﹟1 CRUSH.

MATTHEW HAD ASKED:   do not kill her.  do not cut her down.   and so elektra stays her blade at her side.  

her hands though   ...   her hands she uses just as easily.   with the strength of a coffin sliding shut,   she takes the DOE/KILLER to the throat,  fingers curling hard around the carotid artery.   there is no dodging, no sliding loose; this little thing, she is not a trained killer. there is no escape but death, a fact elektra knows intimately, a fact she could bring upon this girl swiftly and easily. she squeezes a little, gesturing to the end. soon the oxygen will run out.   soon the fog will set in,  and quicker she will fall to the ground, unconscious and useless to elektra. not yet. not yet. still a role to play. a promise to keep. a more fitting life to take. this is matthew's burden to bear, and she has done her part interceding on catheryn's childish little attack on matthew's tow - headed wife.

she releases, keeping her grip, but allowing the girl to breathe, a brief reprieve only so she might SPEAK what elektra needs to know.

SHE SAYS: "BULLSEYE. WHERE IS HE? TELL ME NOW AND I'LL ONLY CHAIN YOU, NOT CUT OFF YOUR HANDS."

the urge to struggle is too strong, causing her to uselessly wriggle underneath the woman's firm, crushing grasp. as should have been expected, it only increases the pain, the pull at the base of her neck as she tries to turn quickly turned harsh and aching. her mouth opens in a soundless gasp, hiccupping in her desperation for air until she is finally granted a reprieve, however slight. the pressure upon her slender throat still threatens to overtake her, but she is nonetheless grateful for the loosened grip.

tracks 1 - 7 ,

the picture's far too big to look at, kid.

the truth still isn't out.

each time you turn a corner, you're right back where you were.

your only hope is forgetting.

is it your fear of being buried that makes you so afraid to speak?

i would do it all again.

i mean, it's cool if you keep quiet, but i like singing.

wishing will just leave you empty.

you can try to live in darkness, but you will never shake the light.

it will greet you every morning, make you more aware with its absence at night.

i've seen the day of your awakening, boy, and it's coming soon.

you're just a piece of the puzzle, so i think you'd better find your place.

if it makes you happy then keep kneeling, but i'm standing up.

i've been a witness to such wonders.

i think i'll be returning now.

i understand you must keep moving, friend, but i'm headed home.

i will send this message in code.

the hook's in deep, boys. there's no more time.

you can struggle in the water, be too stubborn to die, or you can just let go and be lifted to the sky.

there is no beginning to the story.

it's a shocking bit of footage viewed from a shitty tv screen.

you can squint at it through snowy static to make out the meaning.

we need some reception.

just tell us what to fear.

i don't know what tomorrow brings. it's alive with such possibilities.

please keep the tape rolling.

we need a record of our failures.

we must document our love.

i've sat too long in my silence, have grown too old in my pain, to shed this skin, be born again.

it starts with an ending.

thank you, friends, for the time we shared.

my love stays with you like sunlight and air.

oh, i truly wish i could keep hanging around here.

soon i will disappear.

this method acting, well, i call that living.

we have a problem with no solution but to love and to be loved.

i've made peace with the falling leaves. i see their same fate in my own body.

i won't be frightened when i'm awoken from this dream.

on a string, i was held.

my actions are orchestrated from above me.

for a song, i was bought.

now i lie when i talk.

onto a stage, i was pushed, with my sorrow well-rehearsed, so give me all your pity and your money now.

we used to think that sound was something pure.

now all anyone's listening for are the mistakes.

i know what must change.

fuck my face, fuck my name. they are brief and false advertisements for a soul i don't have, something true i have lacked.

they will lift me up out of darkness.

how awful that must feel.

you said you'd be my dream, i could have you every night.

if by morning i'd forgotten you, well, no big deal, that'd be alright.

you are the reoccurring kind. you never really leave my mind.

are you the love of my lifetime?

there's been times i've had my doubts.

we were just kids when i first kissed you.

i wish we were there now.

i write when i'm away letters that you'll never read.

go explore those other women, the geography of their bodies.

you're a boomerang, you'll see. you will return to me.

can i follow you?

it's up the stairs and out of view. no prying eyes.

your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out.

you didn't care to know who else may have been you before.

i want a lover i don't have to love.

i thought he said to meet me here, but i'm not sure.

i got the money if you got the time.

you said it feels good.

i'll give it a try.

let's just keep touching.

i got a hunger and i can't seem to get full.

i need some meaning i can memorize. the kind i have always seems to slip my mind.

you write such pretty words, but life's no storybook.

love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt.

do you like to hurt?

then hurt me.

there was a loophole in my dreaming, so i got out of it.

to my surprise, my eyes were wide and already open.

there's nothing i can do for you you can't do for yourself.

just hold my hand, i think that that would help.

i think i'm cured. in fact, i'm sure of it.

that's how i learned the lesson that everyone's alone.

don't worry, 'cause now i got your back.

every time you feel like crying, i'm gonna try and make you laugh.

if it just hurts too bad, then we'll wait for it to pass, and i will keep you company.

we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve.

our lives are fractions of a whole.

did he come to save, did he come at all?

would he make me clean again?

they say they don't know when, but a day is gonna come.

every man wanted her, yeah, and so did i.

she up and died in a fit of vanity.

what my father did, you know it don't mean shit. i'm not him.

you think i need some discipline. well, i had my share.

i got a good talking to.

i don't know why, but i still try to smile when they talk at me like i'm just a child.

there is no truth, there is only you and what you make the truth.

i'll leave you town and i'll never look back.

i don't look back because the road is clear and laid out ahead of me.

they'll know how i love them.

i'm nothing without their love.

i don't know when, but a day is gonna come.

could you please start explaining?

you know, i need some understanding.

i want to understand.

tracks 8 - 13 ,

the future has got me worried.

the spinning never stops.

i just want someone to walk in front and i'll follow the leader.

i fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush.

i almost forgot who i was, but came to my senses.

i'm trying to be assertive. i'm making plans.

wanna rise to the occasion, yeah, meet all of their demands.

i know i should be brave, but i'm just too afraid of all this change.

it's too hard to focus through all this doubt.

i keep making these to do lists but nothing gets crossed out.

when the world ends, who's gonna hear it?

i've been feeling sentimental for days gone by.

now i've got to crawl to get anywhere at all.

i'm not as strong as i thought.

oh, how i long to be found.

i wait for a hand to lift me up, help me stand.

i have been laying so low. don't want to lay here no more.

someday, maybe, i'll get to where i'm going.

our love is dead but without limit.

you taught me to just let it all go by.

it was always horribly convenient and happening too fast.

return to the person that you were and i will do the same.

it is too hard to belong to someone who is gone.

once too often, i have retreated into the depths of my despair.

i felt closer to you than you ever would have known.

hurry up and run to the one that you love.

blind him with your kindness.

he'll make war on who you were before.

he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

i am not gonna bless you with such compliments, some degrading psalm of praise like the kind that converted you to me so long ago.

the truth is that gossip's as good as gospel in this town.

you can save face but you won't ever save your soul.

no beauty could have come from me.

i'm a waste of breath, of space, of time.

what did you expect?

with one day leading to the next, you get a little closer to your death.

no one got hurt, you should be thankful.

your carelessness, it is something awful.

your decisions now are yours alone.

i'm sick, lonely.

i'll play again, get lucky.

i want to scream out that it all is nonsense.

can't they see it's pointless?

i'm never real, it's just a sketch of me.

when the voices blend they sound like angels.

i hope there's some room still in the middle.

i have no faith, but it's all i want.

he must have been the voice of god.

well, that's one less founded opinion, one more cause for a dispute.

it was a spectacle. no, i mean a miracle.

it was a small mistake. sometimes that is all it takes.

and so it never started and it will never stop, just like i am and you are.

i baptized myself in change and one by one i drowned all of the people i had been.

i looked in the mirror and someone new was there.

still, i was as helpless as a chess piece.

in all of my salvation, i still felt imprisonment inside that holding cell that is myself.

oh, my patient prisoner, you have waited for this day and, finally, you are free!

we will finally know the way out of here.

i'll cut out my lover's tongue and sing of a graveyard gray and a garden green.

we won't have to worry no more.

are you still living there on your estate of sorrows?

you used to leave it occasionally, but now you don't even bother.

how their eyes seemed to follow you.

you were the saddest song in the shape of a woman.

i thought you were beautiful, but i wept with your movements.

oh, how she would worry so.

she asked me to care for you.

i went and betrayed her.

do you know we're in high demand?

us people who suffer, because we don't take to arguing and we're quick to surrender.

i think i would call tonight if i still had your number.

your thoughts have always lain close to mine.

you should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living.

it's the ones with the sorest throats who have done the most singing.

the city's driving me out of my mind.

next time, he will not aim so high. yeah, next time, neither will i.

i've learned to retreat at the first sign of danger.

i mean, why wait around if it's just to surrender?

ambition, i've found, can lead only to failure.

i do not read the reviews.

with all these wishes i make, i should buy something real.

i don't have them to blame.

well, i should stop pointing fingers, reserve my judgment.

"honesty," "accuracy" is just popular opinion and the approval rating's high.

someone's gonna die.

they give us fact or fiction? i guess an even split.

we're still the pawns in their game.

they take eye for an eye until no one can see.

we must stumble blindly forward, repeating history.

so sorry, so selfish.

i love you regardless and there's nothing you could do that would ever change this.

i'm not angry, it happens. but you just can't do it again.

i've been staring too long at the screen.

it came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody.

how grateful i was, then, to be part of the mystery.

"so if you weren't hungry, what were you?" he asks ... carefully, carefully. neutral at the mouth. neutral of the tone. "your symbolism in your kills is quite... specific." CHRISTIANITY. not like people have much need for religion anymore, not with sibyl to guide their hearts and minds. was it from her childhood? there's not much there. he can only guess. revenge on a religious upbringing, or maybe bringing a criminal to a state of godliness, salvation, freedom? cannibalism as an act of justice; tearing out the wickedness of man, partaking of the flesh to seal your holy state of retribution? or longing for a god long since struck down by the dominator's unflinching judgement?

he thinks of that very first case: the man allergic to the synthetic meats the government could so easily provide, and the way he'd cut into human beings instead as a result. that was meat; but even then, there was more, wasn't there? the failure of the system. the desperation of a starving man. his power over his victims. always more. kougami shifts in his seat, flicking to the next photo--this time, it's her arrest pictures, the ones that could never have been aired lest they damage the population's hue, cause undue stress. beside her mugshot is her psycho-pass; her crime-coefficient pushed past 270, nearing the level for a LETHAL ELIMINATION. aoyanagi pushing catheryn at the spine toward a car. division 2's reports are in the file as well, but he's already memorized what's there.

she looks back to the enforcer, watches him as he looks at the pictures. she knows he thinks she's horrible, even if he isn't showing it. they all do. no one understood. he's good at hiding it, pressing her. in a way, she supposes, it's entirely her fault that no one understands, her being completely unwilling to mention him, the one she had done it all for. she holds him under her tongue, her greatest secret, the thing they had never gotten out of her, not entirely. the rift between them escapes her memory entirely, the weight of isolation having driven her completely back into the arms of her devotion. she had come to like the tragedy of it — the lovers cruelly kept from each other by an evil force. nevermind the fact that he had in fact aided that force, turned her over. still, she seemed more devout in her beliefs than ever, feeling more passionate than she even had cutting into bodies with knives and teeth.

still, here, she wants to make him proud, that all - knowing being who came to her, saw her. he could still feel it here, couldn't he? god still existed in here, didn't he? she could still feel him, warming her flesh even in the cold concrete. she sits smug in her secrecy. don't worry, my love, i won't give you away. ever. ❝ I GUESS I'M RELIGIOUS. ❞ it was true that sibyl had all but eradicated the need for traditional religion, but, lucky for cath, hers was all but traditional. where the need for god or sibyl, god - like in her power, had failed her, he had saved her.

come down to my house.

you can always pull out if you like it too much.

make a whole new religion.

i'll feed your obsession.

there'll be nothing but this thing that you'll never doubt.

a hit is hard to resist and i never miss.

i can take you out with just a flick of my wrist.

bow down to me.

now i want it too much.

now i want it to stop.

hey, boy, take a look at me.

let me dirty up your mind.

i'll strip away your hard veneer and see what i can find.

i hate to see you here.

you choke behind a smile, a fake behind the fear.

this is what he pays me for.

i'll show you how it's done.

you'll learn to love the pain you feel.

like father, like son.

i know what's good for you.

you can touch me if you want.

i know you're dying to.

you're nothing special here.

i'm only happy when it rains.

i'm only happy when it's complicated.

i know you can't appreciate it.

you know i love it when the news is bad.

it feels so good to feel so sad.

pour your misery down on me.

i only smile in the dark.

my only comfort is the night gone black.

you'll get the message by the time i'm through.

you can keep me company.

as long as you don't care.

you wanna here about my new obsession?

i'm riding high upon a deep depression.

nothing that you say will release you.

nothing that you pray will forgive you.

nothing's what your words mean to me.

something that you did will destroy me.

something that you said will stay with me long after you're dead and gone.

if flesh could crawl, my skin would fall from off my bones and run away from here.

as far from god as heaven is wide.

if holy is as holy does, this house will burn straight down to hell.

nothing said could change the fact.

my trust was blind, you broke the pact.

if god's my witness, god must be blind.

take it back. i dare you, take it back.

no, you can't. you should have thought of that.

what's inside a man that goes so wrong?

choke on guilt, that's far too good for you.

say one word, i'll laugh and bury you.

i wish i could fly as angels can fly.

i bit my tongue and stood in line, with not much to believe in.

i bought into what i was sold and ended up with nothing.

this is not my idea of a good time.

you thought that i would never see.

what was meant for you was meant for me.

i was distracted at the time.

forget about yours, now what about mine?

you thought i was a little girl. you thought i was a little mouse.

you thought you'd take me by surprise, now i'm here, burning down your house.

i could have stayed that way forever.

bad blood and ghosts wrapped tight around me.

nothing could ever seem to touch me.

i lose what i love most.

did you know i was lost until you found me?

a stroke of luck or a gift from god?

you came to me.

here comes the cold again.

i feel it closing in.

you say that you'll be there to catch me. or will you only try to trap me?

these are the rules i make.

our chains were meant to break.

you'll never change me.

i can't use what i can't abuse.

i can't stop when it comes to you.

you burned me out but i'm back at your door.

i nearly died.

i came to cut you up.

i came to knock you down.

i came around to tear your little world apart.

i came to shut you up.

i came to drag you down.

you've gone too far, now i won't give in.

you crucified me but i'm back in your bed.

pretend you're anything just to be adored.

what you need is what you get.

don't believe in fear.

don't believe in faith.

don't believe in anything that you can't break.

you stupid girl.

all you had, you wasted.

what drives you on can drive you mad.

a million lies to sell yourself is all you ever had.

don't believe in love.

don't believe in anything that you can't waste.

i can't believe you fake it.

i wish i had not woke up today.

everyone mistakes the things you say.

take the simple truth and twist it all around, make it sound important, make it seem profound.

nothing you learn will stick.

you make me feel so worthless.

everyone i know has gone away. died or left or just forgot to stay.

i never would have pegged you for what you have become.

everyone lies, everyone cheats. not like you've done.

i'll cherish them until the end.

send me an angel to love.

i need to feel a little piece of heaven.

i'm afraid i'll never get to heaven.

i'll steal your breath and throw away what i despise.

i've done my time.

if i should die before i wake, then you'll know why.

things don't have to be this way.

catch me on a better day.

take away my fear.

everything i had to give gave out long before.

fix me now, i wish you would.

bring me back to life.

kiss me blind, somebody should.

who gave up and who gave in?

i'll go without a fight.

cut me down or cut me dead.

take away my doubt.

i am lost, so i am cruel.

i'd be love and sweetness if i had you.