I know who you pretend I am

[blacksky]

It is meant to be a simple end to a terrible second life. Elektra desperately wants it to be done. She thinks on some level Matthew wants it too. Why else stay when everyone else had run to safety? Things with them are never simple. Rocks fall, they fall, and that should be the end, but it very much isn't. She awakens in the dirt and debris with his arm draped over her protectively. Elektra laughs which quickly dissolves into a cough as her lungs demand she clear them. She should have known she wouldn't get off so easy. 

That resentment quickly falls into panic. Matthew is still at her side without any of the power she possesses. She vows to stop at nothing to end her existence if he isn't breathing too. Mercifully, his pulse beats against her fingers when she presses it to his throat. He's alive. She just has to make sure he stays that way.

Ultimately their rescue comes in the form of running water. She follows it until it leads to a sewer drain flowing into the river. She swims for both of their lives as Matthew sleeps on. The rest passes by in a blur. She steals a car, loads her beloved in the backseat, and finds the energy to start driving in the direction of a safehouse outside the city she can only hopes still exists. 

Perhaps the God Matthew loves so much exists because against all odds she does find it. Aside from a few sprung traps by some would-be squatters, the little vacation house is in good condition even if the yard is wild and overgrown at this point. She gets to work on practical issues even while running on fumes. She gets them both out of their wet clothes. Matthew is settled on a dusty couch, lovingly bandaged, and buried under a mountain of blankets of varying quality with a water bottle settled within reach. 

Elektra runs out of energy when it comes time to take care of herself. She passes out cold against the couch, head fallen against Matthew's prone form. A blanket is loosely draped over her shoulders and her first aid kit rests on her lap. She'll get to covering her rapidly healing wounds eventually. For now she desperately needs rest.

Comments

[aworldonfire]

Through it all, Matt swims in and out of consciousness. When he's awake, he's aware of being cold -- so cold, though he's not sure if that's because everything hurts so badly he can barely stand it, or the smell of sewage that makes its way to him beyond the taste of his own blood in his mouth. When he's not, he dreams of gold -- the bracelets Elektra used to wear, sometimes, and the way they'd just barely brush his skin when her hands were on him, leaving a line of gooseflesh behind in their wake.

(He's sure he smells her, too, but that must be the dream. She didn't survive. They didn't survive. Maybe this is what being dead is like.)

In the end, in hindsight, he won't be able to say how long the back and forth persisted, how many minutes, hours, days he was unconscious in the end, but in the end, he finally does surface. Not that he's sure he's entirely awake, after all, for all that he's still sure he can smell her.

His hands reach for her, holding onto a glimmer of hope. "Elektra?"