Everyone Dies Sometime
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October 18, 2014: Matt and Elektra meet. It's awkward. Again.
The wrong side of the tracks in New York City
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New York in autumn. The cold wind has a way of biting through clothing, chilling skin, freezing blood and vein and bone. There's also the wetness, which with the cooler temperature sits longer in puddles and in keeping the sidewalks slick.
The cold is murder on Matt Murdock.
It bites him, affects him, more than other heroes. His sensitive skin feels like pins and needles, and with the wind it can be miserable. He's made attempts to make his suit warmer, but those have always only been moderately successful.
Still now, he's able to mentally block the cold, but only because he hears something going on down below.
The alley offered some small measure of protection from the world above, granting secrecy from Elektra's newest bane of her existence cameras. Being dead was one thing. Being dead and filling her 'employer's' bidding, something entirely different.
There's a thud against a wall as skull meets brick followed by a faint crack. "Yield," comes a very tired, very tested, very familiar voice. Authoritative and unwieldy.
"N-no!" sputters the man on the ground, spitting blood when he does so. His hands press into the pavement and he e pushes himself up back to a very tilted stand. The staff that he has in his grip is held upwards again.
"My employer's instructions were clear: bring you in," she's beginning to sound irritated, "one way or another." She sucks in a breath, sharp and unhappy, and her sai cuts through the air with a twist of her wrist. "They need your eyes; not the breath in your lungs."
There's a slight zing in the air as Daredevil's billy club, or part of it anyways, is shot far into the distance in the night sky. The metallic wire spreads out all around Daredevil who leaps downwards into the alleyway. All of his senses work together as he falls towards the wet pavement, and he pulls hard on the end of the club just before he reaches his destination.
When he lands, he crouches low, "You're employer?" Though it's a question it sounds more of a spiteful disdain. "Who is /your/ employer?" The Elektra he once knew only answered to herself.
Elektra's eyes slit at the sound of someone landing behind her. Her lips tug upwards, and she twists around to catch sight of Matt, whom she'd been avoiding.
Contemplatively, she regards him with his open disdain. Perpetual avoidance didn't seem likely, but she'd certainly put in the effort. Her sai are lowered to her sides.
The gentleman to whom she was applying pressure takes the opportunity to bolt — his paces are hard and loud against the pavement as he manages a few steps away from her.
But Natchios doesn't let him leave so easily. She focuses for a moment, and paints an illusion of herself in front of him, prompting him to stop in his tracks: "H-h-h-ow are there t-t-w-o of y-ou?"
"Because, sir," she virtually purrs, "I'm a ghost." Her eyes narrow at Daredevil and she quips, before closing the distance between herself and her target, "Ghosts don't have real employers." She delivers a square kick to the back of the man's knee, causing him to crumple to the ground with a groan. "Just unfinished business." She turns the sai over in her hand.
Matt stands out in front of her, well, the first her. The red mask with the red eye lenses gives the appearances of glowering towards the woman he once cared for so greatly. In truth, it's just the way his mask looks. "Explain yourself," he says quietly. Desperately wanting information from her, but getting none.
"Why do you continue to avoid me?" he asks, just as quietly. It makes no sense. When they last met they were incredibly close. Now that she's back-somehow she's back-she seems so different.
Something crosses Elektra's eyes, and the small inhalation of breath that catches in her throat is indicative that something is amiss. Her chin drops, and her eyes turn to the man now cowering on the pavement. She heaves a sigh, and the tension changes in her posture. Her sai are lowered again to her sides.
She regards the gentleman and cants her head to the side, "Sir," she states evenly — detached and altogether removed from the situation, "see them tomorrow. Turn yourself in or you and I will have words tomorrow night." She turns on her heel to face Matt again before casting over her shoulder, "And believe me, you won't like any of them."
With the opportunity to run, the man bolts once again, this time exiting the alley at a sprint so as not to illicit anymore of the ninja woman's wrath.
She watches Matt in silence for some time, her arms crossing over her chest. "I thought it better you move on with your life."
"I have," Daredevil says defiantly. It's clear that the defiance comes from a place of pain, though. "So you're saying you faked your death. A simple conversation or even a Dear John letter would have been easier and more humane." He takes an inward sigh, "At the very least, you owe me a full explanation. I want the the truth." One of his nice features is he's able to tell when folks are telling the truth and when they aren't. It's come in handy both in his life as a lawyer and as a vigilante. He never thought he'd be questioning Elektra's honesty.
There's a raise of Elektra's eyebrow at the demand. She slides bcd towards the wall, and she actually leans against it with the assumptions tied therein. Her eyes flit down the alley. Her boots click against the pavement as she takes to slow pacing, back and forth across the uneven pavement. And if it weren't for her movement, her own silence might be damning. "I didn't say I faked my death." Her lips twist to the side, "I died."
Matt exhales as he tilts his head at her, clearly not comprehending. "Elektra, people don't just come back from the dead. Why won't you tell me what's really going on?" He "looks" down at her, his sinewy body standing with shoulders slumped and defeated. He, the man who swore he wouldn't rest until the Kingpin was behind bars, while others laughed. He, who pulled it off. "Why are you being so evasive?"
"Would you rather I lie?" Elektra asks earnestly. "Because the lie seems easier for you to believe than the truth." She turns on her heel, and paces the other direction, not abandoning the alley, but certainly not inching any closer to Matt. And then one more time she manages, "I died." Her eyes lid lightly, she sucks in another breath, and her tone turns grim, "I understand that Bullseye lived." One of the sai in her grasp is spun in her hand. "He should consider his days now numbered."
"He lives, barely. He fell from a building in a fight we had this summer. If you're looking for someone to blame, you can blame me. I could have killed him, but chose not to." As an afterthought, Matt adds. "He's incarcerated."
Another sigh, "So you're just not going to tell me, are you? This is how it ends for us. I loved you, mourned you, and I should just let it be. Is that right?"
There's a tight-lipped smile at the location of Bullseye. "I know," Elektra states evenly. "I'm going to rectify that," she already has a plan, "and then I'm going to kill him. Slowly. Bit by bit. I will watch the life drain from his eyes, and ensure he stays dead."
There's a skeptical arch of Elektra's eyebrows and a shake of her head. "Or, I'll let them bring him back so I can do it all over again. And again. And again." A new plan seems to be hatching for her. "After he did what he did, he deserves no mercy. Not even an easy death."
Matt listens to the blood in her body as it courses through her, trying to gain insight into her moods because her words give so little. And just like that it comes. They. They who? In all of the days of lawyering, he'd always advised people against representing themselves for this reason: emotional attachment. His own thinking is clouded by his emotions—unable to push them away and focus on the objective. "Them? Who are they?"
There's the faintest curl of Elektra's lips as her head turns to the side in silent contemplation. "My employers." Her fingers tighten around the sai, her obligation towards them ever present in the back of her mind. She allows her gaze to shift. "I'm bound to them." Her jaw tightens and she hisses, "Debts need repayment, Matt."
"You seem to be varied in how you repay your debts, Elektra," Matt says coldly. "I thought our bond was a little more important. I guess I was wrong." Matt exhales, his breath visible to her in a cloud of smoke, and to him in a haze of pink in front of his face as it registers on his radar. "I should go."
"You're right," Elektra answers cryptically. About what is anyone's guess. "But I should be more insulted. You had an opportunity not taken to kill my killer. You sent him to prison where inevitably some tart will one day let him out. To finish the job you couldn't." Her tongue rolls over her lips. "And my bond to them, to this opportunity they've given me in my afterlife is beyond anything I can humanly comprehend," she hisses. "So Matt, move on, let me repay my debt, and stay out of my way."
She turns on her heel back towards the mouth of the alley.
Matt listens to her walk away and mutters, mostly to himself, "We'll see about that last part."
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