ELEKTRA NATCHIOS (MCU)

[devilwithoutfear]

Her words were simple but the air was too heavy for him to move. If he went to her right now, they both knew where that would lead. Some part of him was always wondering what the point of resisting was and then the other reminded him that he was never going to be sure he as making clear and conscious decisions from between her legs. although in most instances they would be the same none the less. Matthew had been lying to himself for years, and it wasn't until she died that he made room for the truth. He had really only ever loved woman in his life. Sure, there had been other women he had been devoted to and honest with, but if he were ever truly being honest with himself, whatever he felt for them never measured up to the way he felt about Elektra. He might have loved them, but he had always been in love with Elektra. And for most of their time together, he tried avoiding that truth--more to spare himself than anything else. Elektra was the only person to understand the violence curled beneath his skin. Cover it as he might try with words like honor and justice...they were just proverbial masks he used to smother the rage brewing underneath. Matt was a good lawyer because he had an intuitive ability to study the rules and find the cracks in their seams, and he supposed, if he was honest now, he did the same thing with God. He didn't have to lie if he never admitted to himself the truth, and if there was anything Matthew was better at than fighting or talking through a case, it was hiding from himself. After all, if he never had to stare the beast in the mirror for what it was, it was a little like getting away with lying to God. But a sin was a sin, wasn't it? Even if you didn't know you were committing. Or in his case, bargaining. this for that. Matthew took a deep even breath as he loosened his tie and tried to ease the tension from his shoulders, except that didn't necessarily help because the air was blowing in from the heater and he could practically taste her from where he stood at the window.

"are you hungry? i can order something."

[vinoctu]

What a battle they were locked in. For Elektra, it was a fight against the reckless and wild beast that had taken up residence in her chest. She felt it gnawing at the cage her ribs had grown into, beating against her mind. Relentless, unforgiving, merciless. That's how she was supposed to be. It was how she was trained to be. It wasn't, however, who she wanted to be.

Like a malignant presence, Elektra had affixed herself to Matthew. Matthew, who deserved better. The blonde with the soft eyes, the nurse with the gentle hands. Hell, even the lawyer with the quick wit. Elektra watched them all parade through his apartment and into his bed in her absence. They kept her spot warm until the buzz in her mind crescendoed and she needed him to dull the pain once more.

It wasn't healthy. Elektra knew that, but she had never cared. She desired Matthew, craved him. He could do what no one else could. He quieted her howl and stopped the world. That wasn't to say she was co-dependent. Elektra was more than capable of taking care of herself. No, it wasn't a need. She wanted him. She wanted him to quell her wicked edges and soften her into someone who could be good. Someone who could be more than a hurricane who left nothing but death and destruction in her wake.

The battle was different for Matthew, of course. She could see the war between heaven & hell corded in tense shoulder muscles and the way he held his body. Tightly. Rigidly. This was a man with damnation bearing down on him, and she could see it in the lines of his face. She knew that he could see her battles as well, even if it was through the calloused pads that touched her body like a priest in worship instead of through the eyes. Matthew was the only one who saw her, and Elektra saw him. All of him.

"Why don't we go out?" Her body unfolded from the couch, her pout unseen as she moved to stand behind him. Long arms wrapped around his torso, her head fitting into the nook of his shoulder. "We can't stay in here forever." With him, it would be tempting. Still, Elektra didn't do well caged in. "I'll be good."

[devilwithoutfear]

@vinoctu

over the last few weeks elektra lingered all over the apartment, burrowing into the fibers of his home in the same way she did every other aspect of his being: mind, body, soul.

though matthew was plenty familiar, when he was exhausted her presence was a haze that made his head swim. he'd never really been able to understand it. like most people, elektras scent was a combination of many things; the detergent she used, lotions, perfume, soaps...but he'd come to know the smell of her intimately. shea and slow roasted pink pepper, traces of jasmine and rose laced through her hair; the feel of which he vividly knew like cool silk between his fingers.

for a moment he just laid there, listening to the sound of her heart beating and breathing her in as rain pitter patted on the window. sometimes he wondered if he was hallucinating her.

"you should see the other guy." matt murmured quietly from the couch.

[vinoctu]

"I did see the other guy."

There was a levity to her words that could only be elicited by one person. Somehow, Matthew drew water from the stone that she had become. Elektra had been — for far too long — full of broken glass. Her sense of self had shattered each time death laid its unforgiving hands on her, and thin cracks still cut their way across her psyche. It would have been all too easy to fall into the abyss that had grown inside her, but for him she tried. For Matthew, Elektra bit her tongue until it bled. She could be human once more. She could be good.

A knife dangled from her hand, the hilt familiar against calloused fingers. In the other she balanced the cheese tray, and Elektra briefly bent to press a fleeting kiss to Matthew's cheek before sitting near his feet.

"He got two hits in that he should not have been able to. Are you going soft, Matthew?" She teased. "What am I to do with you?"

[witchoutoftime]

"witches have been surviving for centuries. it's what we do. so if one more person decides they want to remind me that my variant is dead, they'll be the next to join her. now... did you want a damn tarot reading or not? I take cash-app and venmo."

[vinoctu]

Elektra couldn't imagine surviving for a decade — let alone a century. She was inexplicably bound to death yet unable to yield to its touch. For Elektra, it wasn't about being reminded that a variant was dead. She had been the one to die, and she carried the scars to prove it. "This magic you have," Elektra looked to the cards. "You believe in it?"

Before she would have scoffed and turned her head. But that was before she died and was resurrected. Now, she lingered.

[roachradio]

"You remind me of someone I've bedded."

[vinoctu]

"I think you must be mistaken." Elektra had never seen him before, and she knew where she had been. She was meticulous in uncovering all the details of what her life had been like before being the Black Sky had robbed her of herself.

[originaltorch]

"First I'm in a new time period and then I'm in a new reality. I'm nervous to find out what's coming next."

[vinoctu]

"I was dead and then I was alive." She might have died and been resurrected again after that, but it was hard to say. "I'm not nervous, but I would love to prefer if things didn't get as bloody again."

At this point, red was all Elektra knew. It was her undoing and her baptism. She was relearning how to differentiate herself from the trails of crimson she left in her wake.

[johnnyssilverhand]

and did you know this is how we evolve?

[johnnyssilverhand]

this is not the end.

[elektranhatcios]

– V.I.P.P.

[notahammer]

The Black Sky. This is all I am?

[vinoctu]

@devilwithoutfear

Being dead was boring. Well, not dead. Elektra wasn't sure dead was the right word anymore. There had been an indeterminable period of time where she certainly couldn't be classified as living. There was a certain irony to be found in the fact that the woman pulled from the abyss of nonexistence had shackled her heart to a man so entangled in the soul's battle between heaven and hell. It was far simpler for her. Elektra had died. She had tasted death and it was nothing. It was nothing more than just another way for the world to try to take advantage and victimize her.

Elektra believed in no God. There was no God who cared for her or called her his own. Elektra did, however, believe in Matthew. It was through him that she found all things holy.

Dead, alive, whatever. For some reasons out of her hands, Elektra found that death was more temporary than she had originally been led to believe. She was on her third (?) go at it now. The first one had been complicated, full of trying and failing. The second one was a desperate blur that began in blood. This time? This time, Elektra was doing what she pleased — and nothing pleased her more than doing Matthew Murdock.

It was more than the physical, of course. His hands made her human, tamed the feral in her that no finishing school could have polished into submission. For him, she tried. She attempted to bottle up the wail inside of her and dull fangs that had been sharpened to a deadly point. This was a new reality, a new chance. Elektra did not want to let sins of the past bloody their present before they had a chance to live once more.

Being pulled into this new reality meant being pulled from the hole she had dug for herself. It wasn't a grave seven feet under, but it was an isolation she had exiled herself to after crawling from the ruins that should have killed her and Matthew. She had tried to stay away from him so that he could have the full life he deserved, but this multiversal mess had changed things. They were adrift, and she had always looked to him to be her shore.

"I'm bored." Accented syllables dripped from pouted lips. In her attempt to not make a stir, Elektra was laying painfully low. "Come, Matthew." One hand extended. "Sit."

[scarlet-strange]

the way of the samurai is found in death

[guerrillla]

Not even the stars are safe in the sky.