes. The questions that would never have answers.

The weight shifted again. His throat tightened painfully. For a moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. Niccola's shoulder remained pressed lightly against his arm. The contact grounded him just enough to stay present.

Just enough.

The transport pulled up beside them. Lights reflecting across wet pavement. People moving around them. Life continuing...

Kilgrave remained still for a second too long. His gaze dropped briefly toward the ground.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar. Quieter than she was perhaps used to. Fragile around the edges.

"Why are you with me?"

The words emerged so quietly that he almost sounded surprised to hear them himself. His steps never slowed. His gaze never left the pavement. For several seconds he didn't elaborate, didn't explain. The question hung between them. Raw, uncomfortable and honest.

Finally he exhaled. A tired sound. "You saw her." His voice remained low. "You saw what she saw."

His jaw tightened. A muscle flickered once. The question lingered between them. Kilgrave immediately wished he could take it back. Not because he didn't want the answer. Because he did. Far more than he cared to admit. How was she supposed to explain something he couldn't explain to himself?

His gaze dropped once more. The city lights blurred softly across the transport window. For a moment, he looked exhausted. The sort of exhaustion that settled into a person's bones.

"I'm sorry."

The words emerged quietly, almost automatically. His thumb brushed once across the back of her hand. A small, absent-minded movement.

"I shouldn't have asked that."

[niccolahiromithomas]

The fragile, hollow cadence of his voice cut cleanly through the damp evening air as the transport pulled up beside them, its lights bleeding softly across the wet pavement. His question, “Why are you with me?”, hung heavily between them, a devastatingly raw and honest plea that he immediately tried to retract with a tired, reflexive apology as his amber gaze dropped back toward the ground. His thumb brushed once over the back of her hand, a small, weary movement as he attempted to pull his psychological armor back over his bleeding conscience.

But the Irishwoman had no intention of letting him retreat into the isolating dark...

She stepped directly into his personal space, her hand tightening around his with an unyielding force that anchored him completely to the present. She reached up with her free hand, her manicured fingers gently but firmly cupping his tense jawline, forcing his fractured, exhausted gaze to meet the steady, brilliant amethyst of her own.

"Never apologize for asking me that, Kaven," she murmured, her voice dropping into a low, fiercely grounding register that easily cut through the background hum of the city. "And do not look away from me. You want to know why I am here? Because in my line of work, I have seen the absolute darkest side of humanity. I have cataloged atrocities and looked into the eyes of real, hollow evil. While some of the things you have done to others are undeniably cruel and dark, it has not been the worst of humanity."

Her thumb traced the slight flicker of the muscle in his jaw, her touch radiating an intense, unconditional warmth that refused to let him drift away.

"You were not cruel because you enjoyed it, per se. You were cruel because that is exactly what the world taught you to be. You were cruel to survive at some points because you knew absolutely no other way to navigate a reality that had stripped away your autonomy."

"But look at what you did the moment you were shown a different path," Niccola continued, her eyes glittering with a profound, scorching pride that belonged strictly to him. "Once you were finally given structure, true understanding, and an environment in which you could actually grow in mature, healthy ways? You didn't flinch. You changed. You rose to the challenge. You became the person that you desperately needed way back when you were completely alone. So few people can see themselves in such a harsh light and genuinely admit their shortcomings. You did that."

She leaned in closer, her breath warm against his skin as she bared her own soul to him completely, letting him feel the absolute reality of her devotion.

"And as I stood by your side and watched you work so tirelessly towards being a better person, I found that the man within the monster was someone I could...someone I could actually come to care for. After all, Kaven, you may be one of the few people in this world who could look straight into my darkness, and somehow still see the light."

The staggering weight of her truth settled between them. She didn't let go of his jaw, waiting patiently for his leaden posture to soften against her touch.

[velvetcompulsion]

Kilgrave recognised her. He wished he hadn't. The thought arrived immediately. It was cruel and instinctive. Not because he regretted seeing her, but because now he couldn't stop. The memory lingered. Her face. The fear. The way she'd frozen. The way she'd looked at him. His hand remained intertwined with Niccola's.

His body continued walking.

At least, he assumed he was.

One foot continued moving in front of the other. The pavement slipped steadily beneath him. Traffic lights changed. People passed. Somewhere nearby, somebody laughed. The city carried on exactly as it always had. He felt strangely detached from all of it.

Drifting.

Sinking...

The weight settled slowly. Not all at once, but a little more with every step. As though something had hooked itself beneath his ribs and was quietly pulling him backwards.

His legs felt heavy.

Leaden.

Each stride required a fraction more effort than the last. He wasn't tired, but some part of him no longer wanted to keep moving.

The warmth from the restaurant had become difficult to remember. The laughter. The cheesecake. The kiss... They felt distant now. Like events that had happened to somebody else.

Kilgrave swallowed. His throat felt tight. The victim's face refused to leave him. Every time he looked away, it was still there. Every time he tried to focus on the present, his mind dragged him back. Back to the fear. Back to the recognition. Back to the look in her eyes.

His hand remained intertwined with Niccola's. The contact was the only thing that felt unquestionably real. At some point, she had begun guiding their path through the crowd. Kilgrave hadn't noticed when it happened. Normally he would have. Normally he noticed everything.

Tonight he simply followed.

He barely noticed when they crossed the street. Barely noticed the traffic lights changing. The city became background noise.

A blur.

His mind remained fixed several minutes behind them. On a pavement. On a stranger.

No.

Not a stranger. That was the problem. For years she had been a stranger. Now she wasn't. Now she had a face, a voice, a life, a future he had once crashed through without permission. The weight settled heavier.

Kilgrave swallowed. His fingers tightened unconsciously around Niccola's, then loosened again. The motion went unnoticed by him. His gaze remained fixed somewhere ahead, unfocused and distant.

The worst part?

The thought that finally surfaced wasn't anger or shame or even regret. It was simpler than that...

He wondered what her name was.

The question arrived quietly and it devastated him. It refused to leave. He wondered if she had family, if she slept well, if she still looked over her shoulder when she walked home, if she was happy...

The thoughts came mercilessly one after another. Because he didn't know. He had never known.

Did she ever recover?

Did she tell anyone?

Does she still have nightmares?

Did she lose people because of what happened?

How many birthdays has she had since then?

How many times has she thought about me?

Suddenly that ignorance felt unbearable.

Kilgrave exhaled slowly. The sound was almost inaudible. For several minutes he didn't speak, didn't joke, didn't flirt, didn't seem to notice the silence growing around him.

He simply walked.

The evening continued. Kilgrave simply carried the weight with him.

One step at a time.

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola could feel the exact millisecond the world fractured beneath his feet. His hand, which had been so effortlessly warm and certain moments before, suddenly became a leaden, detached weight within her grasp. To the passing crowd, they were still a flawlessly coordinated couple moving through the evening high street, but she felt the phantom gravity pulling him backward, trapping his mind several minutes behind them on the pavement. He was moving mechanically, letting her blindly guide their path across the street while the city dissolved into a meaningless blur.

As they moved away, Kilgrave's fingers tightened unconsciously around hers before loosening again, his amber eyes fixed on a distant, agonizing void. Within her mind, they were pooling their distinct perspectives to provide her with a comprehensive survival strategy for the man drowning beside her.

“Director, the subject is experiencing a severe dissociative regression; his cognitive functions are entirely consumed by historical trauma,” Katriana evaluated, her clinical tone carrying a rare, protective urgency. “Apply immediate somatic grounding. Regulate your own breathing so his body can unconsciously mirror a steady rhythm, and increase your tactile pressure.”

“He’s suffocating under the weight of his past, Nickie,” Tamiko urged softly, her fierce presence channeling into an unconditional, grounding warmth. “Hold onto him with everything you’ve got. Press your shoulder against his arm and remind him that he isn't alone in the dark. Protect his progress right now.”

Armed with their dual counsel, she stepped closer, firmly brushing her shoulder against his arm to act as his physical perimeter against the dark. She knew the silent, merciless questions currently devastating him: the names, the nightmares, the acts, and the ripple effects of the lives he disrupted. The unbearable weight of his ignorance was the agonizing proof of his awakening humanity and she respected it too much to offer cheap words. It would be a betrayal to do so...

As their transport pulled up, Niccola lifted his hand, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the back of his knuckles. Her amethyst eyes locked onto his profile with absolute devotion.

"I'm right here, Kaven," she murmured, her velvet voice a low, grounding whisper meant only for him. "I've got you. Let's go home."

[velvetcompulsion]

For perhaps the first time that evening, Kilgrave forgot to say something clever. The kiss arrived with all the subtlety of a breach charge. One second he was standing beside the table. The next, Niccola had a fist in his lapels and every carefully maintained thought had been replaced by the overwhelming realisation that she had apparently decided patience was no longer required.

By the time she pulled away, he remained exactly where she had left him. Motionless and silent.

A rare occurrence.

His amber eyes followed her as she collected her bag and turned toward the exit. A fond smirk graced his featuers.

"Oh."

A faint laugh escaped him. The sound carried a dangerous amount of amusement. "So that's where we are."

He watched her walk away. The confidence in her stride, the certainty, the complete lack of concern regarding whether he would follow...

As though the outcome had already been decided.

The thought pleased him considerably more than it should have. Slowly, Kilgrave straightened his jacket. Not because it needed straightening. Because he needed something to do with his hands. His gaze lingered on the doorway for another moment. Then he shook his head. The smirk never disappeared.

"Unbelievable."

The accusation carried an absurd amount of affection.

Only then did Kilgrave become aware of it... His thumb brushed absent-mindedly across his lower lip. The motion paused. A faint smear of dark lipstick stained the edge of his thumb. For a moment, he simply stared at it. The corner of his mouth twitched. The smile that followed was impossible to hide.

"Right."

The single word emerged softly. As though several things had suddenly been explained. A faint laugh escaped him and he shook his head. Then, with deliberate care, wiped the remaining trace from the corner of his mouth.

The gesture should have restored some degree of dignity. Instead, it somehow made him look even more pleased with himself. His amber eyes never left her. The amusement there deepened.

"Subtle."

The accusation carried absolutely no conviction whatsoever.

A beat passed. Then he started after her. Not hurriedly. Not because she was leaving.

Because she wasn't. Neither of them were.

The restaurant was ending. The evening wasn't. Somehow that realisation made the warmth beneath his ribs settle even deeper. By the time Kilgrave fell into step beside her, he said nothing for a moment. The smile never quite left his face.

"You realise that's going in the report."

His gaze slid toward her.

"'Director abandons all diplomatic protocol during extraction phase.'"

Then, without comment, his hand found hers. The movement was effortless, almost instinctive. As though somewhere during the course of the evening, the decision had already been made and his body was only just catching up. His fingers slipped between hers naturally.

"Recommend continued observation."

-----

The woman almost walked past Him. At first, she didn't really look. Just another couple on the highstreet. Another pair of figures moving through the evening crowd.

Then her eyes drifted toward Him.

And the world stopped.

Her breath caught violently in her throat.

No. No...

The immediate thought arrived instinctively. Years had passed, yet recognition remained effortless. She knew that face. She knew that voice. She knew exactly what he was capable of...

Her stomach dropped. Every muscle in her body locked. For one terrible second she was back there again. Back in a life she had spent weeks trying to escape. Back in memories she worked every day to keep buried. Her gaze snapped toward him fully, waiting, expecting...

Preparing herself for whatever came next...

... But nothing happened.

The victim frowned, confused. The expression on His face was wrong. Not the smile she remembered. Not the one that preceded a command. Not the one that made people nervous. This one was smaller, softer, real...

The realisation unsettled her more than fear ever could.

His hand was intertwined with the woman's. Not possessively. Not controlling. Just... Holding it. The woman beside him was saying something. He laughed. Actually laughed. The sound carried briefly across the pavement.

The victim stared, unable to reconcile what she was seeing.

The woman looked comfortable. Completely comfortable. No tension. No fear. No signs of coercion. Nothing... Just happiness. As though standing beside him was the most natural thing in the world.

Kilgrave glanced toward his partner. The smile returned instantly, effortlessly. The sort of smile that appeared without permission.

And suddenly the victim understood something that left her feeling strangely hollow. He wasn't performing. He wasn't charming her. He wasn't manipulating her.

At least not in any way the victim could recognise.

He simply looked... Happy.

The thought landed like a physical blow. Because monsters weren't supposed to look like that. Monsters weren't supposed to hold someone's hand and listen to them talk about their day. Monsters weren't supposed to look at another person as though they mattered.

Then he saw her.

The recognition was immediate. A face from another life. Another version of himself. His stride faltered, barely. Not enough for most people to notice. But enough for him. Enough for Niccola, if she was paying attention. The warmth didn't disappear, but something heavier settled quietly alongside it. Kilgrave's gaze lingered for half a second longer than necessary.

The woman had seen him. He knew that immediately.

The tension in her shoulders. The stillness. The way people froze when old memories arrived without warning. For a moment, neither of them moved.

The crowd flowed around her, around him. Around the weeks that sat silently between them. Kilgrave understood exactly what she was seeing.

A monster.

A mistake.

A nightmare that had once worn his face.

The irony was that he couldn't even blame her. His fingers tightened fractionally around Niccola's hand. Not out of fear.

Grounding.

A reminder.

The victim's eyes flickered briefly toward their joined hands. The movement did not go unnoticed. Something twisted quietly beneath his ribs. Not anger or resentment.

Regret. The old kind. The useless kind. The kind that arrived years too late to help anyone.

For a moment, Kilgrave considered crossing the street. Saying something. Apologising. Explaining...

The thoughts vanished almost as quickly as they arrived. There were no words capable of repairing that damage. No explanation she owed him the courtesy of hearing. So he did the only thing he could do:

Nothing.

His gaze met hers, just for a second. There was no command. No manipulation. No attempt to justify himself. Only recognition. An acknowledgement of a wound he had helped create.

Then, quietly, he inclined his head. The smallest gesture imaginable. Not forgiveness. Not absolution.

Simply: I know.

For a moment, neither of them moved. The crowd continued around them. Cars passed. Conversations drifted through the evening air.

Yet the silence between them remained.

Kilgrave knew she would remember him differently for the rest of her life. The uncomfortable truth was that she had earned that right. Some wounds did not heal because the person who caused them felt sorry. Some stories did not get rewritten because people changed. The thought settled heavily.

Then Niccola's fingers shifted against his. A small movement. Nothing more. Yet it brought him back immediately. Kilgrave exhaled slowly. He looked away first. The warmth of Niccola's hand remained in his. And after a moment, he continued walking. Because there was nothing else he could do.

The victim stood motionless on the pavement as the couple disappeared into the evening crowd.

Fear would have been easier. Hatred would have been easier. Even anger.

Instead, she was left standing alone on the pavement with something infinitely more uncomfortable.

Confusion.

Kilgrave never looked back. Not because he didn't care. Because he would.

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, a deeply satisfied, cat-like smirk gracing her dark lips as she stepped out into the crisp evening air. Behind her, she heard the smooth cadence of his voice finally catch up, the sharp strategist completely stripped of his usual immediate counter-stroke.

"You realize that's going in the report," Kilgrave murmured as he fell into an effortless step beside her, his gaze sliding toward her with a lingering, affectionate warmth. "'Director abandons all diplomatic protocol during extraction phase.'"

A soft hum of amusement vibrated in her throat, but before she could formulate a witty bureaucratic rebuttal, his hand found hers. His fingers slipped naturally between hers, a completely instinctive and unhurried gesture. The lingering heat of the restaurant settled deep within her as they merged into the bustling high street crowd, their steps perfectly synchronized.

"Recommend continued observation," he added softly, the private joke settling comfortably between them. But the easy, intoxicating rhythm of their victory didn't last. As they navigated the pavement, she felt it: a microscopic, nearly imperceptible falter in his stride. To the passing crowd, he hadn't missed a single beat, but to the Director, who had spent months analyzing his every physical parameter...the shift was as loud as a gunshot.

Her sharp amethyst eyes immediately swept the area, scanning the immediate grid for the catalyst. It took her less than a second to lock onto the source: a woman standing completely motionless against the flow of the pedestrian traffic, her shoulders locking rigid with a primal, deeply ingrained terror.

The ghosts of his past had arrived without warning. Before he quietly inclined his head in a somber, silent acknowledgment of the wound he had helped create, she did something entirely uncharacteristic for a black ops director. She deliberately caught the woman's panicked gaze. For one split, hyper-focused moment, Niccola locked eyes with the woman, offering her a deeply understanding, solemn, and apologetic nod of her head. It was a silent, ironclad vow: I see you. I understand you. I promise you he will never do it again. I'll kill him myself if he does.

As they moved past, the heavy shroud of regret settled over Kilgrave. Inside her Mind Palace, the ladies were immediately mobilized, completely synchronized in their objective to protect the progress he has made while balancing the ledger of his past.

“His emotional recalibration is holding, fully validating his psychological transformation,” Katriana evaluated, her clinical voice carrying a rare undertone of fierce, protective support. “He is fighting his own history to stay here with us. I suggest running a localized synchronization on the high-street CCTV feeds when we have a moment so we can identify the civilian. We will trace her file for full financial compensation.”

“...we back him up,” Tamiko chimed in, her usual sharp hunger softening into a profound, protective warmth. “If our data search shows she lives anywhere near our primary base of operations, authorize an untraceable relocation grant immediately. Throw enough funds at her to move wherever she wants, so she never has to risk running into him again. Give her enough money for the fresh start she deserves and the medical care she needs in order to live carefree. Let's clean up the wreckage so he can keep moving forward.”

Before the darkness of the memory could fully pull him under, his fingers tightened fractionally around her own. It wasn't a possessive grip; it was a silent, desperate plea for grounding. He was reaching for her to pull him back from the edge of his own nightmares.

Niccola didn't hesitate. Her fingers shifted deliberately against his, squeezing back with a firm, unyielding warmth that cut through the agonizing weight of his silence. The small movement was an absolute, unbreakable reassurance; a declaration that whatever he had been in another life, his change was real, and he was entirely safe with her now.

Sensing her touch, Kilgrave exhaled a slow, heavy breath and looked away from the woman first, continuing his stride into the evening crowd. She matched his steps perfectly, her hand securely holding his as they walked together into the night.

[velvetcompulsion]

Kilgrave noticed the look. Of course he noticed it. The woman across from him had spent the better part of an evening teaching him precisely what her expressions meant. By now, he was becoming alarmingly fluent. The moment her attention shifted toward the arriving check, the corner of his mouth lifted. There it is. Not nervousness. Not hesitation...

Anticipation.

The realisation settled warmly somewhere beneath his ribs. Oh, this was dangerous. Very dangerous...

His amber gaze lingered on hers for a moment before drifting toward the folder the waiter had left on the edge of the table. Then, quite deliberately, he reached for it first. The movement was effortless.

"Absolutely not."

The words arrived with absolute certainty before Niccola could even think about objecting. A faint laugh escaped him.

"Don't."

He opened the folder and his smile deepened.

"You've spent the entire evening threatening me..." He quirked a brow as he glanced back up at her. "I feel I deserve at least one victory."

His card disappeared neatly into the folder. Discussion over. The confidence in the gesture left very little room for negotiation. When his gaze returned to hers, the amusement there was impossible to miss.

"Besides..."

The word emerged thoughtfully, almost innocently.

"I suspect we'll find a more appropriate method of reimbursement later."

The statement hung there. Perfectly reasonable on the surface. Entirely unhelpful underneath. Kilgrave's expression remained infuriatingly composed. "Consider it deferred payment." His eyes never left hers.

"With interest."

Then, apparently satisfied with the chaos he had just caused, he leaned back in his chair. He regarded the final bite of cheesecake for a moment.

The poor thing had spent the better part of the evening functioning as diplomatic leverage, a strategic asset, a bargaining chip, and the subject of at least three separate negotiations.

It deserved a dignified conclusion.

The fork paused briefly between his fingers. Not because he was distracted. Because he wasn't in any hurry. He seemed content to make her wait. With unhurried precision, he cut through the final piece and lifted it from the plate. His gaze never left hers. Not for a second. The eye contact lingered comfortably between them now. Not challenging. Not testing. Only certain. As though somewhere along the way both of them had stopped wondering whether the other was staying.

Only then did he bring the fork to his mouth. The movement was slow enough to be deliberate like that last time. Confident enough to be infuriating. A faint hum of approval escaped him as he tasted it. The expression that followed suggested Chef Kenshi had, in fact, delivered on the promises made by the dossier.

He finally set the fork down and then straightened the cuff of his sleeve, getting ready for their departure. The movement was neat. The cuff settled neatly beneath his watch. Satisfied, Kilgrave rose from his chair. The movement was effortlessly unhurried. His gaze drifted toward Niccola.

"Come on, Director."

The title carried a familiar warmth now. A private joke rather than a rank.

He offered her his hand and his smirk deepened fractionally. For a moment, his eyes held hers.

"I've been patient all evening."

[niccolahiromithomas]

Niccola watched with a deep, smoldering amusement as Kilgrave intercepted the check with absolute, infuriating certainty, smoothly declaring it a "deferred payment with interest".

“Come on, Director,” he murmured, his amber eyes locking onto hers with a quiet, dangerous warmth. “I’ve been patient all evening.”

As he stood there, towering over the table with that maddeningly immaculate composure, she saw her perfect window of opportunity. He clearly believed he had secured the final victory of the dinner but she had no intention of letting him leave the establishment with his perimeters intact.

“Subject's center of gravity is currently extended and unanchored,” Katriana calculated swiftly, her clinical voice sharp with analytical precision. “A sudden, high-impact physical advancement will completely bypass his cognitive defenses before he can deploy a counter-response.”

“Don't just take his hand, Nickie,” Tamiko purred frantically, her presence coiling with a tight, fierce hunger. “Pull him down into our territory. Catch him completely off guard, shatter that smug composure, and remind him exactly who commands this operation.”

Taking every ounce of advice from her inner council, Niccola didn't reach for his open palm. Instead, she stood up gracefully, her crystal-crusted Louboutins stepping directly into his personal space. Before he could even register the shift, she reached up, her manicured fingers curling firmly into the tailored fabric of his lapels, and forcefully pulled him down to her level.

She met his lips in a breathtaking kiss that completely obliterated the quiet, ambient decorum of the restaurant. It wasn't a playful tease or a diplomatic negotiation; it was a torrent of raw desire and consuming need. She poured the intoxicating heat of her barefoot caresses, the heady thrill of his hardening length, and the breathless weight of hearing him call her love straight into the press of her mouth against his. For a spectacular, suspended second, she felt his iron-clad composure entirely fracture, his breath catching sharply as his body locked rigid against the devastating force of her sudden surrender.

Just as quickly as she had seized absolute control, Niccola ruthlessly pulled away. She left his lips glistening and smudged with her dark lipstick under the warm, amber lights. Giving his lapels one final, smoothing pat, she calmly collected her Birkin bag, turned on her heel and walked away toward the exit, her hips swaying with a slow, hypnotic rhythm. She never looked back to see if he was following, knowing with absolute certainty that he wouldn't want to miss what was waiting at home.