Elektra should’ve never been able to walk away from the fight. Stick had brought an army with him - some of the very same men who had surrounded her as a twelve-year-old girl, who had been told not to hold back as she took them all on - had fought her again tonight. The difference was, she was choosing to disarm. To disable. Stick saw it, called it out, mocked it. But she no longer belonged to him, she no longer fought the way he demanded her to or for his fucking war. She was fighting for Matthew. She was fighting for herself. And when she finally managed to fend them off long enough to escape, to lose them... She had one shot. She knew that, in the back of her mind, she was running on borrowed time. So she put the goal in her mind: Get home. Get to Matthew. Anything else was unacceptable. It had taken everything in her, every last ounce of fight that she had. Part of it was, admittedly, selfish. She wanted to be in their bed, in their apartment, with him. But she also wanted him to know the truth. The thought of leaving him wondering, waiting, while hours ticked by and days passed... Or, worse, Stick feeding him bullshit... No, he deserved better than that. But she made it. She told him. They were together. And now, in her unconscious state, the line she’d so narrowly escaped countless times was in front of her again. She could see it. She could reach out and touch it. In her gut, she knew that once she did, this would all end. She would die... ...A hand patted her face, a voice - one that she loved to hear call her name - did just that, and while her eyes didn’t open, she tried to reassure him, “It doesn’t hurt anymore. They can’t hurt me anymore or control me anymore. It ends with me belonging to you. It ends with me belonging to myself...”