The knife doesn't just graze his ribs, it plunges, it cuts, it sings like a sharp blade will when it strikes home—
And because he is Matthew, he keeps talking.
He feels it, of course—the pain rises in his face like a fever, and his breaths shorten. As for those blown-out eyes that she loves, the eyes as dark and hollow as the sky behind the stars—they widen and wince. He's wounded, and he loves her, but she isn't ready for him yet.
.
She's ready when she kisses him. If they lived long enough, she would be torn by regret. Pierced by her own selfishness.
But they are dying, and Elektra has always loved to revel in her sins.
.
If she cannot bring love to the point of death as the just and righteous would have her do, she will bring death to the point of love, tie the two together and sink them like a stone through water, like heartbreak to the center of the earth.
They will die down here. She turns the thought roundabout in her mind like a comfort. They will not leave this place, and no one will even find their bodies. It is deep and secret and soon it will be over.
If the world ends with them, that is the closest to eternity that anyone—even Alexandra, even Gao—can ever have known.
Matthew could not save her, but he will never say that (he will never have the chance). And that is why she can be selfish, that is why she can hold him here, bleeding out against her.
.
She has missed kissing him. She has missed those soft, clever, generous lips.
He kisses her like he's won. And not won a battle—oh no, it is never that kind of petty triumph for him. He kisses her like he's won her heart, her sanity, her freedom.
And the triumph, the trick, the tragedy—they are all one. She lets him.
.
Long ago, she tried to break him. Judging by the sight and feeling of him beside her, arms around her, perhaps she succeeded.
She has been his eyes, and he, her heart, and they were once Stick's hands, but the right hand never quite believed what the left hand was doing.
Yet. Yet. It is alright, it is alright—so she tells herself. She never lets anyone else touch him. No one else may break him.
He is all, and always hers.
.
There are tears on her face. It could be sweat, or blood, but it isn't.
The building caves in around them.
It is over. The reckoning she wanted, the reckoning he prayed for—at least, so he says.
It is the end, until it isn't.
.
Because none of it, none of that red-painted battlefield of her own making, answers for the true ending—a coda of blind and blinding light.
For the ending is this:
They make it out alive, and it is Elektra who carries him.