lady in red.

ELEKTRA NATCHIOS IS...

Emotions were always complicated, no matter who was dealing with them, or what roadblocks were in place to prevent understanding and accepting them. With Matt, though, emotions had always been particularly difficult. At various points he had been intense or cold, overly-trusting or detached. His heart was either unguarded, open for the taking, or as impossible to reach as grace itself. Elektra had been the first exception, and in Matt’s opinion, she was the last as well. Matt had been in love with others since college, but none had burned as brightly, none had been as entrenched or life changing. Falling into others had been easy, something that he could never say about his relationship with Elektra, but the moments when they were together more than made up for any challenges. Some of his best memories consisted of lying on the bed in his dorm room, grinning for no conceivable reason, listening to Elektra read out loud or just the familiar rhythm of her heartbeat. There were times when he wished he had never left that room at all, but then they wouldn’t be here. He would never know that she could defy even death, that she would find herself on his doorstep once again in the wake of her resurrection.

“I suppose it depends on what aspect they’re going for in their comparison,” Matt countered. “I was going for ‘intoxicating’ and ‘expensive,’ but clearly I need to refine my technique a little more.” Again, smiling for no conceivable reason other than the fact that she was there beside him, and that in itself was even more of a miracle than Elektra noticing him in the first place had been. “I’m pretty sure there’s a kid’s book out there somewhere that details the life of the spider. There has to be, right? They’d be idiots not to capitalise on how many kids cried over Charlotte’s Web, I mean.” Matt was part of that category, but to be fair, he cried at most books as a child (and as an adult, if he had time to read them, which he often didn’t). “Ha ha,” Matt deadpanned, even though more than likely it was true. “I am rewarded. I have my own place, I bought a pizza without having to write an IOU to the delivery guy, and I get free wine from you. What else do I need?” Health insurance, perhaps, but with Claire’s help he wished to avoid hospitals entirely. Difficult to explain the scars, after all. “How many floors are they going to have to go up to deliver it? We don’t want cold noodles.”

The source of Elektra’s propensity towards either avoidance or outright denial was easy to speculate about but hard to pin down. Her very birth was marked with a loss, because the world could not welcome her existence without claiming the life of the woman who had created her. Naturally, Elektra didn’t look for signs, she didn’t believe in divine intervention, fate, destiny. Even in the present, after conquering death herself, she thought everything happened because somebody intended for it to happen. And that was that. Her inability to grow close to other people could be blamed on her father, the way he refused to offer her a chance at a normal childhood. She could have gone to boarding school, stayed with the same group of people and learned what it meant to bond with those who weren’t blood. College was the first time she was set to be apart from her father, to live on a campus and try to make friends. And, in truth, she had tried at first. She was friendly, even talkative, but her life was inaccessible to her peers. Her upbringing was not relatable or normal, and in turn, neither was Elektra. Somehow, Matt had never thought of her as strange, or maybe that was why they were drawn to one another. Neither had an average childhood, both were damaged in strange and uncomfortable ways.

For years after she fled New York, she ignored that their connection was one she valued above any other. Never once she did believe that what she chose to fill her time with could compare to their weak attempts at studying together in school. There were times when she might be sipping champagne forty floors up and looking out at the Eiffel Tower, and still she would rather be sitting at the desk in Matt’s dorm, feeling his fingers lightly brush her forehead to move fallen hair from her face as she wrote a letter to her father. She often looked at her life as before and after; before her father died, before she trained with the Chaste, before she became one the world’s most sought after assassins. Then there was the after. For so long, only one after mattered. After she left the city. After Matthew. Now there was after her own death. She still didn’t know what this second life might look like, she only knew that she had wasted too much of her previous lifetime denying herself of the one thing capable of making her happy, among all the feelings of guilt and regret and despair. Those weights weren’t so heavy when she stopped trying to carry them all by herself.

@reselektred

As far as Felicia was concerned, there was no better coping mechanism on earth than avoidance, pushing the feelings down as far as she possibly could and dealing with them (or not) at as late a date as possible. She had a job to do, after all, and her targets were now in an extremely unique position of vulnerability that she was determined to exploit. Perhaps that made her a bad person, but she was a damn good thief, and she was going to take advantage. She didn’t steal from people who didn’t deserve it, after all.

She landed on the roof across the street from the jewellery store she was planning to empty, setting up her gear to take out the security system. It was only in the lens of the camera that she spotted another person over her shoulder, and she was ashamed to admit that she jumped. “I think you just ended one of my nine lives,” Felicia said, catching her breath. There wasn’t much time for it, though. A scream echoed from the street below, and when Felicia poked her head over, she saw a group of people fighting back against the air - seemingly, their fear induced hallucinations. “They’ll probably hurt each other,” she commented. “Are you the Good Samaritan type? If you are, you should really go deal with that. I’m a bit busy tonight.”

This fear toxin idea was intriguing to Elektra more than anything else. As far as she was aware of, nothing frightened her any longer. She had scaled imposing mountains, traversed arctic tundras and trawled through deserts. Somehow, she had survived the loss of her entire family. Having nothing to lose made a person dangerous, but it was one of Elektra’s greatest advantages. The toxin certainly didn’t threaten her and in an unsurprising twist, offers were pouring in as people’s paranoia about being offed by rival gang members heightened. A small part of her common decency forced her to turn down many of these requests as they were clearly not well thought-out. To kill out of something as fickle as artificial terror was beneath her. Besides, she had her hands full with tracking down the Hand and her bank account was far from housing tumbleweeds and mothballs.

Elektra was left with self-imposed surveillance duty, watching the comings and goings of some of the most powerful people in the city to add to her deep well of coveted information. Usually this was a solitary activity. As she walked across the rooftop, she quickly saw somebody else had already picked this same location for their own nefarious purposes. “My apologies,” she intoned with a smirk. “You get used to it.” It was just vague enough not to make much sense to someone on the outside, but she found it a bit humorous. Really, she didn’t know if dying was something one could get used to. Elektra heard the scream but didn’t shift her focus from the other woman. “It seems that way,” she agreed, clearly not overly concerned. The question caught her slightly off-guard and she had to poorly conceal a laugh. “Sometimes. Usually not by myself, I’m afraid. I don’t quite have a heroic disposition.” Elektra’s eyes slowly drifted down to the woman’s supplies. “Mind if I join? I haven’t pulled off a heist in ages.”

Stick had taught Matt when he was barely out of the initial shock of his father’s death that caring about people would only bring him pain. It would make him slow, it would make his blows laden, and it would make him weak in comparison to his enemies. At a young age, Matt had been inclined to believe him, if only because he knew the pain of losing Jack. As he grew, though, he became more and more determined to prove Stick wrong. He threw himself wholeheartedly into Elektra and found that it was easier than anything else to do. When she left, he still held onto the hope that one day he’d be walking down the street towards the courthouse and he would pick up that all too familiar heartbeat, or hear the sound of her breath amongst the crowd, feeling a stab of disappointment each time he didn’t. It didn’t become easier over the years to forget her, to pretend that he was capable of moving on completely, his reaction just became numbness instead. Maybe a little denial, too, if his initial greeting of her upon re-entering his life was anything to go by.

She was back for a second time, and despite the universe seemingly conspiring to keep them from ever reaching the finish line of happiness or however close they could get, Matt was going to take advantage of whatever moments they had. “Well, you definitely smell as good,” he said, smiling as he did so. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve heard rumours about a pig with spider powers and a talking duck that has connections to some of the most powerful people in the universe. Mind you, I overheard it in Avengers Tower, so that kind of thing might just be their sense of humour.” That life always seemed so incomprehensible to him. “I managed to end this month without my bank balance in the red, so that’s a first. I even had five bucks to tip the pizza guy last night.” It was as if he had provided the poor kid with the holy grail. “She pays with discreet donations to a few of my old clients,” Matt said. “A few of them will just use it to go back to old habits, I know, but they need a chance to get out of it.” Matt leaned forward to top up their glasses, smiling as he did so. “Is that what we’re calling it now?” he teased. “That sounds amazing. I’ve always missed ordering Chinese to a penthouse.”

The popularly held belief about Elektra, based purely on reputation, was that she fought without feeling. That she was, possibly, incapable altogether. Elektra didn’t care if people assumed she was a sociopath who never thought twice about the implications of her actions, how they affected the world at large. Possibly, if this was true, her job would be easier. It wasn’t necessarily difficult now, but she did sometimes have pesky thoughts that caused hesitation. Ironically, Stick was one of the few people to see her as she truly was. He would have liked her better as a student if she truly was as heartless as she was presumed to be. Unfortunately, Elektra was motivated by her heart a great deal of the time. Most of the time, she was fighting on someone else’s behalf, and this made her far less emotional. But when she fought for herself, her driving force was always driven by her feelings, whether it was lingering sadness over her father, anger over her own death, or the protectiveness she felt for Matthew. Stick had called this weakness but she thought the strength of her emotions was one of her greatest strengths. It was her restraint in communicating her true feelings to others that led to misconceptions.

“Usually when people say you smell like alcohol, it’s an insult.” Of course, that’s not what he had said, and she was aware of that. Rather than accepting obvious compliments, she liked to make people work at them. See if they would even bother before conceding that she made it more effort than it was worth. “Well, sure, why should humans have all the fun? It’s strange how you never hear about the adventures of the radioactive spider itself, don’t you think? I’ve come to believe they don’t have a sense of humor.” Some of their costumes certainly indicated otherwise, though. Unintentionally funny. “Thanks to you, that pizza delivery person probably has more to his name than you do.” Elektra didn’t agree with his reasoning, a fact he could assume well enough without her verification, so she simply exhaled with slight frustration. “Oh, honestly, Matthew, don’t you think you deserve a chance as well? To say more for yourself than simply not being in debt. You are allowed to reward yourself through your own hard work.” In an effort not to harp on the matter too much longer, she avoided commenting that he could, without too much effort, live in a penthouse himself, if he made the sort of financial choices she suggested. “Quite the tall order but I think we can arrange that.”

(✉ → Elektra): Maybe for you it’s a waste, but I’m having fun. Good point. I could argue that at that point ice is no longer ice but water, and therefore you eat ice and drink water, but anyway. Okay, maybe a few times.  (✉ → Elektra): An omission of truth, then. Or shadowing of it. I met with one of my old classmates last week, and he definitely thinks he’s God’s gift to mankind, so he hasn’t got the memo. Foggy wasn’t fond of my night job at the beginning either. He got over it, mostly. (✉ → Elektra): His apartment regularly gets broken into by gangsters wearing tracksuits. At least mine gets broken into by more interesting parties. I mean, I won’t argue with silk sheets being more comfortable than leather.

(✉ → Elektra): Where is the fun in getting things easily, Elektra? I would offer to write them, but we both know I’m not exactly Wordsworth. You put them in your mouth and they go into your stomach. You don’t drink them, so therefore it’s eating. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. (✉ → Elektra): I would be offended if I didn’t know you were lying. I’m flattered, but our entire cohort probably isn’t. Presence makes the heart grow fonder, and you’re sticking around this time, right? I know, I love it. (✉ → Elektra): I aim to please. What’s wrong with my apartment? The sofa is more comfortable than it has any right to be.

Everything that Stick had taught him, every talent and skill that Matt had refined over the years, had been specifically tailored to the body he was in. It relied on knowing himself inside and out, and while he could recognise that a large portion of that was to do with his mind which he was still in possession of, his abilities and body were also a significant part of everything that he had accomplished. Clint’s body allowed him to, if he wanted, run through the rooftops, parkour across empty spaces and take down traffickers, but even with all that, things seemed quiet. Dull. He could see nothing but bright light, and yet the world seemed dark.

And now Captain America, one of the few faces he could recognise, was in his living room. Matt briefly wondered if he was in a genuine nightmare - that would be the best case scenario, for sure - but then the man started talking, and things gradually began to click into place. “Elektra?” Matt asked, sincerely hoping Steve Rogers wasn’t in the habit of calling Clint darling. That would be weird. “I woke up next to her, and she wanted to kill me for it, apparently. It’s hardly the first time it’s happened. You’re literally in Captain America’s body.” It was a good thing, then, he didn’t have his powers. He was sure this guy’s heartbeat was like a marching band. “I’m Clint Barton, apparently.” He paused for a moment. “I can barely hear anything, but seeing again is … it’s strange. I waited for so many years, thinking what it would be like, and now it’s here it’s – underwhelming.”

Although the Avengers were unlikely to offer her a membership to their team any time soon, she was positive that for a short duration, Elektra could competently take on the responsibility. Being in such a recognizable body would attract a certain amount of attention, some of it negative, and she could likely deal with these issues without tarnishing Cap’s reputation. What information Elektra wanted would also be used...well, perhaps not responsibly by Avengers standards, but certainly not for “evil.” A large part of Elektra’s job revolved around knowing people and pieces of information that not everybody knew. And if what she learned eventually led to loss of life, it wouldn’t be her idea, only her doing. She’d put off any of those particular activities until she was returned to her own body.

It had been so easy for Matt to fall all in when it came to Elektra. In college, that could be blamed on the fact that she was his first girlfriend, first love, first everything, but with a decade or more between that point and now, he had to admit that it was something much more than that. Each and every time she appeared he fought it, she continued being herself and before long, he was right back where he had been when they left off. Death didn’t even manage to change the way that they worked, how they came back together, but maybe it should. Maybe things would be different this time, and they wouldn’t be punished for trying to make it work - or maybe Matt was reading the situation completely wrong and the only reason Elektra was here was because he was a tried and true combat partner, and a link to all that she had lost.

“Here I was thinking I had company to do just that,” Matt replied, the smirk on his face dampened only by the fact that the wine was, actually, the best he had ever tasted. It came a close second to the bottle he had stolen from that party in college, at least. “Thoughtful? It’s basically charity. You should get a medal of honour for your services to the most dependent of all New York’s citizens.” There were times when Matt was glad he couldn’t see himself. The smile that he currently had on his face had to be embarrassing. He leaned against the back of the sofa, humming along with Elektra’s description. “If your current career doesn’t pan out, you have an illustrious future in wine tasting. My good character, actually. Turns out being a superhero comes with a lot of added recruitment difficulties. I’m all up for it, actually. It doesn’t even go against my contract this time.” Going pro bono in his spare time was one thing. Going pro bono on defence against the state he was meant to represent was quite another, and Matt doubted his boss would see the charitable side. “How are things going for you?”

She was exceptionally disciplined when it came to certain areas of her life -- namely, almost all of them. People liked to look at her as if she was a liability, like she wasn’t a trustworthy person to work alongside because she could go rogue at any second. And she could see how it might appear that way, but Elektra never made a move without first considering the ramifications. Where Matt was involved, she acted as if this way of thinking still held true, and he wasn’t entirely wrong to assume she had an angle, especially when she went years without speaking to him. But truthfully, if she took any pleasure in how easy it was to insert herself back into his life, she couldn’t deny that leaving New York in the first place had only been difficult because it was a city he would never leave, even when he insisted otherwise. Keeping in touch with people you missed was far more difficult than radio silence. Matthew was also an exception to the cloud that followed her around. The people she loved died, and unlike Stick, Matt would never send her away. It was up to her to self-isolate. Although allowing herself to fall back into things with Matt had led to her death, she didn’t think it was an inherently dangerous decision. She’d had close calls numerous times in Europe and Asia, and if death insisted on shadowing her, she may as well enjoy whatever time she had before it claimed her again.

(✉ → Elektra): You know you love my subtext. You also know that sonnets could be written about your accent. Not by me, but I can appreciate it. It makes sense, Elektra. You have a hypersensitive tongue and see if you can eat an ice cube. Judging from what I can hear, about 110 over 60, so physical perfection. (✉ → Elektra): You’re right, I was definitely enough alone. I never heard you complaining, anyway. Foggy will warm up eventually. I can’t believe you’re denying me an argument. (✉ → Elektra): Only if it was you or you know, Charlize Theron. What if Hawkeye had to sleep in my bed after a hard night’s crime fighting? Do you think I would enjoy that?

❈ PINTEREST

❈ PLAYLIST

(✉ → Elektra): I know. Luckily I basically have a degree in subtext, so I can make up for both of us. I’m pretty sure you’re the furthest from monotone there can be. It’s frozen fruit, it’s good for smoothies. Ice is too cold. I am in perfect shape, thank you very much. (✉ → Elektra): Why do you need popularity when you had me and Foggy? Agree to argue this further later on. (✉ → Elektra): More painful for you, or for me? In both cases, I would go for the latter. And where would my plethora of guests sleep when they stay over if I didn’t have a futon?

Things in New York had been a little wild as of late, with the ‘bodyswap’ phenomena affecting several different heroes. Pepper had been run ragged dealing with shareholders and board members who demanded to know what was going on, and she was even more exhausted than usual. It was an absolute headache, and why she thought it would get better after a quick lunch by herself was anyone’s guess. 

She should have seen the whole ‘badly dressed supervillain’ thing coming. Hell, she probably should’ve seen running into Steve Rogers coming, too. Seeing Steve was never a bad thing, of course, but things did get a bit irritating when seeing him came along with seeing the barrel of some c-list villain’s ray gun.

When Steve spoke, Pepper found herself mildly surprised at his tone. Surely it got old, being called out to fight someone in the middle of a normal day like this, but threatening to break someone’s legs sounded a little unlike Steve. She raised a brow as his eyes landed on her, tilting her head towards the villain. “I thought you liked this sort of thing,” she hummed thoughtfully, inspecting him carefully as she spoke. It wasn’t so far fetched to think that Steve might have fallen victim to all this as well, she supposed.

It was a good thing Elektra performed well under pressure, or she might have been just the slightest bit nervous with an audience watching her do her best Steve Rogers impression. As long as she sounded brave and sure of herself, she assumed nobody would suspect something was off. There also were not many people who would go along with this particular body swap, making it seem less likely that anything was amiss with Captain America. He was lucky, really. His reputation would remain pristine with her at the helm, no rumors about how he had started running from fights. Elektra was curious about how he was managing in her body, though she had to assume he didn’t have the same idea. It was only a matter of time before he went running to the other Avengers and the jig would be up.

When Pepper Potts replied, Elektra found herself mildly regretful for the first time since she had woken up that morning in Steve’s home. The CEO of Stark Industries would no doubt have a friendly relationship with Steve and she hadn’t been too careful with her word choice. She also didn’t expect Pepper to step in, but that would only give her the chance to take care of the man without breaking any bones. Or not many bones. Whichever was easiest. “Nobody likes madmen challenging them in the street. But I would rather he attacked me than those innocent people.” And before she could say anything else to give her away, Elektra approached the man slowly, holding up a hand as if to talk him down. “Hey. You probably have a lot going on. Let’s just talk--” Before the man could respond, before she could even finish her own sentence, she grabbed the gun from him and smashed it on the ground. “If you still want to dance, we can dance.” That was a thing annoying heroic types said, wasn’t it?

Felicia doubted that the situation could be any worse than what she was currently faced with. Johnny and Peter had swapped with each other, which was more than a little strange, but at least they knew that they could trust each other to keep their bodies safe and secure until the natural order was restored, or one of the many super geniuses that inhabited the city came up with a eureka moment. Felicia, though, was in the body of a veritable stranger, and that stranger wore sweatpants on a daily basis, and sneakers as a fashion choice. That wasn’t even mentioning the fact that she kept running into things, that her body healed within seconds in a way that gave her more than a few strange sensations, and she couldn’t keep her mind focused for more than a second before it moved onto another thread of thought that was utterly and completely irrelevant to everything that was happening.

More than that, she supposed she was some kind of Avenger now. What if aliens came down from a hole in the sky and tried to vaporise the city? Would she be morally obligated to help? The thought of a heroic sacrifice being necessary was deeply troubling - would she die, or Pietro? - and so Felicia found herself walking towards Avengers Tower. Or sprinting, as the case may be.

When she arrived, it was right into the middle of a situation involving Captain America, which was just what she needed. “Yeah! You won’t have a leg left to stand on!” she chimed in, figuring Avengers backed each other up, right? “Oh, um. Yeah, I can handle it. Are we just punching him in the face, or do we need to get some kind of warrant before we do? The politics of this confuses me.” 

It was a bit tricky pretending to be somebody who you didn’t know very well, particularly when that person was well known overall. Elektra could have avoided those who knew Steve best instead of throwing herself right into the deep end, but laying low seemed like a waste of what she was choosing to see as a unique opportunity. She was quite quippy herself, but likely not in the way Captain America was. In this instance, she had no idea whether Steve would actually invite an onlooker into the fight or take care of it himself. Elektra would have preferred to break his legs immediately as threatened, but she was in a rush, she was impatient, and she was annoying by the man causing an unneeded spectacle. Elektra tended to play more by the rules when she was fighting alongside somebody else.

Of all the people Tony could have turned to for assistance in this obviously extremely important matter, Steve was one of the best that he could’ve come up with. Sure, they had their moments, the arguments that they had remained hanging in the balance and he was pretty sure that at any given moment they wanted to punch each other in the face or else hug it out, but he knew that when it came to hot dogs, any of the Avengers would lay themselves on the line to prove that he was worthy of a famed American delicacy. “It’s really me!” Tony exclaimed, grinning as he did so, at least until the heart rate monitor around his wrist started beeping. “Okay, I really gotta watch that. Do you seriously not know me better than that by now? I’m not asking for special treatment, I’m just asking for mustard! Mustard, from a hot dog vendor. That doesn’t sound too hard to me!” Tony paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes at Steve. “Why is it always you who avoids situations like … well, like this,” he said, gesturing to his - Bruce’s - body.

While there was plenty to benefit from in this mix-up, Elektra knew she also had an obligation to put out fires, kiss babies, things like that. Thankfully for anyone who relied on Captain America to protect them, Elektra was capable of taking down anyone who crossed her path and she wasn’t the type to let bystanders and citizens get hurt, despite common misconceptions. Unfortunately, being an all-around good guy and American icon meant being kind in even the most puerile instances. “I believe you, buddy.” She glanced down at the beeping wrist, keeping her expression unreadable. Steve was probably used to that annoying sound. “Why exactly is he withholding the mustard?” She gave the vendor a once over now, not trying to intimidate him but at least hoping Steve’s celebrity would grant Tony some complementary mustard. “Always? Pretty sure I’ve seen my share of ‘situations.’ I guess I got lucky this time.”

(✉ → Elektra): It was subtext. I could definitely argue for it to be permissible. Don’t offend Siri like that, she reads texts just fine. Honestly, you should write greeting cards. I’m tearing up a little in the frozen produce section. (✉ → Elektra): And that’s just because of the friends you made along the way. His overwhelming charm and intellect means he doesn’t need one. (✉ → Elektra): I was talking about using your company tonight as leverage, but we’re going straight for murder, okay. Where else was I supposed to get a new futon for a hundred bucks? The last one was destroyed by a ninja, Elektra.