Disclaimer:

I do not own Elektra or any other Marvel Comics characters. This is a fan fiction story meant only for the enjoyment of myself and other Elektra movie and comic fans.

Title: The Treasure

Genre: Action/Adventure, Romance, Fantasy, Comics

Setting: This story is set in the Elektra Movie-verse

Rating: PG-13, for violence

Written By: Jennifer S. a.k.a. AssissinElektra

Author's Note:For those who watch Angel and Buffy, my character Sorrow is sort of based on Drusilla. I picture them looking and acting a lot alike, although Sorrow is not insane, just evil.

Chapter 10

Pain decided to make her first appearance that night at Ley's house. I remember perfectly, because sensing that someone was watching had been the only thing that made me pull away from Amanda's kiss.

Pain had been standing in the dark corner, next to the fireplace. She wore a long, black dress with tattered ends that added to her eerie appearance, and a dark cloak with a hood. Her eyes glowed red, and she wore her hair long and loose. It fell in cascades around her sharp shoulders. When she smiled, curling her unnaturally red lips, her sharp teeth were visible in the darkness.

My first thought had been for Amanda's safety, but Amanda jumped to her feet and into battle stance before I did. She had pulled her spear out, held it ready, and glared at Pain.

"I come for The Treasure." Pain announced, as if her words would make Amanda walk off with her without a fight.

"Too bad you're gonna leave without it." I told her, eyeing the flames in the fireplace. I was ready to soak her cloak with fire if I had to.

"Do not try to test me, mortal. I come from a universe that is beyond your comprehension." Pain had told me, her voice deep with power.

"And what universe is that?" Amanda asked.

"You must be The Treasure." Pain had smiled at Amanda, had looked at her like she was nothing more than a box of golden coins.

"I'm known by one name only." Amanda said, coldly. "Silent Death."

"You were not so silent when they pierced your arms." Pain said, waving her hand at Amanda. Amanda fell to her knees and screamed in pain as red holes appeared in her arms. I hadn't known what Pain had done to her then, but I found out later that The Hand had tortured Amanda many times, once by nailing her to a wall. Pain had reopened those horrible wounds.

"Jeremy…" I looked at Amanda as she struggled to speak, "Sue and…her husband…" I nodded and hesitantly left Amanda for the stairs. But, at the top of the stairs stood Sorrow.

She smiled at me—an enticing smile that dared me to make a move—and I had known then that Ley and her husband were already dead.

"You're a pretty man." Sorrow said, her high-pitched voice echoing throughout the house. She spoke with a thick British accent and twirled her hair in her fingers as she slowly walked down the stairs. "It's going to be a shame making you cry."

"What makes you think you can make me cry?" I had naively asked.

Sorrow had smiled, then opened her mouth unnaturally wide and screamed a familiar scream. It was like she had no jaw, because her mouth just kept getting wider, and the familiar scream louder. I fell backwards down the stairs at the sound of Becky's scream. It had never happened, because Becky had died in her sleep, but it had been a reoccurring nightmare of mine for years afterwards.

Sorrow giggled and took the last remaining steps to stand directly by me. "You're not too resistant." She told me, giving me a pleased look. Then she faked a pout and said, "I like it better when they run and scream and kill themselves because of their anguish. But, you're different. You are not afraid of me, just of the past." Her eyes stared into mine, and I couldn't break the gaze.

"Tell me, lovely, wonderful, beautiful man," Sorrow said, "why do you fear the past so?"

I looked at her, and then I answered, because for some reason she had the power over me to make me answer her. "Because," I said, my voice almost a whisper but loud enough that she heard me, "the past is unchangeable. What has happened can never be taken back."

"There are ways to change the past." Sorrow had told me, giving me an amused look. "Were I not about to kill you I might help you find those ways. You are so pretty to me." She smiled. I did not respond, so she spoke again.

"The Treasure is ours, mortal." She said, and her voice was Becky's. "You failed me once, brother." She said as her face melted away to look just like Becky's. "Do not fail me again." She added. "Give me The Treasure, Jeremy." I still don't know to this day if she had known my name or if I had just thought I heard her say it because she looked like Becky.

I remember that I covered my ears, trying to block out the false sound of my sister's voice. But, Sorrow had only laughed, then kicked me against the wall. I stood up quickly after that kick, holding my ribs where she had no doubt broken one, and glared at her.

"You're not getting on my good side." I told her. I sucked the fire from the fireplace a few feet away, then breathed the fire at Sorrow's face. She screamed in agony, and backed away, scratching at her face as she tried to put the flames out.

"Sorrow is an easy thing to be rid of." I looked at the man who was speaking. "But fear will haunt you forever." He was tall and thin, but built with enough muscle to knock me around. He had tattoos of thousands of screaming faces running down both arms, and those faces all held a look of complete terror. He had noticed my eyeing them.

"I keep them to remember those I have defeated." He explained, smiling. "It's where I keep their souls." He added, his voice sinister and threatening.

"What are you?" I asked him.

"I am the horror that will not let you sleep at night. I am the shadows that follow you when you are alone. I am your deepest, darkest fear. And I am going to destroy you." He said, keeping his smile. "Let me see what you fear most." He said, closing his eyes and concentrating.

I took that chance to kick him, but right before my foot hit his face I heard Amanda scream. This scream was different from before, more painful, and I glanced over to see that she was lying on the floor a foot away from me in a pool of blood. I forgot about Fear and rushed over to Amanda, bringing her up into my arms.

"Amanda?"

"I'm dying, Jeremy." She said, struggling to speak. The blood that was pouring into her mouth made a gurgling sound as she spoke. "I'm…dying…"

"No." I told her. "You can't, Amanda! You're immortal! You can't die!" I felt tears form in my eyes—and I don't cry very often at all, so the feeling was a bit of a shock. "Amanda, you can't leave me now. Not when you've shown me that I can live for someone else, that I can change my ways and do good. Please don't leave me!"

I heard Fear laughing, but I kept my eyes on Amanda's. She smiled at me. "Say it, Jeremy, and mean it." She told me.

I didn't think before I said what I said next, because I just said what I felt.
"Amanda, I'm falling in love with you. Please don't leave me alone now!" My voice was pathetically thick with despair, so much that I could even hear it. And then I watched Amanda take her last breath, and she fell limp in my arms. Fear was laughing much louder now.

What I heard next though surprised me more than anything had so far. I heard Amanda's voice. I glanced over to see her screaming at me even as she struggled to fight Pain, and I was confused.

"It's an illusion, Jeremy!" She screamed. "Fear can do that!" She knocked Pain onto the ground long enough to stop and look at me with a truly sincere look on her face. "Your worst fear is my death." She said, quietly. I tried to call out to her and warn her before Pain slammed her fist into Amanda's face, but I wasn't quick enough.

When Amanda looked back up at pain as she struggled to stand, the part of her face where Pain's fist had touched was covered with hundreds of tiny cuts, which I could only assume were old wounds reopened at her touch. Amanda winced at the pain, then jumped to her feet and began fighting Pain again. When I turned back to face Fear, I saw that Sorrow was standing next to him, looking very angry.

"That wasn't very nice." Sorrow said, tilted her head as the burns my flames had left on her skin healed.

"Your worst fear is the demise of another." Fear said, beaming in delight. "How strange and wonderful at the same time."

"How do you figure?" I snapped.

"Because, caring for another as much as you do is nothing more than a weakness. It will be your fall." He told me.

"Caring for another is what keeps me going sometimes." I said, thinking of the new hope that Amanda had given me. I was back on the road to being a good guy again. I knew it was not going to be an easy room back, but the thought of Amanda being there with me made it seem easier.

"I'm not as weak as you think." I said, holding my hands out.

"The pretty man wants to play." Sorrow said, smiling at me. She was a strange, morbid type of beauty. But, she also disgusted me.

"The question is," I said, concentrating as I spoke to pull the ground water out from around Ley's house, "are you ready to lose the game?" I finished. Finding the water was easy since it had rained a few days before. I willed it to find its way into the house, and suddenly the room was flooded.

Everyone was swallowed up by the cold waves except for me, because I had perfect control over the waves and was able to move them around me. I protected Amanda too, redirecting the waves from around her to Pain.

Amanda's eyes caught sight of mine just as she brushed some wet hair from in front of her eyes back to behind her ear. She looked at me and everything else seemed to stop, and I realized then that I really, truly was falling in love with her. But, Death is a terrible thing to love, and I knew that. I knew that from the moment I first laid eyes on her, and yet I was unable to stop myself from falling for her.

She took a deep breath, the looked around the room as I pushed the waves back outside. Pain, Fear, and Sorrow were gone, and the only evidence that they had ever been there to begin with was Ley's torn up living room and Amanda's bleeding arms.

I ran over to Amanda and caught her just as she fell toward the ground. "It's okay, Amanda." I told her as she slipped slowly into unconsciousness. "I'm here." Her blue eyes opened just enough to look at me, and then they rolled back into her head and she was sleeping.

Looking at her bleeding arms, I immediately started looking for some sort of bandage. I took Amanda upstairs, walking past the room where Ley's and her husband's bodies were. I tried not to look but caught a glimpse of them and saw that they had not only been killed but mutilated. Ley's eyelids had been completely removed so that she seemed to stare at me. I shuddered at the sight and closed the door, then headed down the hallway.

There was a sort of office room at the end, and after pushing the computer and printer off of the desk, I gently laid Amanda onto it. The bodies of Ley and her husband haunted the upstairs, a lingering morbid reminder of the intruders who had tried to destroy us, but at least it was dry.

I ran into the bathroom and grabbed all the towels I could find. Once I had stopped the bleeding my wrapping Amanda's arms with the towels, I felt it was safe enough to start looking for real bandages.

It was about two hours later, long after I had cleaned, stitched, and bandaged Amanda's wounds that she woke up. I had fallen asleep, my head on her lap and her hand in mine. I woke up because I sensed someone staring at me.

Amanda smiled when she saw me open my eyes and lift up my head. "How are you feeling?" I asked her.

"Better." She said. Amanda looked at her arms and tears from the memories of the original wounds Pain had reopened formed in her eyes. She looked up from her arms at me. "You saved me, Jeremy."

"Well, I was in the neighborhood and I had nothing else to do." I said, jokingly. But my smile faded as I became serious and looked at her. "Did you see what Fear did to me?" She nodded. "Did you…" I hesitated, "Did you hear what I said?"

Amanda looked away. "Yes."

"And, what did you think?" I asked, taking a chance.

"I think that I'm the last person you want to get involved with, Jeremy." Amanda said, plainly, holding nothing back. "A deal with the devil you can sometimes get out of, but" she looked at me, "death is final, there are no arguments." She looked so sad, so tired of the life that she had been living, but I had no sorrow for her. She had just ripped my heart out right after I'd handed it to her.

"I'm not afraid to die." I told her, trying to stay calm. She looked at me, studied me with her knowing eyes, and then gave me a little half smile.

"I know you're not, Jeremy." She told me. "And that's the problem."

"Amanda…" She looked away again. "What are you so afraid of?" She didn't answer, so I sighed then said, "I'm not Kismet, you know." A tear fell from her eye, but she still refused to look at me. "I'm falling in love with you, Amanda, and if you're not there to catch me I might die anyway."

I stood up and looked around the room. Then I changed the subject drastically. "We need to get out of this house." I told her. "It reeks of death."

"Sue and her husband did not survive then." Amanda concluded.

"I'm sorry." I said, and I really meant it. "They were already dead when I started for the stairs." Amanda blinked her tears away, then sat up—careful to not use her wounded arms. "There was nothing you could have done." I told her.

"Actually, Jeremy, we could have stayed far away from this house. We could have avoided putting them in danger. But, I was selfish and afraid." Amanda said, and I was a bit surprised to hear her admit her fear.

"Why are they after me?" She asked suddenly. "What do I have to offer that so many must be sacrificed for my capture?" They seemed like rhetorical questions, so I kept silent. Amanda turned her head and looked at me. "I'll get revenge for every life they took in my name." She stood up.

"Amanda, you're not in any condition to…" I stopped as I watched her rip off the bandages I had so carefully covered her arms with.

"Take my hand." Amanda said, holding her bloody arm out toward me. I looked at it, uncertain of what to do. Her wounds were so raw, so open. "Take my hand. Please." She sounded so calm, but I saw desperation in her eyes, so I reached out and took her hand into mine. Her touch felt wonderful, but the sad look on her face ruined it for me.

"What?" I asked her.

"You can heal me." She said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Jeremy, you can heal me. Sue told me that once two people are connected in either life or death or both, they can heal each other in times of great need. We are connected now, Jeremy. We've fought side by side more than once for our lives. You, out of all the people in this world, are now my closest friend." I felt honored, but sad that she had no one else left. "Now, want it more than anything, and you can heal me."

"Have you done this before?" I asked her.

"No."
"How do you know it will work then?" Amanda looked at me without a doubt in her expression, and spoke softly.

"Have faith in me." It was a whisper, but I heard it perfectly, would always remember the way her tongue rolled around those words.

"Okay." I told her, closing my eyes. I concentrated completely on her, breathed in her scent, observed the touch of her hand, saw the image of her beautiful face in my mind's eye, and I wanted more than anything for her arms to heal.

When I opened my eyes Amanda was glowing, literally. I backed away as she hovered in the air for a moment, her eyes closed and her hair flowing gracefully around her shoulders in dark waves. I watched in awe as her glow intensified, then as it slowly died as she gently touched the ground again. She opened her eyes and looked at me, and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She was so beautiful right then, that it brought tears to my eyes.

I looked at her arms and saw that they were perfectly healed, that the tiny cuts on her cheek were also gone. She had no wounds. "What did you do?" She asked, looking at me, and I was surprised to hear that she sounded a little angry with me.

"What? What's wrong?" She didn't answer me. "Amanda, what's wrong?"

She blinked, then whispered, "You were supposed to only heal my body, Jeremy." I was confused and started to ask her what she was talking about, but she answered my question. "Not my soul." My mouth fell open in astonishment.

To Be Continued…

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