3917/Rising Tide: In the Wake of the Tide

Rising Tide: In the Wake of the Tide
Date of Scene:	20 February 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	After the battle at Blackgate, Elektra takes a wounded Matt back home to heal and other older wounds are opened in the process.
Cast of Characters:	Elektra, Daredevil
Tinyplot:	Rising Tide

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Elektra has posed:
It was a quiet journey back. Perhaps because neither of them wished to drag up conversations that not only couldn't be finished en route, but might make it impossible for them to continue on. And while Matt had said he was okay, Elektra knew a lie when she heard one, and she knew Matt far better than that. Better than either of them were maybe comfortable with.

So silence was their companion until she let them both into his aparment. Oh, she'd been there before often enough that she knew where she was going. It was nothing of a surprise to step inside. Not that she was asking his permission to come in...

Once in, she led him to the couch, and settled him. Turning back, then, to lock the door, and retrieve water from the fridge, bringing both a bottle. His she opened and handed oer wordlessly, letting him begin the dialogue.

She'd brought him home safely and without question. The next move on the board he had to pay for himself.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt's home had changed little since she'd been there last, that night he'd turned her away. The video billboard across the street still bathed the living room in strobing multicoloured lights. They lit Matt in profile as he say on the couch when she went for the water, and lit them both when she returned, turning the bottle blood red as she passed it to his waiting hand. He took it with a grateful nod then put it to his lips taking a long drink before he lowers it again. He runs his fingers over the cool damp surface of the bottle considering if he should speak.

The silence had been their détente, their way of keeping the peace between and wondered if he broke the silence would the détente break with it. In the wake of everything at the prison, he welcomed her familiar presence beside him. More than he'd care to admit. He didn't want to say something that would bring that to end but he did have to say something.

Running his finger over the lip of the bottle, he remarks, "You know, I have things stronger than this in the cupboard by the fridge," a mild joke, perhaps even a bad one but it was better than addressing all that was unsaid between them.

Elektra has posed:
His words are unexpected enough that they draw a throaty laugh from the woman. Elektra gives him a shake of head, and, still wordlessly, sets her water bottle down and pads off the the cupboard he mentions, coming back with a bottle that she puts on the table at mid point between them as a perch is taken up on the other end of the sofa. Her water is retrieved and drank from, the bottle nearly drained before she, herself, speaks.

"I understand why the lie, but really, was it necessary?" Not that she fully waits for an answer, shrugging it aside. "You look like hell. How much of that blood is yours?"

Daredevil has posed:
Matt smiles boyishly, turning that look towards Elektra, before finishing his bottle of water and setting it down on the table. He picks up the bottle, unscrews the top and gives it a sniff, whiskey, good choice. He takes a swig right from the bottle while she all but drains her water. The familiar burn of the liquor felt good, almost too good, so he takes one more swallow before offering the bottle to Elektra. "I promise I don't have kooties," he says wryly.

Elektra's question earns a moment of consideration, "No, it was the force of habit. Foggy, Karen, they'd worry if they saw me like this, easier to pretend it doesn't hurt and spare them that." To say nothing of sparing him the hectoring that came with the worry.

The second question, earns a slight flaring of his nostrils as he focuses on the coppery scent of the blood on him. "Most of it," he answers once he's made senses of the smeell. "I split my scalp when I hit the concrete, head wounds bleeds like hell." Not that she needed to be told that. He reaches up to touch the wound, gingerly, "I think it's stopped at least." Not that he didn't have other wounds, ones the way he lifted his arm spoke of clearly.

Elektra has posed:
Elektra sets her water bottle down, now nearly empty, and reaches for the offered whiskey bottle. "Promise?"

There's a delicate arch of brow as he's given a 'look', and without wiping the lip of the bottle, lifts it to her own, taking a swallow.

She, too, gives a small grimace of appreciation at the slow burn of the thing down her throat. After tonight, it's a welcome thing, though she knows it is not a luxury she has to indulge much past a few swallows between them. She still has to travel home. Perhaps once within the safety of her own confines she might allow a proper glass and contemplation, but for now? Some few swallows she can share.

"Ah, yes, the ever-present sidekicks."

The whiskey is held back out to him.

"You should let me see the wound. Make certain its clean and doesn't need stitching."

Yes, she's more than aware of the bleed of head wounds. So many blood vessels surrounding the head, the bleeding of such a wound was deceptive.

Daredevil has posed:
He can feel the movement of her hand reaching out for the bottle and he moves the bottle to meet it. The word promise, the tone of it told him that 'look' was being given even without being able to see it. He chuckles softly.

While Elektra drinks Matt settles back and enjoys the lingering taste of the whiskey on his tongue. His eyes, uncovered by shades, open and staring sightlessly, close with a touch of satisfaction.

They open again, at the sidekick remark. "You make it sound like I dress them in costumes and make them fight crime with me," he says with a smirk. "They're my friends."

He takes the bottle back from her aware in the moment that she might not have many of those, friends, well, except for Foggy. He felt for her as he took another swallow from the bottle.

"Sure," Matt says about the wound. "How about you?" he asks, he studies the sensations he gets from her, seeking her wounds in turn.

Elektra has posed:
"Don't you?" Elektra asks of him when he remarks that she makes it sound like he parades them all around in costumes. "You use them as shields, Matt. You always have."

And then he throws the word 'friends' out as though she doesn't understand such a thing. Or, more pointedly, as a reminder that her failure to understand comes at the price of having none.

She rises easily from the couch. "The med kit is still in the bathroom cupboard?"

He was always one to come home with injuries. She'd wondered until she'd learned the truth about him, and then it had made a sense she realized she should have seen all along.

For her part, she's sore and bruised, but nothing more than minor scrapes and bruises; a few shallow cuts that would heal, but could probably do well with a cleaning. She was more worried about his scalp wound needing stitching. That and the fact she knew he wouldn't get it looked at at the hospital should it need care. Someone had to see to it. Someone who wouldn't ask him things he wouldn't be able to answer.

Daredevil has posed:
"What?" Matt asks with muted incredulity. "I protect them, Elektra, I don't use them as shields," he says. He gives shake of his head at the thought of it.

He knows his remark about friends stings, "I didn't mean it that way," he says as she makes her way to the bathroom for the med-kit. She was right of course, he wouldn't go to the hospital, too many records, in fact at this point he was probably listed as MIA at the prison, but he'd deal with that in the morning. For now though, he knew Elektra could help him and had no need for questions.

As she comes back with the kit, he gets a sense of her injuries and eases back into the sofa. "How'd you manage not to barely get hit?" he wonders aloud.

Elektra has posed:
"You use them as shields," Elektra reiterates with calm, padding off to retrieve the med-kit. "As to how? Really, Matthew, you've known me long enough to know I'm better than that."

That and the fact she'd not hit the bulk of the prisoners as a solo artist, and when it was just her, after the dampener had gone off, she was lashing out in such a fashion that yes, it was a wonder she wasn't hurt more than she was. Just as it was a wonder she hadn't killed anyone by accident.

Not that she had qualms about killing people, but it still remained a sobering thought within her. She, Elektra, never killed without it being a purposeful act. To have barely avoided killing by happenstance and chance? It left her unsettled.

Med-kit in hand she instructs him to turn that she might examine his wound, pulling out the bottle of peroxide, and wipes, to do an initial clean.

"This shouldn't sting, and I'll know better once I've had a look. What of you, though. How as it you ended up in the middle of a prison riot?"

Daredevil has posed:
Matt's puzzlement shows as he asks, "Alright, I'll bite, how do I use them as shields?" he calls after Elektra as she pads away into the bathroom. He does smile to he response to the other question, how she'd avoided injury. "Of course," he says with the smile coming through in his words.

Matt likewise regretted his own loss of control, though he'd mostly been on the receiving end of the blows struck when he'd lost his sight. It irked him though that moment of weakness.

Matt turns obediently, giving his back to Elektra, "I can manage," he says about the sting. "And I was visiting a client, decided to do what I could to keep things from getting out of hand," he says before smiling slightly. "To disappointing results."

As to the wound, it's fairly deep and a stitch or two should set it to rights.

Elektra has posed:
There's another of those rich and negligent laughs from Elektra, drifting out from the bathroom back to him. "How do you use them as shields? You really are going to sit there and tell me you don't see it?"

BAck in the living area, she dabs at his wound with cotton balls and peroxide. As she said, it didn't sting, but it did bubble. She'll dab with alcohol before stitching, though.

"Your world is so black and white, Matthew. You refuse to admit there are greys. And when you do, the very few times you do, you allow it because of them. They save you from having to take any moral responsibility for decisions that challenge your sense of what is right or wrong and face up to the fact that there aren't always answers that fit into your tight little boxes."

The sting of the alcohol is sudden, and cool, against his scalp, but it isn't drawn out with any cruelty, or malice.

"You need stitches."

The wound is regarded for some moments while she decides whether or not she trusts it clean enough to avoid an official medical visit or not. Once she's decided he'll live, she threads a sterilized needle from the kit and settles down to the task.

She knows he's had this done before. The needle and thread aren't there by accident.

"You'll want to update your tentanus shot after this." It's as much a demand as a suggestion.

Daredevil has posed:
"I'm telling you I don't," Matt says his firm reply coming to hear clearly while she rummages in his bathroom for his med kit.

Even though his heightened senses heightened the touch and sting of the treatment he takes it without complaint. He was an old hand at this as the needle and thread in the medkit attested.

When she elaborates he listens, but has to keep himself from shaking his head knowing she was tending to the wound. "That's not true, I just put their lives over those rules, I know it's wrong, and hypocritical but I just can't let them get hurt because of me." There is a silence, where words were meant to be, where he had intended to say, she was one of those people just as much as Foggy and Karen were, but he couldn't get the words out. Though the silence in itself is telling.

He takes the news about the stiches with stoicism, and the treatment is met the same way, with a barely a flinch. "What about you, why were you at the prison?" he asks.

Elektra has posed:
Elektra is quiet as he speaks, and protests that he doesn't make those lies, saved from commentary by examining his wound. Of course, she schools her features out of habit. Almost everything she does is out of habit..

"Now, see, I'd say you realize those rules mean nothing in the face of those you care about." She either ignores, or refuses to acknowledge, his silence. Refusing to fill in the words he doesn't say. "I'm not faulting you for that. I am merely saying it's a lie. All of it. Mostly those rules you make up in your head. Even your god commanded you to love one another. Not debate the morality of that love."

"This is going to hurt by the way." And it does, though even he might be able to tell that she doesn't go out of her way to make it painful as she puts the first stitch in.

Daredevil has posed:
He can't see the schooled features but the signs he read are silent too and so he makes no remark. Matt was used to that from her, the control, it while it hid from him what she was thinking, that control was one of the things about Elektra that made her stand out from the noise of his senses, an island of enforced calm in a sea of chaos.

"I can't believe that, Elektra," he says. "That all of it is a lie. I can believe I am flawed, that I am making choices that are against those rules, but I can't believe they're false. There have to be lines, Elektra, things to keep us honest otherwise the world is just chaos."

Matt sucks in a breath when the needle breaks the skin and drags thread behind it. He can feel it, all of it, in intimate detail, but he clenches his teeth and bears through it. "You'd think I'd get used to this," he says through gritted teeth. He's definitely had experience with these wounds, the other scars she can feel on his head bear testament to that.

Elektra has posed:
She doesn't speak while she stitches the wound. While it can easily be done while chatting, it's also just as easily done in silence, and in truth, the silence allows Elektra to have a gentler, more deft hand. Her motions are efficient, confident, and precise. For every wound he's taken, or scar he bears, she's equal experience of her own, and just as many tending such things.

Stitching done up, she swabs the thing again, with alcohol - perhaps as a small retaliation for his stubbornness, though more likely to make certain there are no lingering effects from her fingers and the stitching proceedure.

"No comment about your god, Matt? Usually you're quick to jump on that and expound what he says and how your actions are toeing not only the letter, but the spirit." Elektra gives a cool grin at that. "Except you can't say that now, can you? Your god sat with the sinners, the reviled, and offered them repast. I do believe he washed their feet and rebuked those who followed the letter of Hebrew law for not understanding the spirit of the thing. Your god isn't an angry god, Matthew. He's a god of love, and your excuses are small, petty things, even if they allow you to sleep at night."

She gathers up the detritus of her tending him and takes it to the kitchen to dispose of.

"And since we're talking about sleeping at night, I'm still waiting on my contract."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt makes no further comments as his wound is stitched closed. When it's done he take a long slow breath letting go of the pain. Later, he'd meditate and encourage his body to heal like he'd been taught, but for now, though the breath was enough to get him through and clear his thoughts. By the sound of things he was going to need a clear head.

"Heh. You missed your calling," he remarks wryly. "And I understand the letter and spirit of God's laws Elektra, as apparently so do you, but angry or loving, I don't see God being alright with killing, for whatever the reason. And trust me, when it comes to the times I break with His law, whatever reasons I have for doing it, I don't sleep well at night."

"Listen, I would love nothing more than to sign that, to be able to sit here with you and be happy but I can't. What you do doesn't give me any room to compromise more than I already do for your sake. I'm sorry," he says that last word spoken in a hoarse whisper with the ring of truth to the words. "I wish there was some other way."

Elektra has posed:
"Touche," Elektra murmurs as he throws counters to her argument. "No. Your god stopped the killing mandate when he sent his son. Or so I was told. I still don't believe your way is better. Though I suppose all that does is prove us both wrong."

She shrugs lightly, coming back to the living area and closing up the med-kit before taking up her perch on the end of the sofa again, leaving the kit to be put away later.

There's something of throwing caution to the winds of her as she reaches for the whiskey bottle and takes first one swig, and then another as she listens to his words. "I'd hoped you'd at least see the wisdom. You say you care for those who can't fight the good fight themselves. I'm offering you an opportunity to prove that you care the way you claim. Monies, as guarded as I can make them - it's not even my money, Matthew - so that you can stand there in court every day and do what you claim you believe: let your moral choices be made by your belief that someone can change, and chould be given all the opportunity that you can to prove so. And you're turned it into a personal statement against my life choices, as though I was asking you to move in with me."

The bottle is set down, and she slips from the sofa, now tending to putting the med-kit away.

"I'm sorry too, Matthew. I really didn't want things to come to this, but you leave me no choice."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt reaches up to touch gingerly at his head, feeling the new stiches with his fingertips. It's tight, even work. She'd missed another calling too, as a boxer's cut man. He lowers his hand, letting Elektra's words sink in. "I guess so," he says of them both being wrong.

As she takes her perch on the arm of the sofa, he turns, the leather creaking under the weight of him, his head turning in her direction with his unseeing eyes exposed, the flickering lights of the billboard outside the window all but casting him in silhouette. Even so, his the impact of what she says can be read in his posture, and what can be seen of his face. He opens his mouth to speak, the conflict in him plain as how he freezes hand raised, as if trying to grab that opportunity and what it might mean. In the end though his hand lowers and his head sinks. "I wish I could, but I can't Elektra," he says pausing sighing. "Not right now, not with the choices you make," he says, those words, coupled with more that he lets go unspoken save for the pleading look he gives her, 'but if you made other choices...'.

He doesn't respond to the other comment, waiting instead to see what response she makes to his wordless plea for change.

Elektra has posed:
Ah, yes. Her stitches are neat and even. Perfectly spaced. Almmost exactly what he might expect of Electra given what he knows of her. They were just another thing she'd learned while becoming what she was. It might even amuse her to know that thought had floated through his head. Cut man, indeed.

Her steps are near silent as she returns to the living area, pausing several feet away from the sofa.

"The offer never included me, Matt. You made it clear that was over."

She shakes her head and gives him a look of disappointment. One that is almost touched by sorrow, but for the fact that she refuses to allow him to sense that of her, even if she knows that tonight she will return to her apartment, and not the streets, and finish the drinking she began here.

"You keep saying you believe people can change. What you really mean is they're only worthwhile if they believe what you believe."

If she intended to say more, she doesn't, merely moving to the door where she'll let herself out, instead pausing in afterthought, turning to say before she leaves, "In all this you never saw that this was me making other, better choices." Then slowly slips away, letting the door close behind her.

Daredevil has posed:
He almost speaks the words, the little joke to lighten things, but the mood feels wrong, too dark for humour to cast anything but a feeble light so the mention of her being a good cut man goes unspoken.

The rest is taken in silence, his mind fixed on those sensations that are her to the exclusion of everything else. His body language betrays the attention even if his eyes are fixed elsewhere as they often are.

Part of Matt wants to shout, I was wrong, when it came to them being over, to speak to how much he missed her, how often he thought of their time together. Though the words never come, the admission wouldn't change the facts, her killing still kept a wall between them and that wall didn't vanish by wishing it were so. Still, while the words aren't given voice, the silence of the absence conspicuous, as is the pained expression around his sightless eyes.

Those eyes blink, when she levels her accusation. In a flash he's on his feet. "That's not true," he protests even as the words strike home and fill him with doubts. Was he that judgemental?

When she turns, leaving her own significant silence in her wake along with her scent, he calls out to her, "Elektra, wait," the words he'd left unspoken surge from heart to mouth, but are stopped short by the cold hand of reason which yanks them back and replaces them with, "I'm sorry," knowing it would not be enough to make her stay.

Elektra has posed:
He's right, of course.

They aren't enough to make her stay. To still her passage from within his apartment to disappear into the void of the hallway and stairwell, then further, into the night. He might be sorry, but what did it really change?

The answer, of course, was nothing. It changed nothing.

He might be sorry - they both might be sorry - but in the end he wouldn't bend, bow, or break for her... and she had tried his way and it had almost killed her.

The fact of the matter was: the woman he loved /was/ the woman who killed others. The woman who tried to fill her nights and days with other things, and distractions, soon became a pale, pale shadow of what it was he loved. And despite what he claimed, he'd try - he'd try very hard - but eventually he'd find that she was lacking, and his love would ever so gently, and predictably fade away.

She doesn't even pause when he says he's sorry, though the words are a knife in her heart. And much as she wants to turn back and tell him she'll try, she'd rather bleed out fast, than the slow wasting away the other offers.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt cursed himself even as he felt the door close and ears reported each step of her leaving. He stood stock still for the whole of it trying to imagine other ways this could have gone, ways he could have stopped her and made what followed her stopping work. Nothing he conjures offers more than delays of this heartbreak and so he does nothing until she is gone from his hearing. When she has he returns to claim his bottle and drinks until the Gotham cops call Foggy and he comes looking for the missing blind lawyer not among the bodies at Blackgate.