[Fic] "Kinbaku" -- Daredevil (MCU)
Jan. 18th, 2020 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingSummary: In which Elektra Natchios, heiress and law student, meets a handsome and mysterious stranger in her favorite coffee shop.
Note: This ficlet is a fill for the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
daredevilbingo square: role reversal. (750 words)
[ETA: the AO3 version is now up!]
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Kinbaku
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Elektra's never going to have the firmest moral compass, but she likes to think she's come fairly far on the basis of two principles. First, treating children as objects to be collected, shaped, and discarded is horrible for the children in question and therefore ought to be avoided; by extension, treating any human an an object is probably a bad idea. Second, true emotional connections are difficult to forge and to maintain and therefore willfully breaking them -- breaking promises, breaking trust -- is wrong. If these principles come into conflict, her strongest impulse is to stay loyal even if that means treating other people as objects, but she tries not to get into situations where she needs to make that kind of choice.
Stick, by those measures, is not a good person.
Elektra thinks she might still love him anyway, in the darker corners of her heart -- thinks he might even have loved her in some bitter and convoluted way, or perhaps the way one loves a well-trained dog, a well-fashioned lock pick -- but she's not looking to reestablish contact with him or the Chaste. She gets her thrills more legally these days, tearing into her law school classmates in preparation for slicing apart her family's opponents in court and over the bargaining table. (And if she sometimes slips her bodyguard, goes for long walks at night, and leaves occasional assailants crumpled on the pavement, that's nobody's business but her own.) She doesn't need reminders of her former life.
This is why Elektra's first instinct, upon spotting the handsome blind man sitting in the window of her favorite coffee shop, is to close the door and find a different place to buy her morning latte.
But she's never liked running away. And the man doesn't look like her childhood memories of Stick, always grizzled and armored no matter what clothes he wore or face he tried to project. This man looks, instead, like a misplaced supermodel: leopard-sleek in a blood-red silk shirt, thick and glossy haircut, designer sunglasses with discreetly gilded frames, and a suit coat and trousers that, in Elektra's moderately skilled amateur appraisal, probably never saw a rack in their lives and cost at least a month of this shop's rent.
He tilts his head toward her as she walks past him, aiming for the pastry counter and the ordering station, and an expression halfway between intrigue and a smile ghosts across his face.
Elektra walks back the same way once she has her latte and a chocolate croissant in hand, wondering if he'll repeat the gesture.
Instead, Mister Runaway Model raises his left hand a few inches and says, toward her collarbone, "Your perfume is lovely. May I ask what's in it? If that's too personal, feel free to tell me to fuck off -- but I like to use scents for meditation sometimes, and I'm always looking for new combinations."
Elektra raises her eyebrows. "And here I thought losing one sense sharpens the others. Can't you pick apart the ingredients on your own?"
Mister Runaway Model smiles. "That's a common misconception. Blindness in and of itself can't strengthen other senses. It does make people pay more attention to sensory information sighted people tend to overlook, but a standard human nose is a standard human nose."
"I see," Elektra says, and decides not to mention that he didn't actually answer her question. "May I sit?"
"I'd be honored," says Mister Runaway Model. "Matthew Murdock. You?"
"Elektra Natchios," she says, and conceals her surprise when he stands to pull out her chair.
They shake hands as she sits down, and she notes both the buildup of callus on his knuckles and his exquisitely manicured nails. It speaks to a distinctive combination of strength and vanity, quite unusual for a man, and certainly not something she has time or interest in maintaining herself.
Even if Matthew Murdock does turn out to be an agent of the Chaste, or have some other nefarious agenda relating to her adopted family's more questionably legal holdings, Elektra knows with a pulsing, hungry certainty that he'll be worth whatever trouble he brings.
She's spent years teaching herself how to be a good person. She likes to think she's done a decent job, all things considered. But underneath it all, she's still a killer, still the girl who moves too fast and hits too hard and doesn't know when to stop.
And for the first time in years, she thinks she's met someone who might keep up.
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End of Ficlet
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I wrote the first ~300 words at work this afternoon, and finished it up once I got home and ate dinner. :)
Note: This ficlet is a fill for the
daredevilbingo square: role reversal. (750 words)[ETA: the AO3 version is now up!]
---------------------------------------------
Kinbaku
---------------------------------------------
Elektra's never going to have the firmest moral compass, but she likes to think she's come fairly far on the basis of two principles. First, treating children as objects to be collected, shaped, and discarded is horrible for the children in question and therefore ought to be avoided; by extension, treating any human an an object is probably a bad idea. Second, true emotional connections are difficult to forge and to maintain and therefore willfully breaking them -- breaking promises, breaking trust -- is wrong. If these principles come into conflict, her strongest impulse is to stay loyal even if that means treating other people as objects, but she tries not to get into situations where she needs to make that kind of choice.
Stick, by those measures, is not a good person.
Elektra thinks she might still love him anyway, in the darker corners of her heart -- thinks he might even have loved her in some bitter and convoluted way, or perhaps the way one loves a well-trained dog, a well-fashioned lock pick -- but she's not looking to reestablish contact with him or the Chaste. She gets her thrills more legally these days, tearing into her law school classmates in preparation for slicing apart her family's opponents in court and over the bargaining table. (And if she sometimes slips her bodyguard, goes for long walks at night, and leaves occasional assailants crumpled on the pavement, that's nobody's business but her own.) She doesn't need reminders of her former life.
This is why Elektra's first instinct, upon spotting the handsome blind man sitting in the window of her favorite coffee shop, is to close the door and find a different place to buy her morning latte.
But she's never liked running away. And the man doesn't look like her childhood memories of Stick, always grizzled and armored no matter what clothes he wore or face he tried to project. This man looks, instead, like a misplaced supermodel: leopard-sleek in a blood-red silk shirt, thick and glossy haircut, designer sunglasses with discreetly gilded frames, and a suit coat and trousers that, in Elektra's moderately skilled amateur appraisal, probably never saw a rack in their lives and cost at least a month of this shop's rent.
He tilts his head toward her as she walks past him, aiming for the pastry counter and the ordering station, and an expression halfway between intrigue and a smile ghosts across his face.
Elektra walks back the same way once she has her latte and a chocolate croissant in hand, wondering if he'll repeat the gesture.
Instead, Mister Runaway Model raises his left hand a few inches and says, toward her collarbone, "Your perfume is lovely. May I ask what's in it? If that's too personal, feel free to tell me to fuck off -- but I like to use scents for meditation sometimes, and I'm always looking for new combinations."
Elektra raises her eyebrows. "And here I thought losing one sense sharpens the others. Can't you pick apart the ingredients on your own?"
Mister Runaway Model smiles. "That's a common misconception. Blindness in and of itself can't strengthen other senses. It does make people pay more attention to sensory information sighted people tend to overlook, but a standard human nose is a standard human nose."
"I see," Elektra says, and decides not to mention that he didn't actually answer her question. "May I sit?"
"I'd be honored," says Mister Runaway Model. "Matthew Murdock. You?"
"Elektra Natchios," she says, and conceals her surprise when he stands to pull out her chair.
They shake hands as she sits down, and she notes both the buildup of callus on his knuckles and his exquisitely manicured nails. It speaks to a distinctive combination of strength and vanity, quite unusual for a man, and certainly not something she has time or interest in maintaining herself.
Even if Matthew Murdock does turn out to be an agent of the Chaste, or have some other nefarious agenda relating to her adopted family's more questionably legal holdings, Elektra knows with a pulsing, hungry certainty that he'll be worth whatever trouble he brings.
She's spent years teaching herself how to be a good person. She likes to think she's done a decent job, all things considered. But underneath it all, she's still a killer, still the girl who moves too fast and hits too hard and doesn't know when to stop.
And for the first time in years, she thinks she's met someone who might keep up.
---------------------------------------------
End of Ficlet
---------------------------------------------
I wrote the first ~300 words at work this afternoon, and finished it up once I got home and ate dinner. :)
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Date: 2020-01-19 08:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
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