Smile by Prithiva Sharma

Image source: Gamespot

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You haven’t slept since a week. 

Everything is too purple, too blonde and too much. 

He’s not here now.

Yeah well, he’s always here.

You used to walk the streets with him in your head, now you walk knowing he could be at any curb, waiting for you with his coiffed hair and his stupid accent. 

Jesicaah, smile.

You need to buy a new mattress; you burned the one on which he made Reuben spill his own blood. You wonder how many more things you can burn. 

You love it.

Your dreams aren’t yours anymore. The entire time you spent rebuilding your mind and reclaiming your thoughts is laid to waste in the face of the wreckage that he left behind. You cannot think anymore, you don’t even know if it’s you who’s thinking inside your head. 

You like Chinese. 

You are not a model citizen; you never have been. But now you are walking around as more whiskey than woman, slamming the slightest sights of purple into walls and cracking bones to wash off the blood he put on your hands.

Kilgrave leaves a trail of broken people behind him.

And what makes you the one who has to stop him?

Crap ass luck.

You remember when you lived with him, when he had you. You remember him entering your mind like it was a room and painting the walls purple like he did to your childhood room, and you remember your body having to sit on the dinner table smiling while you stood in a corner trying to break free from invisible shadows. Whenever someone asks you why you don’t flinch in the face of even a fire, you think about how you’ve been touched by the devil in all kinds of hells. Nothing comes close to that.

You can’t control me anymore.

It felt good; to touch that scar at the back of your ear and remember the time you came from. How you came from that terrace where he told you to cut your ear to your kitchen where you slammed him into a cabinet. He can never have your mind again, and you have this if nothing else. 

I’m still fighting. I won’t stop fighting.

The names of people shattered and bleeding is increasing. But it is not because of you; it’s not blood on your hands. But it might be, because the trails of that blood and bones are supposed to lead to you. You need to wash that blood from your hands, clean it with his blood. You will prove everyone right – you are a bitch, and you won’t smile for him anymore. You will make his name a war cry.

Yeah well, this bitch is in control of you now.

Tragic pasts do not make for an excuse for breaking people. The supervillain origin stories have it wrong – you cannot unhurt yourself by hurting someone else. He didn’t understand it, but you do. It is time for you to unhurt by ending the hurt. 

Smile.

You snapped. Somehow, for once, they all remember being hurt by him; they let you go. You’re not a model citizen and you now have a file on your name, but you walk away feeling a little less purple. Purple was always seen to be a royal colour; you had your fix of royal poise playing trophy enough. You’re going back to an apartment with a broken glass door that Trish will pay to renovate unnecessarily. You won’t refuse; you need to repaint all the corners where blood was splashed, and there are a lot. Some might call you a hero, and you know how you feel about the ‘h’ word, but all that is for tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, when you can finally see something not purple. You snapped, and for once, no one was there to tell you that you snapped wrong. 

The next time you’ll smile, it will be because you told yourself to.