A/N: This fated pairing will truly be the death of me.
The first time I took a life, I was twelve years old. I did it of my own volition. I wasn't saving another, I wasn't even protecting myself. I did it because I needed to know that I could.
Elektra remembers being twelve. Not as other girls remember, standing before a long-ago lover—feeling thin and pale and uncertain, butterflies all around them. Elektra remembers being twelve and being alone. There had been blood, so much blood, but none on her hands, because she had been careful that way, and she was afraid it would stain. (It was the only thing she was afraid of.)
—not that I could get away with it, not that I could get used to it—
There's something about the way his scattered gaze follows the sound of her voice, as though he's always searching. For me, she thinks. It's the pain she feels then that almost cuts her most. She never gets used to this.
And you enjoyed it?
What she would give to say no. But Elektra remembers what it felt like to be twelve, knowing that she should feel fear, guilt, remorse—and feeling only power. It rushed to her head. Kiss or kill, she's always liked a heady rush. (It's a high she never gets used to.)
Goodbye, Elektra.
They were almost tangled up together, a few days ago, scars against scars, companionable and human. He prayed for her, and he kissed her, and he wasn't hiding anymore what she'd come to find—he still loved her.
Knowing that, she knows his goodbye is a fatal one.
And if he was not the man he is, the man she must leave—she might dare to tell him how she first fell in love with him.
(It was because she needed to know that she could.)
