#timeline 00:00

[elektralivesagain]

@hellsguardiandevil

As she tried to navigate the city the shadows surrounding her felt heavy and at times endless, but even as a child Elektra Natchios had never been afraid of the dark. Stick trained her to fight, to always be ready to fight. When she walked though a hallway at night she knew she was meant to be the scary in thing in the dark. The shadows felt like a part of her, the way this city was part of him.

She followed the scent of smoke and a trail of cinders that wafted through the black expanse. Hell’s Kitchen was living up to it’s name. It felt right somehow that this would be what lit the her way through the maze that would lead her here, back to him.

As she slipped in through the roof access door of his loft she could still taste ash. Nothing inside seemed to have moved, everything in it’s place like his life hadn’t moved an inch. Why should it-? When she didn’t hear him anywhere inside she began to move, her fingertips skimming the banister on the way down the stairs. She was drawn past the couch and with her hand moving over the worn leather came with a strange sense of weight she couldn’t place. Jamais vu . She should know why she was standing in this spot, but she didn’t. It was a common feeling these days, like a vertigo that struck when she tried to reach for her own context - and part of what she’d hoped to leave behind.

By touch she found the tin box on the shelf and carried it over to the sink. Absently she began to clean and stitch the wound on her palm, a knife laceration but not terribly deep. Once wrapped she continue to let the water run to  to clear the scent of her blood from the drain and coiled her fingers inward. It was going to hurt to make a fist for a while.

Stepping across the room she slid open the door the bedroom, having to get close in the dark to see that was left unmade. Then the sound of scraping on the roof interrupted her thoughts, and her breath slowed and heart stilled on reflex.

[shockandawesome]

@getmystique​

The city was a different sort of animal in the dark, with everything cast in heavy shadow until the uncertainty of pitch black corners grew menacing teeth. For miles in every direction distant sirens wailed endlessly in a way that only seemed to promise that help wouldn’t be coming anytime soon. Even growing up here Alison couldn’t have guessed how damn quick civilization would die in the dark. That alone should’ve been a perfectly sane reason not to be out on the streets, and especially not alone.

She had gone out into the night knowing she never had to be truly in the dark, not when she could make quite literally be her own light. However, now that she was being chased she was learning the fragility of that confidence. The men hadn’t offered any explanation, not even some lame catcall as she passed by. Somehow that was even more unsettling when they’d simply started to follow her a couple blocks back. When the unspoken anxiety of the moment crawled into veins and spiked she broke into a run and so had they. Every pound of feet against the pavement was a small blessing though, even a little noise was better that none.

[elektralivesagain]

@wiggiiewoo

They had warned her that nobody who entered was able to leave again, as if that wasn’t the way it had always been. New York is a city gets under the skin (and it was never just the pollution), it had a heart and beating pulse that could keep a person company, even if they were alone. Or maybe she just associated the steel maze so closely with her reason for being in it that she couldn’t separate them anymore. Elektra revved the engine on the stolen car and drove towards Midtown with the windows down. In a darkened skyline one thing stood out, the gaudy tower that used to bear Stark’s name, now a beacon for earth’s so-called Avengers.

It had been all over the news, for a second time in a decade an alien ship had touched down in New York. The first time she hadn’t come, but now keeping herself away no longer felt like an option. She had too little left to lose to risk it.

She used the luminous structure like an urban lighthouse, a guide so she didn’t get turned around in the dark. Sharply turning a corner a silhouette appeared in the headlights and she turning and spun the wheel hard to send the car spinning, careening across the street. before they’d be caught under the tires. Finally screeching to a hard stop she slammed back in her seat with something between a grimace and a smile.

Headlights still burned and illuminated the street around them, a young woman in a red coat still standing in the same spot where she’d just nearly hit her. Her brow arched curiously and the assassin slung an arm out the the open window. “Just out for a stroll then-?” She asked with a huff. “Or perhaps the lights are on but nobody’s home.”

[elektralivesagain]

@punisher-devildog

The sound of sirens faded in and out of the distance. It seemed that after being left in the dark New York was rapidly descending to it’s baser instincts. Elektra Natchios had to ditch the car she’d stolen some blocks back to navigate streets increasingly filled with abandoned vehicles, debris from broken storefronts, and fires set either to light the way or maybe just for the sheer hedonistic delight. 

Despite the darkness she eventually opted for higher ground. As she crossed from one rooftop to another a shrill sound cut through everything else. It was a panicked, desperate shrieking that did not even attempt to summon language beyond abject terror. On the adjacent block headlights burned on a large SUV and the piercing screams were coming from a girl bucking against silhouettes that pulled her from the back and dragged her inside a dark building. First one, then another. The group unloaded what seemed to be an entire haul, with their cries for help swallowed up by a callous universe.

Elektra had somewhere else to be, sort of, but as she drew closer to her destination conflict had been gathering uncomfortably in her chest. Coming back to his city had not been the plan - yet here she was. This vignette of human misery wasn’t any of her concern, not really. However, it did present the promise of a diversion and maybe that was exactly what she needed right now.

While the Assassin crossed the street and moved in for a closer look the SUV turned it’s lights out and started in reverse. The street ahead was littered with trash fires it attempted to exit back the way it came when a van pulled in behind it deliberately angled to block it’s path.

[elektralivesagain]

@avenging-latrodectus

Being a good Samaritan and bleeding on herself, clearly her current fixation had done more than just drag back to this city. Even when it wasn’t in the mass chaos of a citywide blackout New York offered no shortage of distractions for anyone that wanted to forget themselves for a while, but mostly she was still trying to remember.

Tearing away at the edge of her cowl she pulled away a strip of fabric and wound it tightly around the open wound on her palm. Elektra hissed softly before steadying herself again, reigning in the pace of her breathing. Her muscles burned with a pleasant warmth and she basked in the waning adrenaline of the detour. It had hit the spot. A bit of violence to get the blood flowing, a few bodies dropped, and even the sharp sting of where the knife in the dark had caught her grasping hand offered a welcome familiarity. Exactly what she needed before going where she said she wouldn’t again. 

The Assassin was pulling on her ruined glove when she turned the corner back out onto the street. Having adjusted to the darkness her eyes were doubly unprepared for the flash of harsh light. Still flush and her nerves ready for a fight, in an instant she defensively drew her sai. She squinted hard into the glare of it  and hissed across the shaft of her weapon at the hidden silhouette behind. “It would be in your best interest to keep moving.”

[elektralivesagain]

Crash;

After that first night Elektra attempted to return to her empty Midtown penthouse. She tried to settle into the vacant space, to let herself breathe, but the in every passing second the quiet there was almost unbearable. Worse than anywhere else in the world that she’d gone to be alone because now she could feel his city all around her.

So instead she’d found herself slipping through the seemingly always open roof access door of his loft again. They didn’t discuss it, the same way they didn’t discuss what they’d been doing in the months since the collapse. Instead she simply found an extra blanket left on the couch on a night the weather outside had taken an inexplicably icy turn.

At least when she was here the quiet was never just that. The tension that lingered heavy in the apartment gave her mind something else to lean on and she needed that. She felt at home in it, more than in her own bed. So she curled up on the leather sofa and she tried to sleep, staring into the darkness of the bedroom he occupied.

[shockandawesome]

@agcnt19

Alison rubbed absently at the fresh scrapes on her palms and her cheek, having learned the hard way that despite good intentions being a beacon in a dark city was it’s kind own hazard. She was going to be sore as hell tomorrow and at this point fatigue setting in was taking precedence over any ambitions helping anyone in all this chaos.

She’d been wandering for what felt like hours, though she had no way of knowing. The glass of yet another broken storefront crunched under her boots and she messily ground her heels in, soaking up the sound.  With just a flicker of light trickling through her fingertips she illuminated the sign, the faded hand-painted lettering indicating a neighborhood deli. God. She was thirsty. Like really thirsty. She was suddenly very aware of the way her tongue felt thick and too dry in her mouth and though she’d passed up the same opportunity before she couldn’t seem to find the harm in it now. Whoever had busted it in the first place had already taken anything valuable. All she wanted was some water, if that wasn’t gone already too.

She cautiously stepped over the sharp edges of the shattered window and pushed into the store, it’s contents ransacked and the leftovers strewn around the narrow aisles. Acting as her own nightlight she navigated her way to the dark cases of formerly cold beverages. The bottles rolling around at the bottom looked a little too much like instant salvation and she took the first two she could grab and stuffed them awkwardly into her jacket, and the third she cracked open a swiftly brought to her lips, drinking it down fast. Even warm the relief of it seemed to instantly spread through her aching body, but it was a short-lived reprieve.

Out front that sound again, footsteps over broken glass. A light shined in her direction and all she could think to do was raise her hands, one of which she held the half empty water bottle. “I can pay for that?” She offered with an uneven grimace, just as one of the bottles in her jacket tumbled out. “Those too...” 

[shockandawesome]

@spvrklefist

Even in a blackout New York was the city that didn’t sleep, but while the buildings hummed with activity anyone sane was mostly staying off the street.

Somewhere ahead of her in the darkness man’s voice bellowed. He spit between his phrases and proclaimed ‘the end was nigh’ to anyone that was forced to hear him. Just another street preacher working himself up into a damn frenzy. He shouted loud enough for his voice to carry off the buildings. “YOUR COLLECTIVE SIN HAS COME DUE, REPENT NOW-- before it’s too late!” He shouted in a way that seemed to echo off the sky, and more than anything she wished he’d just shut the hell up.

The screaming was getting under her nerves in the eerie darkness, the hostility of it. What kind of salvation needed to be found through terror-? Just when she thought she’d slipped by he snatched up the arm of her leather jacket. “REPENT GIRL, the divine judgment has arrived and it can smell the sin on you. REPE-” The man’s lips continued to move but without a voice behind it. He would breathe just fine but the noise, the noise belonged to her now. She could do that when she focused. “Have to be honest with you man, I never really subscribed to that particular newsletter.”

Now for lack of a voice he waved his hands over his head and she tensed up ready to swing back. Instead his gesturing and flailing was aimed upward. Alison turned and looked up to see a figure of light floating in the sky, burning like a star but in the figure of a person.

Oh...

The man muttered something about an ‘avenging angel’ before his words descended into broken syllables. Alison was momentarily transfixed on the light. She’d never seen anyone glow like that. Well, nobody else. As the bright figure drifted closer the vagrant scuffled backward. “Hi-? I don’t suppose you’re just like...looking for directions? Because it’s already been kind of a hell of a day.”