Chapter Text
MARCH, 1969
He hasn’t been sleeping all too good as of late, what with Matty being gone and everyone so on edge and scared and worried. But it all always comes crashin’ down eventually, and even though he’s been awake a loooooong time, Bullseye eventually passes out on the bed.
And really, it’s not like he’s alone . He’s got Elektra, and she sleeps in the same room an’ all, but it’s not the same. Not really. And well, she’s nice and all sometimes, but she’s not Matty and he can’t really sleep with her like he used to with Matty, and so he’s forced to sleep on his own bed, by himself.
So maybe that’s contributin’ to the sleeping problems.
Regardless, he’s finally, finally getting some good sleep, and then she goes and wakes him up.
He doesn’t realize it’s her at first, though, ‘cause he never does.
“Matty? Y’didn’t have t’wake me up, you know that.”
Every morning he opens his eyes and hopes Matty will be there, sleeping stiff and spread out all wide on the bed, or else maybe he’ll be accompanied by Mr. Wesley into the house and Bullseye will hear it and he’ll wake up just in time to see him, or Matty’ll climb in through the balcony and Bullseye wouldn’t even get upset at him for being covered in blood this time, or, or--
“As I have told you ceaselessly , Matthew is not here.” Elektra whispers to him, and her eyes are big and bright in the pre-dawn light. With her hair in her face and covering her cheekbones, she looks like the ghost of a woman, rather than a living, breathing thing, and it scares him just a mite.
He rubs his hands over his eyes and tries not to look too close at her.
Bullseye always got why Matty liked Elektra, because she’s kinda mean and terrifying and intense and everytime she walks into a room, you know she’s there even if you haven’t seen her yet. And Matty doted allllll over her, all the time, even when she was being mean, but she’s mean in the way Matty’s mean, where a lot of it goes right over Bullseye’s head and he can ignore it for the sake of not cryin’ in front of her and everything.
“Come now, get up.”
She steps away from him, and as he’s blinking owlishly and trying to rub the sleep from his eyes, dragging his fingers down his cheeks like that’ll help keep them open wider, Elektra goes towards her side of the room and starts packing stuff up.
He sits up and starts to stretch; if he’s gotta be up, he’s gotta work some of the kinks out of his joints, otherwise he’s not gonna be very flexible, and he hates when he’s stiff all day.
“What’re you doin’?” He asks around a yawn, because she’s not usually so eager to wake him up on account of he’s pretty she doesn’t like him all that much. Usually, Bullseye will find her in one of the common areas, or in the kitchen, but she’s usually quiet in the mornings, so this is all really peculiar already.
And it’s not even light out yet.
Elektra pauses for a moment and looks back at him, and her eyes don’t look quite so scary now, but they’re still big and remind him of when he spooked a fox out in the woods once and the fox had stared at him with big, wild eyes that he couldn’t even begin to decipher. She returns to packing.
“We are going to find Matthew, as he is obviously not returning to us.”
That gets him standing almost immediately, and he wobbles a little. Sometimes when he gets up his head gets all fuzzy-like and it takes a few moments for his head to level out enough to be able to see again. So he waits for that to pass and then he thinks about what she’s saying, and--
Oh. He kinda wondered when people would start lookin’ for Matty. He’s been gone so long, and they don’t think he’s coming back, and it hurts to think about and it makes him shake sometimes, or get so angry that he’s gotta go out to the back gardens and cry a little and--
And he’ll be here all day if he thinks about that, so he yawns again and focuses on Elektra’s packing and asks, “Like a Mission?”
It’s been a while. He’s never been too good on ‘em, so they stopped sending him all too often. But that’s what makes sense, if Elektra’s packing and getting ready to leave, and she’s taking him, because maybe Matty will wanna come home if he gets to talk to Bullseye. Well, maybe. He doesn’t know how much Matty likes him, but he wants to hope seeing him would make him wanna come home and behave again.
Elektra smiles at him, a wide thing that looks jagged and makes him think of that fox again, with its long sharp teeth and muzzle. “Oh yes , a Mission from God.”
Bullseye almost shivers, and he wrings his hands around each other, over and over and over again. He must have given her this Mission, and that makes it a real sacred thing, and well, it’s gotta be if it means they’re bringing Matty back. He’ll be Home again and everything will fix itself and he’ll be able to sleep again and he won’t be so lonely anymore, and Matty will be good , and sure, he’ll have to get punished for this, but he’ll be Home and that’s all that matters.
He doesn’t even feel himself walking barefoot across the floor to Elektra’s side, but suddenly he’s just there and he can smell the faint floral scent of old perfume on her hair, and he knows, knows, knows, just knows it in his Soul, that Matty’ll come back to them. He has to.
“Where are we goin’? How long’s it gonna take?”
She spits, “I do not know ,” and Bullseye almost takes a step back, but if they’re gonna be on a Mission together, he can’t just be all scared of her the entire time, because she’ll do that sneer she does when she thinks he’s being stupid and thinks he’s too dumb to realize she’s doing it. So he doesn’t, and stays close.
Her expression evens out, like a mask, and it reminds Bullseye of Matty and his Moods. She says, “I do not know,” again, and continues, “He could have gone any number of places.”
Which… is true. They don’t know where he’s at, because he didn’t leave on a Mission, and he could be anywhere . Anywhere in the entire world, and he doesn’t know where everything in the world is. He could even be in Japan for all Bullseye knows, and he doesn’t even know how they’d manage to get there, and the thought of being so far away from Home makes him want to curl up and shiver. So he just says, “ Oh ,” and falls quiet.
It hurts. All of this hurts so much, and he’s glad that they are being sent to help, to bring him Home, but in his quiet moments, he’s not sure that things would be all the way fixed even if Matty did come home. He left them, and even wanted to leave, and that’s-- It’s--
He realizes Elektra is by the door all at once, and doesn’t know how long he was in his head, but the fog of panic passes when she says sharply, “ Bullseye ,” and he shakes himself out of the reverie. “We are leaving now.”
“It’s the middle of the night ,” He says, and looks towards the balcony, to where the moon hangs in the sky and the stars are still visible and the early dew is just beginning to form droplets of moisture on the railings, making everything look wet and kind of foggy. He imagines it’s so very chilly, and he’s never left for a Mission in the middle of the night before. “Why do we have to leave now ?”
“It is early morning, and we are leaving now because this Mission is a secret .”
Bullseye doesn’t really get why it’d be a secret; they’ve all been wondering where Matty’s been, and it’s not like it would surprise anyone to know that they’re finally gonna start looking . But-- If she’s got her orders, then that means this is Right and Just and Proper, and it’ll do neither of them any good to argue and whine against that.
Whining is for fools with no power , Matty told him once, and he’s remembered that, because, well, he sure does whine a lot, even if he doesn’t mean to and doesn’t always know he’s doing it until Elektra or Matty say something.
She starts walking to the door and he starts to follow her but--
No. Not yet. He takes a look around the room, comforted how well he’s covered all the walls in here, knowing he won’t see it for a while. It soothes his nerves, to look at all his paintings, and while it seems Elektra’s grabbed all his stuff for him, she’s forgotten to look for anything Matty left behind.
And he knows what he’s left behind, because in the first few weeks of him being gone, Bullseye had looked and looked and looked for clues everywhere, especially in the bedroom, but the only thing he left behind were his sais, wrapped up and put away in one of the nights stands like he’d have to wake up in the middle of the night and fight off some of those ninja folk he used to talk about sometimes.
He finds himself opening the drawer and pulling them out, being awful careful not to nick himself on the blades. They’re sharp, and their legacy is shrouded in blood thick and oozing down the hilts, and as he holds them, he can see why Matty feels safe when he has these blades in his hands. Bullseye feels safe having all matter of stuff in his pockets, and even if it ain’t as sophisticated as Matty’s choice of weapons, he gets the feeling all the same.
Maybe he left them behind on purpose. Maybe this was the clue. Find me, Bullseye, and bring me back what I left behind .
It feels him with something like purpose, and he carries them to the doorway, only to be met with Elektra’s wild, furious eyes again, and he really hopes the sun comes up soon, because she still looks like a ghostly effigy of the woman he knows.
“See, I was ready to go an’ all and I was right behind you, I swear. But then I was thinkin’ that this could be dangerous ‘cos Missions really aren’t all that fun and sometimes they’re awful scary, so I had to go back an’ grab ‘em ‘cos they’re Matty’s . Matty doesn’t like it when I touch ‘em, but he’s never said nothin’ about you.” And he holds them out to her, hoping the sight of the blades will make her expression even out, will make the harsh lighting of the pre-dawn light make her less angry.
She takes them, and Bullseye grins at her. They look good cradled in her arm, and he doesn’t even have to tell her how to be careful with them without nicking herself. It’ll almost be a shame to give them to Matty, because if Elektra’s doing Missions now, they’d serve her well.
Elektra turns and Bullseye follows her out of the House.
Bullseye’s always liked Elektra’s car. He was kinda sad when she moved in for good, ‘cause it meant she didn’t really need it anymore, and so it just collects dust. Which is really an honest shame because it’s small and yellow and she calls it a ‘Bug’ and Bullseye thinks that’s really rather cute. He always thought it was real funny watching Matty try to squeeze his tall frame into the little cabin of the car; he always looks so tall and elegant that seeing those long legs look more awkward than anything always made him laugh.
And considering Elektra always had a little smile on her face when he’d climb in, Bullseye thinks maybe she thought it was funny, too.
Elektra leans over him and has a real severe look on her face, though. No smiles for Missions, he supposes. She puts her hands on his shoulders, her hands firm, and she speaks the way she does when she goes to the parties, all soft and sweet-like. “Bullseye, do you know how the gates work?”
And see, that’s something he can do, so he says, “Of course! Lemme show you!” Even if she doesn’t wanna smile on a Mission, it don’t mean Bullseye can’t, so he gives her one of those grins that he knows makes her frown.
“No, that is not necessary. I trust you; you can open them for us.”
He sets off to do as she says, nodding rapidly to show that he understands, he gets it, they’ve gotta work. He never had to do much on the other Missions. Frankly, and he doesn’t wanna question his Path or nothin’, but frankly, he wasn’t sure what use he ever was. It wasn’t like he did the things that Matty did, couldn’t, wasn’t allowed, didn’t need to.
If Matty was assigned a Mission, he’d always get it done alone.
So really, it always boggled his mind that he had to come along, and he’d just get scared anyhow, and Matty would sometimes get scary and he’d get even more scared.
It’s nice to actually have a use, so he does his best to open the gate, working the lock and the mechanism. It’s hard work, and it’s heavy, so he gets it open enough for the car and not much else, because it would just be a waste of energy, and like he said, he hasn’t been sleeping too good lately, so he’s not always the strongest.
Elektra unlocks the front door for him, and his eyes go wide, because all their stuff is in the backseat, which means he gets to sit in the front seat, and he all but scrambles in place and closes the door behind him fast so he’s locked in, she can’t change her mind, and he says quietly, “I’ve never rode up in the front before.” He runs a hand over the dashboard.
She makes him stay in the car while she closes the gate behind them, and Bullseye busies himself in feeling how the car moves. He doesn’t get to ride in them all too often, and he always liked Elektra’s quite a lot, and now he’ll get to be in it for a long time because they’re finding Matty and he might see Matty soon.
He almost jumps when Elektra gets back in the car, the gate closed but unlocked behind them-- and for a second, he wonders why there weren’t any escorts and why Mr. Wesley didn’t help them, but it hurts his head a little to question his Path, so he drops the line of thinking and rubs small circles in the upholstery of the seat and pulls his feet up to his chest so he can get all comfy.
Elektra says nothing, and her knuckles are awful stiff and white on the steering wheel as she pulls away and they start down the road to leave the property. Bullseye gets a jitter in his body like he always does when he leaves, a tangled up knot of apprehension and excitement and fear and some stuff he doesn’t have the name for but it’s not good, and he’s wide eyed as he looks ahead of them.
The moon has faded somewhat as the dark, oppressive night sky slowly gives way to a golden pink that trickles in through the ghostly branches of the winter-bare trees. It doesn’t look like much to Bullseye.
Elektra makes a terrible, awful noise. The kind that Matty makes in his sleep sometimes, or when he’s real, real mad, the kind that Bullseye imagines comes from some in-between place that’s not quite human and not quite animal, but something wholly demonic.
It wakes him up; the smooth rocking motions of the car put him to sleep fast, and she didn’t want him touching the radio or messing with the contents of the car, so he got bored after twenty minutes and closed his eyes as the horizon passed them by.
She’s crying .
He cries an awful lot, but Matty and Elektra don’t . It’s why he thinks they were good for each other. Not a lot of emotions. But the way Elektra looks, tear tracks down her face and the skin around her eyes puffy and thick and swollen, and the way her lips tremble in an effort to stay calm-- it’s not just a cry. This is a sob, something that comes from deep, deep, deep within. Maybe she does have emotions.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Did something happen?” He doesn’t know what could cause this, what this could mean, what happened to make her like this.
He suspects it’s something about the Mission and Matty, but her lips are moving and no sounds are coming out, and she looks furious so he doesn’t say Matty’s name, because sometimes Elektra doesn’t like it when he brings him up.
“What happened, ‘Lektra? Are we safe?” ‘Cause maybe it was a car accident or something. The car is stopped, they’re pulled over on the side of the road, and there’s no one in sight, but he was asleep and he just doesn’t know . He smooths his hand over a small piece of quartz that he found on the dashboard, ‘cause turns out Elektra had a few trinkets up there, all perfectly arranged to evoke… Something.
Matty once told him that Elektra is very particular about her stuff, but if they’re in trouble, Bullseye knows he needs something in his hands and they can probably get out of it. It’s his Path.
Elektra struggles to word things for a while, and she sits up off the steering wheel, and looks straight ahead. Her eyes don’t look like ghosts anymore; they look like a corpse’s. His jaw tightens at the edge of a memory that wants to choke him, and he pushes it down like nausea.
“Bullseye, go back to sleep.” Her voice is rough and scraggly and it leaks out of her like a death rattle.
He looks at her for a long, long moment, and then nods, pulling his legs back up to his chest, and looking straight out the windshield. He won’t sleep for a while, but he’ll stay quiet for her, and he won’t even look at her, to afford her some privacy.
“‘Kay,” he mumbles, and runs his fingers over and over and over the point of the quartz.