Author's Note: Yeah, haven't updated my other fic in a month, but I post this bit of randomness. That's what happens when you lay awake stressing yourself out and try too hard to sleep. Anyway, I know this isn't anything special and it's not meant to be, but please do drop me a review. All mistakes are due to my incredibly fast, incredibly shoddy editing job. Also, the mountaintop scene was inspired by Daredevil #190, courtesy of Mr. Frank Miller.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue me.
It's the quiet moments that got to her. Really, if every moment of every day could be filled with at least a bit of white noise, she'd be fine. Really. But that's not how it was, not this far in the mountains, this far from car horns and radios and the thousand other noises that came with New York. The days were bearable, between the training and the old man's lectures, there weren't many silent moments during the day. Though sometimes Elektra wanted to trade Stick's orders and criticisms for a bit of quiet. It was a fleeting urge, lasting but a few seconds before Elektra remembered the truth. Sanctimonious preaching's from the blind man she hardly knew were better than the silence. Silence meant the other blind man, the one she couldn't afford to think about.
The worst came right after her resurrection. After Stick finished relating the unbelievable explanation she had no choice but to believe, Elektra couldn't stand to keep her eyes open anymore. It seemed that being brought from the dead was a rather exhausting process. Weak and weary in every way possible, Elektra still managed to glare at her savior until he decided to leave. When Stick commented on her state, Elektra said something that probably caused her childhood etiquette coach to roll in her grave. Elektra had never understood why kung fu had to be followed up with lessons on the proper way to act a lady, but her father's motives had always been somewhat hazy. When Stick commented on her lack of gratitude and respect, Elektra lunged at him. Rather, she made it halfway to sitting up before collapsing on the small cot again. When Stick offered to have someone stay with her, Elektra simply scowled and faced the wall,
When he was gone, Elektra released a shaky breath, crushing the thin blanket that covered her and wishing she had something better to take hold of. It wasn't terrible at first, she could hear hundreds of students practicing outside, distant as the sound was. She fell asleep to that sound, her dreams anything but peaceful. The next time she opened her eyes, it was dark and quiet. There was soup on the table next to her, but no noise, not even the chirp of a few crickets. And she was still too tired to move. Physically, emotionally, it all amounted to the same thing. Stick had fixed the hole in her abdomen, but Elektra was still broken. Broken beyond repair or recognition.
The absence of sound was intolerable. With nothing to hit, nowhere to run, not even a hint of noise beyond that of her own breathing, Elektra was left with nothing. Nothing to do but mourn for what she'd lost. She'd promised to find Matt again, but that had to be a lie. Second chance at life didn't mean second chance at love, not after what she'd done to him. Still, with silence echoing all around her, Elektra couldn't help replaying those last minutes over and over. The promise she'd made, the one she had no way of keeping now, the knife and the blood and the fall. And Matt crawling to her side. His voice had been so raw, so ragged when he implored her to stay. Stay with him, stay alive. She hadn't been able to do that either, and she'd known from his tone that Matt understood. Even as her world faded, becoming nothing more than black silence, Elektra heard in his tone that Matt realized what he was asking, that he wanted the impossible. She'd wanted to say something to him, something grand and meaningful, something that would make up for the events of that night. But that was impossible too. There was nothing she could've said, no words to express the depths of her sorrow. Even if there had been, she was dying and they both knew that, and her heart stopped beating long before Elektra could bother with any sort of tear-filled goodbye.
Miraculously alive, Elektra lay on that cot for what felt like hours, hating the lack of noise. Lack of noise allowed her mind to drift into unpleasant topics. Like her father. But not really her father, because Elektra couldn't grieve for him anymore. Grief was anger now, they were the same emotion. When she could move again, Elektra demanded to know why, why Stick had brought her back to a new life of misery and solitude. Her father was gone, Matt was lost to her, so what was the point? He'd rambled on about not having the answer; it was something she needed to find on her own. After being told that he sounded like a fortune cookie, Stick revised. He said that she had potential, a great deal of it, that he could help her. The first part appealed to Elektra. Vanity was hard to avoid when one excelled at nearly everything. The second half was ludicrous because she was beyond help, but Elektra swallowed it anyway. If Stick needed her for some secret battle then fine. It wasn't as though there was anything left to go back to.
It was mostly okay after that. Training past the exhaustion point, then butting heads with Stick until she was ready to strangle him. If she could ever actually get near him in a fight anyway. Most nights, Elektra dropped into nothingness the minute she hit that little bed in that little cabin. Most nights, she was too tired even to dream. Some nights were different though. Some nights, she lay awake in that hideaway in the mountains, surrounded by silence. Silence led to thoughts, thoughts besides anger and rage. Silence led to Matt.
It was easier after Stick threw her out She didn't have the orders and the criticisms to keep her distracted, but neither did she have his voice in her ear trying to play conscience. If he wanted to give up on her fine, it just meant that she no longer had to deal with the philosophical debates and fortune cookie riddles. True it was difficult for a time, very, very difficult. The gap between being exiled and deciding on her new career was terrible. Lots of quiet moments when her mind could wander, lots of wandering to places Elektra didn't want to be.
She considered going back to New York, to the person who was always waiting to creep up on her. Going back would solve the silence problem at least. But Elektra couldn't do it. Ever since her father's death, she'd been beyond help, even from Matt. Especially from Matt.
The work was good, best thing for her really. It required her full attention, and with McCabe lining up job after job, there wasn't much time for the quiet moments that were such a threat. Not much time, but still enough, still too much.
"Another day, another dollar. Good job, E, client's pleased."
Pausing in her wipe down of the kitchen counter, Elektra threw the agent a sour look. "Client might be. I'm not."
"What, this doesn't please you?" Snapping open the suitcase he'd brought over, McCabe displayed the neat piles of unmarked bills."
"Hand off the counter," Elektra ordered, not looking at him or the money.
Exasperated, McCabe backed away from her, raising his hands in a gesture of defeat. "You ever think about opening a maid service? Side job during the slow season?"
"We don't have a slow season," she replied, tossing the used dishtowel in the garbage.
"Knock on wood," said McCabe. In demonstration, he crossed to the single wooden dining chair and pretended to touch it, though his hand never actually made contact. "So you're not pleased. What can I do about that?"
"You didn't tell me he couldn't speak," Elektra snapped, tying off a garbage bag full of items she'd handled and placing it next to three others. She continued avoiding his eyes.
"Malcolm?"
"Who else would I be talking about?"
The agent shrugged. "He couldn't speak. Childhood illness or accident, something like that."
"You didn't tell me."
"Did that stop you?"
Elektra said nothing, crossing to the sink and bending to retrieve cleaning supplies. They always begged for mercy, asked questions, did anything to put off the inevitable. They were all cowards and they all babbled and pleaded and talked about their wives or their kids or their grandchildren. Not this last one. This last one had been shocked by her arrival, but hadn't said anything. The lips had formed maybe two words, no sound escaping. Then he'd stopped trying. The lips stopped moving, the terror in his eyes became a kind of gentle resignation, and the man simply looked at her and waited. The experience was disconcerting, to put it mildly. Elektra much preferred the pleas for mercy to the silence.
"Hey, it's not like I wouldn't have told you. You're the one who wanted bear minimum, only the relevant details."
It was easier to end a life when you didn't know the details of that life. She supposed that was why most of her victims liked so much to speak of the people they'd leave behind. "You didn't find that detail relevant?"
"Why, because it made things easier for you, no way to call for help? If you have to know, I thought it'd take some of the fun out it and then you'd bust my ass. Guess the result's the same no matter what."
"What's that mean, McCabe?"
"Means you need to work on winning friends and influencing people."
"Not that," Elektra argued, locating a mop and bucket and placing them next to her. That done, she turned to look at him for the first time since his arrival.
McCabe shrugged a second time. "It's fine if you get off on talking to them, E. Weird, but fine, no judgment in this room. Like I said though, didn't want to spoil the fun, and it's not my fault the guy-"
"From now on, I want the full package."
"Full-full or half-full. Because full-full is a big leap from bear minimum. I could give you the names of preschool teachers and childhood pets."
"Get everything you can. And get out."
"The maid service doesn't pan out, you could always get a job as a hostess."
"McCabe, just go."
"Fine, fine," he replied, holding his hands palm out. "You want me to drop those at the curb?" he asked, gesturing towards the garbage bags.
Elektra shook her head. "Incinerator's downstairs, I'll take care of it later."
"Don't say I didn't try being a good citizen. Look, there's an offer out of New York. Now I know how you are about-"
"Not New York," she interrupted. "Never New York."
"E, this hatred of the Yankees or whatever your problem is, it's limiting your cash intake. More importantly, it's limiting my cash intake."
"Not New York, McCabe."
He left and she cleaned, focusing on closing up the apartment and getting out. The plane was unusually silent that time. No whiney kids, very few announcements from the captain, and a cabin full of broken earphones. Cheap airline, but the airline with the earliest flight out. Unusually silent flight, unusually silent man. It was easier when they talked. Their voices drowned out the one in her head, at least temporarily. Stick wasn't there to be her conscience anymore, but the same couldn't be said for Matt.
After returning to and departing from Stick's training camp, after trying and failing to keep Abby Miller alive, after doing for Abby what Stick did for her, Elektra knew that work was out of the question. She couldn't live with it anymore. Stick had put her on a crash course with Abby and Mark, and now she couldn't live with it anymore. It was Stick then, who'd essentially put her out of a job.
She didn't miss it as much as she thought she would, which lent credence to Stick's assertion that Elektra was in fact redeemable. She didn't miss the adrenaline, the actual killing, as much as she thought she would, but that didn't make things easy. Unemployment meant downtime, lots and lots of downtime. More downtime meant more silence.
She'd managed not to think about Matt for the longest time. Even when she was languishing on that island, waiting for McCabe to give the go-ahead, she hadn't thought of him. Even when she was kissing Mark, the first time in years that she had any kind of satisfying interaction with another human being. Even then, Matt hadn't entered the equation.
It was funny how her mind worked. With the death of her parents, the pain was always right there, waiting for an excuse to hit the surface. With Matt, she could compartmentalize, lock the feelings away for long periods of time. It hadn't always been that way, but practice made perfect.
Elektra had gotten better at dealing with the silence, at keeping it from overtaking her. She'd gotten better, but no work meant no distractions, or at least fewer distractions. When she left the Millers, promising herself that things would be different, Elektra hadn't realized exactly what that would mean. Suddenly, she was alone again, kicked out by Stick with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was different of course, she and the old man had come to some kind of understanding, but that didn't change the basic facts. Abby and Mark had their own lives, training with Stick again would no doubt lead to bloodshed, and Elektra wasn't good at anything else. Killing was off the table, the Millers were gone, Stick was Stick, and Elektra was left with nothing but time. Time to sit in silent contemplation and examine her choices.
For obvious reasons, dissecting her life over the last few years wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. She needed to do things. Difficult things that required high concentration, because if she really considered the kind of person she'd become, Elektra was libel to go insane. Problem was, it wasn't easy to keep herself busy, to keep her mind occupied. It was adrenaline and exhaustion that kept Matt out of her head, kept him out so effectively that Elektra thought she might be getting past it, getting past him. The absence of adrenaline and exhaustion showed how very wrong she was about that. With nothing but time on her hands, with endless moments of quiet reflection, Elektra realized that she'd never come close to forgetting about Matt. She'd buried him in a far corner of her mind, but the act was a farce, empty. Just like the grave he'd paid for, the one situated very close to Jack Murdock's headstone.
For the moment, Matt was back in that far corner of her mind, his voice silent in her head. He wasn't asking what she'd done or why she'd done it, he wasn't asking her to come back. For the first time in months, Elektra had found something that really did require all her effort and concentration.
The mountain was more like a wall. A sheer mass of snow and ice that—according to local lore—was nearly impossible to climb. When the drunks of this small foreign village nestled in the hills told her about it, Elektra hadn't paid much attention. Most of them smelled like something foul, and most of them had already tried hitting on her. When they told her that conquering this mountain was supposed to lead to a spiritual epiphany, she'd ignored them. Eastern superstition at its best, but Elektra was still here, still freezing her ass off and trying not to fall into white nothingness. She'd been traveling since she left Mark and Abby, figuring out what the hell to do with herself. More accurately, she'd been trying to figure that out. Elektra wasn't looking for any revelations, she was killing time. Distracting herself. Fighting boredom. Also, there'd been a certain challenge in those men's voices when they talked about this place. So she was risking her neck on a remote mountaintop to keep herself busy and prove a point. That's what she did instead of going to the employment office.
The locals may have been idiots, but they weren't lying about this. It really was like a wall, a very slippery, very dangerous wall without very many footholds. The howling wind and bitter cold didn't help things, nor did what Elektra thought to be the beginnings of frostbite. Her climbing equipment could've been better, and she very much wanted another five or six layers of clothing. Maybe McCabe had been right about her supposed death wish
Despite all of that, Elektra made it to the top. As if in reward, the sun suddenly made its presence knowing, bathing the snow-capped peak in its rays. The wind slowed slightly, no longer biting into every inch of her body. It was still cold, but not bitterly so, it was bearable now.
Pulling down the hood of her parka and shedding winter goggles, Elektra studied the view. It was the typical picturesque mountain range, and somehow Elektra thought that it really wasn't worth the effort. She'd made it through another few hours without going crazy, but now she was standing here with nothing but a view and the prospect of an arduous descent through very thin air. She might've been able to appreciate this a few years back, but these days it was hard to impress her.
Something changed on the mountain, and it took her a moment to decide what that something was. The wind had stopped. Not slowed, stopped. It was so abrupt, like an unexpected downpour on a clear night. The silence was almost disturbing in its completeness.
It occurred to her then that the view would be better if Matt were here. He'd recognize the beauty in their surroundings, even if she had to describe every detail of them. She'd tell him about the height and the vastness and the sun glinting off the snow, and Matt would understand the awesomeness of this place. Elektra wasn't sure how she knew this, but she did know that Matt would find beauty where she couldn't. He'd find the good in everything. Maybe he would be able to find the good in her.
Thinking of Matt didn't bring the usual rush of pain. She felt no need to push away the memories. Because of that, the quiet surrounding her wasn't threatening the way it should've been. Elektra felt no need to keep herself busy, to keep herself out of the past. Instead, she smiled and enjoyed the silence.