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You have had no short supply of clients ever since the docks. Perhaps a bit more accurately: since Killgrave was murdered. Of course, most people are still too afraid to admit that someone like him (and thus, somebody like you) could ever exist, but the fact remains: some people are desperate enough to consider, when it would help their petty little problems, that you would be able to help them.
(You can't really help anybody these days. You have crawled halfway out of the bottle and Killgrave is dead, but that doesn't make everything sunshine and rainbows. Not by a long shot.)
Now you investigate people who a little meaner, a little more dangerous, than you did before. If these scum are more likely to end up in prison once you are through than the people you investigated before, so what? Just fewer idiots for you to deal with on the streets, fewer people to bother you. It doesn't mean anything important.
(You tell yourself that you are just making a living. Just working to pay for your rent and occasionally, your booze. Except-except maybe there is more to this. There has to be.)
Trish doesn't understand. How could she possibly understand? She has never woken up, unable to blink or breathe or swallow, because of the orders of a man long dead. (Maybe she dreams of the woman who was supposed to love her hurting her, or of the kiss of a monster, or of abandonment by someone she trusted. But you aren't going to think about that right now.) She has never looked at herself in a mirror, wondering if there is a difference between the “take care of it” of a monster, and willful murder. She has never had to weigh one life against many, her own life against the lives of strangers.
(One cannot weigh the value of one life over another, of one life over many others. There is not a balance. Your thoughts are a slippery slope, you know that. But so many died for you, because of you-you cannot help but count. You cannot help but search obituaries, trying to determine how high that count may be. So much pain. So much potential.)
When Trish looks at you, late at night when you can't and won't keep her away, you wonder if it really matters. She knows you better than almost anybody, and definitely better than anybody still living today. She saw you in some of your darkest moments and she did not flinch. And you remember once, when you (both) were young and scared and you were strangers to each other- you remember compassion. Not pity, but compassion. Is now really so different?
(Sliding down a dark alley wall, you admit that now is in fact different. Back then, you were innocent. You were definitely not innocent in action, but you were innocent in thought. You didn't mean to crash the car: intentions matter. This doesn't excuse your guilt, but it does manage it. Now- now you are guilty in action as well as in thought. You knew, as you were chasing Killgrave, what you were doing. You knew what (who) was at risk.)
About once a week or so, you see someone that reminds you of Luke- a homeless man on the corner carefully folding his newspaper, a man carelessly sliding on a motorcycle helmet in the pouring rain. And it hurts, it really does, to think about what you did to him. Not shooting him in the head, although that burns a bit- but what happened before that. You lied to him for weeks, by omission and otherwise. What you did to him was entirely your fault. You cannot blame Killgrave for this. Maybe you could have loved him, and maybe you couldn't have, but this point remains: you avoided telling Luke about what you were made to do (or maybe what you did all by yourself) for as long as you could.
(Self-hatred is nothing new.)
You try to drink a bit less now, and you are generally successful. You haven't slowed due to Trish worrying and nagging again, no matter what Malcolm may claim, but because you never had a right to. Drinking was never really about Killgrave and what he actively did to you. Drinking was about forgetting him, sure, but drinking was really about what he made you do (or possibly, didn't make you do) to other people. Drinking was, in the end, about a punch in the chest and a swerving bus and a cold, cold road. Drinking was about permitting yourself an escape. And you no longer think you deserve that.
(You do not enjoy the cold. You tolerate it better than most, perhaps, but you do not like it. Winter is for people who have someone to go home to. Winter is for hot chocolate with friends and a burning fire with family. You have a newly fixed window in your door, and patches in your walls. It is a start. It is easier to continue something that it is to begin something. It is a small start.)
Nights have been harder as well as longer since you snapped Killgrave's neck and since you stopped passing out every night. Foolishly, you had thought they would be more tolerable now, but that just goes to show how little you know. Now, instead of waking up crying after dreams of what he did you to, you wake up screaming after dreams of what he did to the others. Optimistically, you consider this to be progress: you have people, now. Maybe you always have had people, but now you know it.
(Once, you told Trish that you were life-threatening. You didn't realize how true that would turn out to be, and not just to her. You are so terribly sorry. You are so, so sorry.)
Killgrave asked you once (just once because for all he that he was, he wasn't stupid) what you would do if you were not with him anymore. He tended to ask these types of questions late at night in bed, with his commands still ringing in your ears. You told him that you would bash his head against a wall, kick in his rib cage, throw him from a ten story building and laugh as he fell. You told him that you would hold him under freezing cold water, slit his throat with glass from his favorite bottle of wine, burn his body beyond all recognition.
(First, you fell apart. You made the one person you still loved sick with worry and fear by disappearing again. You tried drowned in a deep, dark hole that you dug yourself.)
(The second time around, you did (are doing) better. You aren't quite happy, but you see how you could be someday. You are still pushing some people away, but now you are remembering how to pull them back in. This time around isn't all about Killgrave and it isn't all about you. You are sorry.)
You never thought about what life would be like beyond him. Like the end of the universe, you never contemplated what could or would come after.
(You have an entire lifetime to contemplate now. You have an entire lifetime to live.)