Work Text:
and I've moved further than I thought I could
but I missed you more than I thought I would
-
1.
It always ends in blood.
(Her father, lying on the floor like a broken doll, red blooming on his white shirt, her legs shaking, Matthew's voice coming from afar, “His heart – it stopped,” numbness spreading through her until she's made of stone – this is how the end begins.)
. . .
Before:
They lie in his bed, legs tangled in cheap white sheets, eating olives straight from the jar. His roommate is away for the weekend, so they're blissfully alone, once she's ditched her overbearing security. She lazily combs her fingers through his shaggy hair; his hand caresses her calf. There's a large bruise blooming where he touches her – they've finished sparring moments before and she can still feel the ghost of a hit she's received. (His lip is split though, and there is a bite mark below his collarbone, so that's fair, she supposes.)
She's in love. She has everything she's ever wanted in her hands.
“What are you thinking?”
His unseeing eyes focus on her lips and he smiles sheepishly, fingers wrapping around her ankle. “Honestly? I was thinking that I would like to never have to leave this room.”
Love fills her to the brim, warm and sweet, and she's grateful, so grateful –
“That would be nice.”
.
2.
She climbs the mountain, and the wall that cannot be scaled. Stick bandages her scraped knuckles, and tells her he won't leave her; but the pain stays, dull and throbbing, and she's unable to forget. There is a part of her, deep inside, that's grateful when he casts her out.
She never belonged with The Chaste.
. . .
It's a love that burns bright and hot and devours everything it touches.
She knew it before, in college, when dark circles shadowed his eyes from sleepless nights he spent trying to catch up on his required reading, she knew it when his best friend moved out of their shared room, knew it when she screamed at her father the night he was killed.
She knows it now, twelve years later, when they're running from the Yakuza and there is no way out, but she also knows that she cannot stop.
Their lips touch. Fire ignites in her veins and from the way his fingers dig into her skin, she knows he cannot stop, either.
.
3.
“You don't belong with us,” Stick said, when he cast her out. “There is too much pain in you. Too much hate.”
Maybe she was always meant to destroy.
. . .
Matthew's fingers are warm when he stitches her up. It doesn't matter how much time has passed, how much blood has been spilled – he's safety, and warmth, and the axis on which her world turns.
.
4.
The Hand is her ending.
She kills and kills until she's so high in the ranks she loses her purpose. She thought she could destroy them from within; stop the war and prove Stick wrong. But her hands have been sticky with blood since the first (last) day, when she killed her sensei. She has lost her soul.
What follows is dust.
. .
She bleeds out in Matthew's arms, poison devouring her insides. The world sways, and his voice is the only anchor she has left to the world.
She can sense Stick when she comes to, the rust and dust and years upon stolen years. The disappointment and betrayal. The longing.
“You have to let her go,” he tells Matthew, “every minute she spends here brings you closer to your death.”
This old man, and his vile truths.
Through the crippling pain she dresses herself, gathers her sais into her shaking hands.
And because she loves him, she runs.
.
5.
The legends say not even death can free you from The Hand. She wouldn't be herself if she didn't try to prove them wrong.
She destroys their accomplices, sets their money on fire. Their funding is vast but she's persistent and clever, and the Natchios name still influential enough to grant her enough access to inflict serious damage.
It makes little difference, with Nobu constantly at her heels. He follows her around the world, him and the other assassins, shadows at the corners of her vision. She is a deserter, a traitor, she needs to be put down. (The Hand never lets you go.) They leave scars like bloody souvenirs on her body.
But she's still alive. And as long as she breathes, there will be no stopping before she destroys them.
Another name, written in red ink on her list: Roxxon.
She runs to New York.
. . .
It hurts. It hurts so much.
Before the fight, Matthew's hand in hers, their lips so close, sharing one breath, he said, “run, I'll hold them back,” and “save yourself,” and “please, Elektra,” but it was no use.
She laughed, the sound high and trembling, “over my dead body,” and then – the pain.
(No one could say she never kept her word.)
She can feel his tears falling down onto her cheeks as he holds her to his chest, lying to her, lying to himself, “you're going to be alright, you'll be fine, sweetheart, just stay with me,” but the world starts to slip from her grasp, and not even he can stop the crippling cold that wells up inside her.
She couldn't destroy The Hand. She couldn't avenge her father. She couldn't love Matthew the way he deserved to be loved.
But she never leaves things unfinished.
This is not how she dies.
(The light goes out.)
.
(6)
She wakes up and smells blood.
(The end is the beginning.)
She gets another chance.