There are some sights from which the eye of the night recoils. On this particular night, it is the sight of Zebediah Kilgrave a.k.a. the villainous Purple Man leaping out of his grave, crying ‘I LIVE!’ But as the zombie Kilgrave lumbers through the graveyard, he suddenly wonders if indeed he does live - when he realizes that he does not. He remembers being a captive of Dr. Doom, then battling the Sub-Mariner. He is certainly dead. They killed him. The Purple Man exclaims that he died, while all those who hated him still live. He sees images of Spider-Man, Dr. Doom and Daredevil in grave markings, as well as his former wife - and his daughter, whose summons he believes somehow raised him from his rest.
He lunges at the statue he believes to be of his daughter and smashes it, telling her that if she wants him, then she shall have him - and his friends! Graves open up all over the cemetery as more of the Living Dead rise, and along with Kilgrave they break out of the cemetery. The Purple Man then shouts ‘We’re coming daughter, set the table for us, with the first course being…your sweet life!’
‘NOOOO!’ screams Kara Kilgrave a.k.a. the Purple Girl as she sits up in bed, waking Laura Dean and Goblyn her friends and former teammates from Beta Flight. Goblyn howls and leaps out of bed as Laura asks Kara what is wrong. Kara hugs herself as she informs Laura that she had a nightmare about her father. Kara’s mother, Melanie enters the bedroom and tells the girls to hush the animal, because of the neighbors. Laura tells Mrs. Kilgrave that Goblyn is not an animal, but that Kara just scared her.
Melanie tells Laura that she is right, and asks her to tell Goblyn she is sorry for calling her an animal. Melanie switches a lamp on and asks her daughter what the matter is. Kara hugs her mother as she reveals that she dreamt about her father. Melanie asks if it because of the telegram, and feels that she should have known. As Goblyn hides under the covers of her bed, Laura asks ‘what telegram’. Kara informs her young friend that it was the telegram waiting for her when she got home - after the break-up of Alpha Flight!
(Flashback, takes place between Alpha Flight (first series) #61 & 62)
Following the Alpha Flight inquisition, Vindicator and Box rejected the governments funding, which led to a new turn in Alpha Flight’s future. Madison “Box” Jeffries carries his lover and team leader Heather “Vindicator” McNeil Hudson in his arms as the fly away from the hearing. Jeffries tells Heather she did good, bursting the bureaucrats bubbles about controlling the Flight once and for all. However, he asks her how they are going to survive, to which Heather reminds him that they have an ace in the hole, one that even Alpha Flight forgot about - the famous Walter Langkowski fortune!
Box and Vindicator land down on the snow covered side walk beside their teammate Wanda “Sasquatch” Langkowski and the Beta Flight kids Kara, Laura, Goblyn and Whitman “Manikin” Knapp. Depressed and slumped against a wall, Sasquatch tells Heather that she doesn’t blame her for counting her chickens before they hatch, as she did herself. Sasquatch grits her teeth as she declares that Walter was rich, and that being a successful biophysicist only added to his fortune. As Sasquatch transforms back into Wanda, she points out that the only problem is the obvious one - that since being resurrected in Snowbird’s Sasquatch form, Walter is now Wanda.
Box asks what all this means, to which Heather explains that as Walter was married, his ex-wife inherits everything. Kara declares that it is exactly what Walt’s ex-wife intends as Manikin suggests that tests could prove Wanda and Walter are the same. Wanda points out that she has been tested, but that nothing even remotely resembling Walter emerges - she is an amalgam of mythical beast, goddess and mortal woman. ‘All of which boils down to two words - Alpha’s broke!’
‘Wow! What a story!’ cry several reporters before a huge mob of them rush over towards Alpha Flight. ‘The vultures of the fourth estate!’ exclaims Heather before the reporters begin asking a million questions: ‘Back to Department H?’ ‘Rumor has it…’ ‘End of Alpha?’ ‘No money, no headquarters’ ‘Heard of death of X-Men…’ ‘Mutants?’ ‘Flag of truce?’ ‘Regret your high handed attitude?’ ‘Crawl back for funding?’ ‘You want a comment?’ asks Heather before declaring that she will give them a comment, and lifts two of the reporters up into the air and telling them to leave Alpha alone.
Manikin’s past and future selves emerge, and Highbrow uses his teleportation powers to teleport the reporters to safety after Heather drops them. Everyone else begins to scare the reporters, Kara hypnotizes some reporters and asks them what it is that they are going to write one thousand times. ‘We must not be rude’ the reporters reply, before Kara anxiously declares that she knows using her powers on “innocents” is wrong, but that she had to get the reporters off their backs. With that done, she asks what they are going to do next.
Box suggests they go home, to which Sasquatch reminds him that they don’t have a home to go to, as Bedlam destroyed it, but then exclaims that they can rebuild Mansion Alpha once she regains her fortune again, as her court date is coming up soon. Whit mutters that he could be old and grey by then, before revealing that now that he has tasted super-heroing, he would rather practice medicine. Kara asks Whit if he is actually leaving, and with his back turned to his girlfriend, Whit tells Kara that he wanted to break it to her easy, but yes he is. Kara thinks to herself that she could make Whit stay, but remembers that is how her father made her mother stay. ‘That’s not how heroes hold onto their heart’s desires!’ Kara thinks.
Everyone turns to Heather, Jeffries reminding her that she is their leader and asks them what they should do. All eyes on Heather, surely she must have an answer, some solutions to their desperate situation. But all she can answer is… ‘I’m sorry Alpha’.
(Present)
Kara tells her mother that her heart ached for Vindicator, and reminds her mother that she never knew her father. Kara tells her mother that while she was always there for her, Alpha Flight was like the first real family she ever had…but the family was breaking up!
(Flashback, continued)
At a train station, Kara is ready to board the train along with Laura and a heavily dressed up Goblyn. Kara tells everyone that she is going to miss them all. Kara and Whit hug, Whit telling Kara that he will write her, and asking if they can stay friends. Tears fall from Kara’s eyes as she tells him that he has a great beside manner, and hopes that his patients appreciate it. Jeffries opens his arms and asks Kara if she has a hug for her “Daddy-in-absentia”. While Whit looks on, Kara rubs her eyes and tells Jeffries that he was the first Alphan to open his arms to her. As they hug, she tells him she will miss him the most.
Heather and Kara hug and Kara asks Heather to say goodbye to the Jade Dragon for her. Heather replies that she will once he is let loose from the debriefing. As Kara leads Laura and Goblyn onto the train, she tells Laura that she cannot wait till they meet her mother. Jeffries wishes her luck, and Wanda declares that they will get back together somehow. Laura reminds Goblyn that she is not allowed to growl as a passenger asks their partner if they smell wet fur. Kara calls out the window, asking Jeffries and Heather to write her, as Heather tells her not to worry, she will be the first to get an invitation to the wedding. ‘The wedding? ALL RIGHT!’ shouts Kara as the train speeds off.
Sometime later, now settling back into home, Kara tells her mother that it was great of her to let Laura and Goblyn come and live with them, especially as Melanie had no idea of what she was getting herself into. As Goblyn rummages through the refrigerator causing a mess all over the kitchen, Melanie asks if it always eats like that. Kara replies that sometimes Goblyn can be a real animal.
Melanie tries to cope, so does Kara, but some of the neighbors are cruel. ‘Did you see the purple freak in 3-W?’ ‘She’s back!’ ‘With a menagerie’
But due to the togetherness of Alpha Flight, being excluded by the neighborhood kids in the early days made Kara feel empty, when suddenly, she comes home to find her mother laughing hysterically, shouting ‘At long last, I’m truly free!’ Kara asks her mother what she is free from, to which Melanie reveals she is free from Kara’s father, who finally got what he deserved. Kara closes her eyes and asks if he is in jail again, but Melanie declares that it is better than that, for Kilgrave the Purple Man is once and for all…dead! Kara’s eyes open wide with shock.
Kara understands how her mother felt, after all, the Purple Man used his powers on her to make her love him. He was a terrible man, but he was still Kara’s father. Sitting at his grave, she asks him why he had to die before she could have met him. Kara declares that she has read all about him and knows all the rotten things he has done, but exclaims that if he knew he had a little girl just like him, a daughter who loved him, he could have been different.
Kara cries and bases her fists against the grave stone, exclaiming ‘I could prove it, if only you we’re still alive, daddy! I want you to be alive!’ An unseen power flow hovers around the grave, but before long Kara gets up and leaves.
(Present)
Kara mutters that she knew even her power could not bring her father back to life, but that she had to try. Melanie asks Kara how she could do that, believing that if anyone’s evil could the survive the grave it would be her fathers. Melanie smiles however, and tells Kara that she understands her longing and explains that it is like that story she once read her, “The Monkey’s Paw”, where a family loses a beloved son and tries to wish him back from beyond the grave. Kara declares that she remembers - and only his corpse comes back. Melanie tells Kara that they should not try to undo what has been done, but that luckily evil only resurrects itself in stories.
On cue, the Purple Man smashes through Kara’s bedroom window yelling ‘Honey! I’m home!’ Melanie and the girls rush to the side of the room as Melanie declares that it can only be Kara’s father. ‘In the flesh wife, more or less’ Kilgrave exclaims. Melanie asks how and why he has come here, to which the Purple Man informs her because their daughter wished it. He tells his wife to come and kiss her loving husband, but Melanie points out that his power isn’t working, and suspects that because he is dead he cannot command the living. Kara declares that they have to get out of here and heads towards the door, calling Laura -only as Goblyn lunges at some of the zombies who have entered the room.
Kara tries to go back into the room, but her mother and Laura try to pull her back out, crying that it is her fault her father came back, realizing her stupid scene at the grave must have worked. She declares that she cannot leave Goblyn to correct her mistakes, to which Laura points out that she cannot fight her own father. Kara declares that she has to, and tells her mother to let go and Laura to lead her out of here. She apologizes for using her powers on them and as they walk away, Kara shouts after them, declaring that she knows it is her fathers way to turn his mind-powers on those he loves, but she has to deal with him alone. She asks them to call the police once they are in the clear.
Goblyn howls and just as Kara is about to re-enter her room to help her, both girls are blasted back into the living room by a herd of zombies that come barging through. The Purple Man orders his zombie fellows after his wife, boasting that as she rejected him in life, she will be bound to him in death. Goblyn attacks any Zombies who try to reach Melanie or Laura as the Purple Man pushes his daughter onto the couch, telling her that her power makes her a powerful ally. Kara pleads with her father and asks him to go back to where he came from.
Kilgrave reminds Kara that it was she who summoned him back to the world of the living - ‘Where I could be reminded of everything I hate!’ he screams as he is about to drive his hands through his daughter’s body. Kara rolls of the couch just in time and begins to run out of the apartment, asking her father how he could hate her when he doesn’t even know her. Kilgrave informs her that he hates those he cannot command, and in death it seems he cannot command the living. As Kara races towards the apartment building lifts Kilgrave points out that she is the living, therefore he hates her.
Kara bangs on the lift door hoping it will hurry up, she realizes that her father is insane, as he was nuts alive and even more nuts dead, his mind already halfway to decay city. She realizes that if she could make him rise from the grave, she could make him return to it. ‘Get lost Daddy! Rot in peace!’ she screams, but it has no effect, as Kilgrave lunges out as his daughter, Kara dodging just as his arm bursts into the lift door.
Kara runs down the stairs, wondering why it didn’t work, and supposes that his mind could be too far gone to accept her commands, but then what is it that keeps him going? Suddenly, Kara wonders if it wasn’t she who resurrected him - ‘but if not me, who?’.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the still hypnotized Laura Dean and Melanie Kilgrave watch as Goblyn tears through the army of zombies, when suddenly the all decompose before she has a chance to finish the remaining ones off. Goblyn wonders what has happened and sniffs out Kara’s trail, following her scent down the stairs.
Kara meanwhile has come to a nearby gas station and her father backs her up against one of the pumps, telling her that he loves her, then that he hates her. Kara tells him that he is no making any sense and asks how he can both love and hate her. ‘you never even knew me!’ she shouts at him. Kilgrave mutters that she lives like his enemies, he hates the living, hates those who made him die. He leaps at her, shouting that he wants to make the living dead like him.
Goblyn leaps to intercept Kilgrave before he reaches Kara, but as Goblyn lashes out at Kilgrave, and breaks open a petrol pump, spilling out petrol in the process, Kara tells her to stop, as he is still her father. Kilgrave lifts Goblyn up above his head and tells her to die, before smashing her onto the concrete ground. Goblyn manages to get up, and scampers away, whining and clutching an injured shoulder.
Kara rummages through a tool box, cursing her father, and finding an axel she turns to him and declares that Goblyn was trying to protect her while all he wants to do is kill her. She asks him why he couldn’t have just stayed dead so that she would not have to chose between family and friends. ‘Kill! Kill!’ cries Kilgrave before Kara tells him that his act is getting stale, and that he needs something to spark it back to life. She scrapes the axel along the ground, causing it to create friction with the petrol covered concrete, causing the surrounding area to burst into flame.
The flame engulfs the Purple Man as Kara leaps out of the way. Goblyn comes over to Kara who tells Goblyn that it is okay, as her father is gone. Suddenly Kilgrave leaps out of the flames towards the two girls - only to fall and smash on the ground. Goblyn holds onto Kara as she cries.
Meanwhile, at an archaeological dig site in the Yukon Territory, someone calls to Elizabeth Twoyoungmen and asks her if she has finished the topographical sketches of level two. The former Alphan replies that she will have completed them by the time he is ready to dig. The young man tells Elizabeth that he has a feeling they are going to find something really big this time. Elizabeth agrees, when suddenly she cries out in pain. Her co-worker asks if she is okay, and as Elizabeth stands up she tells him he is fine, that it was just a migraine.
Elizabeth, who was once the phenomenally powerful Talisman goes and sits down somewhere else, thinking that she hated lying to Brad, but that she could not tell him that she felt a surge of power similar to that as she once wielded as Talisman. Elizabeth doesn’t understand how that was even possible, as her father, Shaman, assumed her Talisman powers when she left Alpha Flight. ‘I must be working too hard’ she thinks. Elizabeth returns to her drawings, not noticing the strangely glowing heap of stones rising up behind her, or the eerie knowing laughter that whistles with the wind.
