What you need to know about Marvel Omega’s Elektra…

Born into violence and tragedy, her nascent cries stained by her murdered mother’s blood, Greek girl Elektra Natchios was trained extensively in ancient martial arts throughout her childhood. Maturing into an accomplished ninja assassin, Elektra met and fell in love with an American, Matt Murdock – secretly the costumed adventurer known as Daredevil – and after a series of adventures she was ultimately killed by Daredevil’s enemy Bullseye, a sadly fitting end to an oft-tormented life steeped in blood and sorrow.

However, Elektra’s story wasn’t over. Resurrected by the dark sorcery of the mystical ninja sect known as The Hand, Elektra went on to experience many new adventures, a number of which occurred alongside the mutant Logan, otherwise known as Wolverine. Although occasionally finding themselves in conflict, Elektra and Logan forged a bond of friendship over time that eventually developed into something more. Searching for a measure of solace in their tempestuous lives, Elektra and Logan married and Elektra fell pregnant with triplets.

Unfortunately, the happiness that the pair had found was mercilessly brief.

Logan’s mutant healing factor was already breaking down the cells of his own body, killing him slowly but surely, and when Elektra then miscarried – apparently also as a result of Logan’s transmitted mutant gene – the strain on their relationship was insurmountable. Elektra and Logan parted, emotionally and also permanently; Logan died soon after, and any scant hope for reconciliation was lost.

Elektra withdrew into solitude from that time, further stories remaining untold. Until now…

Elektra in…

EVERY BREATH OF HAPPINESS

By Meriades Rai

Goethe looked down upon the river canyon, a ravine of expansive greens shrouded in the icy white drift of rising mists. On either side of the valley there rose the dark flanks of the Kirishima mountain range, behemoths of indigo and violet pressing against the sky, and to the north there was the glassy shimmer of a series of waterfalls. The mountain peaks were softened with cotton fog and the humid morning air threatened rain. Far below, nestled in the neck of the valley beneath the mist and the emerald canopy, there was a bell tower and a cluster of rudimentary buildings interspersed with Sakura. Cherry blossom carried on the wind like tiny flecks of blood.

An omen.

Goethe’s eyes narrowed in the shade of his hat. He slipped a tin case from his pocket and took a cigarette from inside. Licked it and lit it.

“What is this place?” he asked, quietly.

Frueger passed Goethe a pair of binoculars. “The locals call it Aishaku,” he said, “although the guidebooks seem to apply that name as a catch-all for the general network of secluded valleys and basins that proliferate the region, so it’s not specific to this canyon.”

“And the village?”

“Not a village, not as such,” Frueger mused. “There’s the tower you can see, which possibly once adjoined a larger temple, and a number of other buildings. A well. There are fields were the trees have been cleared, with crops and livestock. I doubt you’d be able to farm extensively here, not so close to the mountains, but the women who’ve made their home here, they get by.”

Goethe glanced at his companion, smoke rising from the corners of his mouth in eerily similar fashion to the mist rising from the forest below. “Not a village then. So what would you call it? A convent?”

“If you lose the religious connotations. A commune, a retreat… a sanctuary.”

“Just for women.”

“Yes.”

“Hiding.”

Frueger shrugged, his expression guarded. “Some of them. Battered or disenfranchised wives, girls from the streets and… broken homes. But not predominantly that. In many cases it’s just a remote haven, a place to withdraw from the rigors of conventional society and enjoy a more sedate, hermitic way of life, or to recover from some… tragic or unwelcome experience. Not a refuge. And not a cult, not ruled by any righteous doctrines or any self-styled overlord, just-”

“You sound sympathetic, Mehmet. Like you approve.”

Frueger stared into the distance, his eyes fixed on the pale shimmer of the waterfalls further along the valley. He didn’t reply. Goethe smoked his cigarette.

“You’ve been watching them,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You know the layout of the buildings, how many persons currently in residence.”

Frueger nodded. Goethe watched the dance of the cherry blossom below, mirrored by the circling of birds high overhead. So peaceful here. So isolated.

“You understand we’ll have to kill them all,” he said, slowly. “They’ll have formed bonds, they’ll have their women’s code. They won’t just allow us to walk in and take Catharine away. They’ll try to stop us, either themselves or by involving the authorities. I won’t countenance that, Mehmet.”

“I know.”

“Are you sorry you brought me here?”

Frueger’s eye twitched. “It’s what you paid me for. To find her.”

“That’s not answering the question.”

Again Frueger didn’t reply. Goethe finished his cigarette and stared out across the valley, his expression serene. When he was done he hitched the guns at his waist and turned away from the edge of the canyon, back to where his band of men were waiting with the horses further down the trail. Seven men, all armed. Paid handsomely for their services, just as Frueger had been. But with no personal stake in the matter. Frueger, on the other hand…

Goethe grimaced. “Move out,” he commanded. “Let’s get this done before nightfall.”

At the cusp of the valley, gazing down into the mist through haunted eyes, Frueger heard the clatter of rifles and other firearms and his heart contracted.

I’m sorry, Cathy, he thought. You don’t deserve this, none of you do. But if you thought you could leave the fear and violence of the world you knew behind you, you were wrong. There’s no escape. There can be no sanctuary, no peace. There’s only this.

Mehmet Frueger placed his hand on his own revolver at his belt, and in that moment his eyes grew cold.

“Only this.”

“I have a gift for you, Ella.”

Catharine was standing in the doorway, framed by sunlight. She was twenty years old and slim and boyish in figure, her caramel-blonde hair cut short and the tan linens she wore styled for practicality rather than femininity, but there was a natural beauty about her that nothing could diminish. She didn’t smile often, but when those unguarded moments occurred they were to be treasured. She was smiling now, shyly but with undisguised pride, as she held out a woven bamboo basket filled with oranges.

The woman named Ella, tenant of the small residence Catharine was currently visiting, regarded the fruit with a stern eye. For a second she said nothing. Catharine’s smile faltered.

But then Ella arched an eyebrow and nodded.

“Superb,” she said, sincerely. “Your finest effort yet.”

Catharine moved to clap her hands with glee, completely forgetting that she was still holding the basket. It fell, but before it was past her knees the other woman had swept forward and gathered it in the crook of her arm, angling her catch so that not one of the cluster of bouncing oranges managed to make an escape. Catharine gasped, her hands shaking.

“Oh God, it always amazes me how quick you are,” she blustered. “How do you do that? You-”

“Just practice,” Ella said.

“You must have been a cat in another life.”

The corner of Ella’s mouth twitched. It was the closest she ever got to smiling – compared to her, Catharine was the embodiment of joy – but it was a definite sign of good humor.

“Another life,” Ella murmured. “Such a wonderful notion.”

“You don’t believe in reincarnation?”

Ella’s mouth twitched again.

She held up the basket and examined it by the sunlight streaming through a nearby window, nodding her head again in genuine appreciation. “The old ones were correct when they said you had natural talent,” she said. “You just needed a measure of encouragement. Direction. But you’ve mastered the art now. You could make this your trade; open a workshop in the city, build up an export business. Traditional, hand-woven crafts from the Orient, the western world would be charmed. You could make your fortune.”

Catharine was breathless and a little flushed. “Well,” she said, “one step at a time. This is the first one I’ve completed that doesn’t look like it was made by a ten-year-old.”

“Don’t put yourself down.”

Catharine laughed nervously, her eyes averted. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” she asked. “The city’s a long way from here. And I’m not sure-”

“That you’re ready yet.” Ella inclined her head, her expression enigmatic. “Don’t worry. As you say, one step at a time. But life is such a fragile thing, Cathy. Moments of opportunity, here and then gone. You should embrace every breath of happiness, no matter how fleeting.”

Ella was taller than her friend and older, probably by some ten years at least. She was similarly lean but with more shape to her breasts and hips. She wore black clothes with a neck scarf of an alarming shade of red offering a singular splash of color. Her hair was raven black and long, braided halfway down her back, and her complexion was naturally dark, with olive skin and dusky eyes. There was a burr of husky Mediterranean accent to her speech, just as Catharine’s bore a Germanic lilt. The greatest difference between the two women, however, was in their outward demeanor; where Catharine was awkward and vulnerable so Ella moved with exquisite grace and confidence. Where Ella was sanguine, Catharine was reticent – or, at least, she was outside of present company. Ella brought out the best in her. They’d only known each other six months but already Catharine couldn’t imagine life without her friend. Even now this innocent exchange sparked in her a strange kind of dread as much as elation at being praised, for the thought of leaving the valley and forging a new existence in the city, of building a second life after the ruination of her first…

She couldn’t bear it. Catharine felt the familiar flickering of panic in her chest and she turned away so that Ella couldn’t see her suffering. It wouldn’t have surprised her, however, to learn that the older woman had already noticed the signs. Ella was like that. Perceptive, intelligent, empathic… to the point that there was something about her that seemed positively supernatural.

Catharine was in love with Ella. It was ridiculous, it was futile, but there it was. She could only wonder if, one day, Ella would think fondly enough of her in return to confide in her the truth about who she was. Catharine had her secrets, but Ella… she was the real enigma.

Catharine’s eyes wandered. There was an old, battered trunk in the corner of the room. Ella kept it locked, with the key about her neck on a delicate golden chain tucked behind her scarf, but she hardly ever touched it. She certainly never spoke about what she kept inside. Catharine had only ever seen it open twice, and on both occasions the contents had been fully covered and bound with reams of folded cloth. Catharine respected Ella enough never to have asked, but everyone had the equivalent of skeletons in their closets, especially the women who’d made their lives here in the valley. Ella, it appeared, kept her skeletons locked away in a very literal sense.

“Would you walk to the lake with me tonight?” Ella asked, her dark eyes guarded as she observed her friend’s body language. “Mae Tai mentioned that the stocks of salted fish were running low, and it’s best to check the cages by moonlight.”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Cathy? Are you-”

“I’m fine.”

Catharine glanced back over her shoulder and smiled shyly. “Thank you. For liking the basket.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes, I do.”

Catharine moved to the doorway but then lingered, the weight of her tread suddenly heavy. It seemed that there was something she needed to say.

Life is such a fragile thing, Cathy. Moments of opportunity, here and then gone.

“Ella?” she asked, gazing out into the street. “I’ve… been thinking about something. Do you remember when I said that… when I said I’d had boyfriends, back in Köln, yet I’d never-”

But that was when the gunshot came.

Catharine screamed, then gasped. Her whole body stiffened. She looked down at herself, and she saw the blood on her clothes.

She heard Ella cry her name, briefly. She turned towards her.

And then she fell.

A ghostly wind rattled along the canyon, sifting through the thicker trees like searching fingers. Goethe and his men descended the valley trail through a sudden blizzard of red and pink and white as more blossom dislodged from the boughs and spiraled like bloody snowflakes with every new gust. The colorful storm served to obscure the party’s approach until they reached the makeshift fence of weathered wooden stakes that delineated the perimeter of the valley community, and by that point it was too late to raise the alarm.

There was an old woman in the bell tower, hanging newly washed linens from the lines strung between the spire and nearby trees. She saw the men and saw their guns, but even as she rang the bell to signal warning so the men were dismounting and separating in prearranged method. The old woman cried when she heard the first gunshot ring out, and clasped her hands in desperate prayer.

But there was no God to hear her. Not today.

Down below, Goethe cast an approving glance towards the swarthy fellow on his right flank as that man lowered the rifle he’d just discharged. The woman he’d gunned down in cold blood had heralded from the Balkans, judging by the hard look of her and by the pitch of her accent as she’d stepped out onto the path in front of them with a shotgun in hand, demanding they cease their invasion of public property. He’d never liked the Slavs.

“Do what needs to be done,” Goethe said, lighting a new cigarette. “And bring me my daughter.”

“Magda!” Catharine wept. “Oh, Christ, they shot her, they just shot her! Someone-”

“Hush,” Ella snapped.

She bent to her friend and dragged her clear of the doorway, her strength as surprising as her earlier swiftness of reflex. Ella’s first thought had been that Catharine herself had been shot, but a quick judgment of the blood splatter on her clothes had revealed the truth. Someone else had been gunned down in the street outside. Magda, Catharine had said, the Serbian widow. Catharine had witnessed it, had been lashed by the murdered woman’s blood.

Magda had journeyed here, to Japan, to escape her past. Everyone was looking to escape something.

Ella stilled. She had come close to losing her friend. Outside, the bell tolled from the tower. There was another gunshot, then another. Screams.

There was no escape. Not from life… and not from death. Another friend had told her that, once.

We can’t run from death, darlin’. Because wherever you go, it’s already there waitin’.

Ella’s eyes darkened and a certain, terrible peace came upon her like a rapture.

“Stay here,” she said, quietly. “I’ll come back for you.”

“What? Ella?” Catharine looked alarmed, her eyes wide and bright like a child’s. “Where are you going? Don’t be stupid, you can’t…”

Her voice trailed away as she saw her friend’s expression. There was a darkness about her that she’d never witnessed in the six months they’d known one another. It frightened her. Silently she watched the older woman cross to the battered old trunk in the corner of the room and unlock it with the key from underneath her red scarf. From the trunk Ella quickly withdrew two bundles of colorful cloth and laid them on a nearby table. She unwrapped the bundles without ceremony.

Catharine stood, her legs weak. She glanced worriedly at the door, flinching at every gunshot and paling further with every woman’s cry that reached her ears, but she couldn’t help but be drawn to what Ella was unpacking on the table.

They were weapons. In one bundle, a sword – a katana – with a black leather grip and an unadorned silver blade sheathed in a frail black scabbard. In the other, a strange pair of objects; like daggers but slightly larger, with a trident arrangement of three prongs extending from each knuckle, the outer two points in each instance far shorter than the more lethal central spike, and curled where that middle blade with perfectly straight.

“What are they?” she breathed. “Ella…?”

The woman with the raven black hair and the dusky eyes turned, the katana and scabbard now belted at her slender waist and the two other weapons at hand, one in each. Balanced. Deadly.

“They are sai,” the woman said. “And my true name is Elektra Natchios. Heed me, Catharine. Hide here and remain hidden, no matter what atrocities you hear or the terrible images those sounds bring to mind. I will come for you. You understand?”

“But what are you going to do?”

Elektra hesitated in the doorway for a heartbeat, wind flickering at her hair and scarf, her eyes black as cherry stones.

“What needs to be done,” she said, softly.

Do what needs to be done.

The men moved through the village that was not a village, loading and aiming and firing with grim precision before reloading and continuing on their way. Frueger was with them, although his heart was heavy. He didn’t flinch at gunning down innocent women; he was a mercenary of certain experience and these faces wouldn’t haunt his future dreams any more than similar faces from the past had ever done. But he couldn’t help but dwell on Catharine, and the terror being visited upon her now when she believed herself safe.

Catharine Goethe had absconded from the family home in Köln over a year ago. It had taken Frueger a long time to track her on her father’s behalf, to Japan and then to the Kagoshima prefecture, and then to this reclusive commune in the Kirishima mountains. But Goethe had never given up hope of finding his wayward daughter, and his faith in Frueger had never wavered. Rightly so. Frueger was not a man known for failure.

He was, however, a man now suffering a crisis of conscience. He’d known Catharine since she was a young girl and without a child of his own he’d always felt affection for her, even protective. He understood why she’d run away from home, and he didn’t blame her for it. Yet still he’d led Goethe here. It was a betrayal, and he hated himself for that. But that was the way he’d lived his life.

To do what needed to be done.

And when Frueger happened to look through the back window of one building and saw Catharine cowering behind a table, hidden from the main door but completely exposed to his view, he found himself faced with a dreadful decision…

The youngest member of the women’s community was eighteen-year-old Shiri, a Japanese girl. The recovering victim of a childhood of familial abuse, her good heart and resilient spirit deserved better than to be shot in the face by a man she didn’t know and who cared nothing for her. But this was her regrettable fate.

The man stood over Shiri’s body as she lay bleeding. The sight of the bloody hole between her eyes excited him, as did the way she twitched when she took her last gurgling breath. The man smiled.

He was still smiling when Elektra plunged one of her sai into his back, separating three of his upper vertebrae and penetrating his heart. She twisted the weapon free and then was gone before the man had even fallen to his knees, blood rising in his mouth along with a small gasp of shock. His killer didn’t linger to mourn Shiri; there’d be time enough for that, as there always was.

In the next building along two executions had already occurred, the corpses bleeding out onto recently washed floors. One woman remained alive, flanked by two assailants. The first raised his gun and pressed it against the woman’s near temple as she closed her eyes and sobbed.

Elektra entered through the window, a red and black feather gliding along a shaft of sunlight. Guiding the elegant sweep of her physical momentum into the cut of her sword, she decapitated the nearest man with minimum effort and then unbalanced the other by rolling against him in almost intimate fashion, pressing her weight upon the three key points of his lower body – ankle, knee and hip – to lift him bodily from the floor. As the man tipped she reversed her initial sword thrust and drew the lower edge delicately across his exposed throat with less force than would be exerted to slice a loaf of bread.

It was beautiful, graceful death. The man’s blood spilled and guttered as he crashed to the ground, but Elektra was already moving on. She was thinking of Catharine. She couldn’t stop.

Outside, more bodies, and two more men seeking victims. Elektra allowed herself to be observed momentarily, then melted back into the scant shadows that laced the wall of the building immediately to the nearest man’s right. She ducked and slid, so that her angle and vantage were now completely at odds with where the two men believed her to be – even though, if they’d just taken a second to breathe and adjust their perception, they could have seen her in spite of the gloom. Elektra was well versed in the arts of fooling such perception.

One of the men raised his automatic rifle and fired, carving a useless series of holes in the dull plaster of the building’s façade. Unnoticed by anything outside the man’s peripheral vision, Elektra swept close and stabbed the central spike of her nearest sai through the undercurve of his left kneecap, up into the meat of his leg, before flexing her wrist and removing the cap – and much of the surrounding flesh – as if levering off the lid of an oyster.

The man screamed and buckled, just as Elektra leaned in behind him and angled the point of the same sai along the length of his right hamstring. The distress was enough to cause the man to fire his rifle with wild abandon, cutting down his fellow where he stood as well as a third man who had just emerged at the head of the street, just as his assailant had intended. Elektra drifted clear of the melee like a wraith, allowing her enemy to gun down his own colleagues and then to quickly lose consciousness and bleed out from his own injuries.

The man at the end of the street was shot but still alive. Elektra rectified that by plunging her sai into his face as she passed, through the eye and into the brain. She didn’t look at him when she killed him. To her, he was less than nothing.

There was no more gunfire now. Just echoing cries, and the persistent ringing of the bell in the tower. Elektra moved in silence, a flicker of dark, reflected light. There was one last man in her immediate vicinity, olive-skinned and with a slug moustache. He was Greek, Elektra noted. That offended her utterly. She approached him brazenly from the side, encouraging him to turn so that she could plunge the downward curve of her katana into the fleshy well beneath the tip of his breastbone and then cut down through his stomach all the way to the groin, releasing the wormlike spool of his intestines in a stinking gush. She then stabbed him through the neck with one of her sai for good measure, and pushed his face away so it could offend her no more.

The man collapsed in his own filth. Elektra entered the shadows and stilled, listening.

There was cherry blossom on the wind.

Elektra moved. Disappeared.

The bell tolled in its tower, and women wept.

And then Catharine screamed as Frueger bundled her from the building where she’d been hiding and placed her in her father’s arms. Frueger bowed his head, looking away in shame. If Goethe noticed – and, in truth, he surely did – then he said nothing. He understood the mercenary’s reluctance in this matter, but the fact that Frueger continued to do his job as bidden spoke volumes for his loyalty. Goethe would reward him when all this was done.

“The problems you’ve caused me, girl,” Goethe said, sadly. He gripped Catharine about the shoulders with one strong arm and cupped her chin with his other hand, forcing her to raise her face.

“Leave me alone!” Catharine hissed, choking on her own tears and mucus. “You bastard. You stinking bastard! You killed my mother, you murdered her-”

“She was going to leave me. Take you with her. I didn’t want to lose you, little one,” Goethe breathed. And then he smiled. “Ironic,” he murmured. “I lost you anyway. And this place, this refuge you found, so far away from home… exactly the kind of place your mother would have chosen if she’d gained her freedom. And where do ideas like that get you? Hm? All these women, Catharine. All these hideaways. Your friends. They’re dead now, because of you. So, you’re coming home with me now. Back where you belong. And if you ever think about running away again, just think on what’s happened here.”

“Please. Please, no. Don’t-”

“Hush, little one. It’s already done. Everyone’s dead. You hear? No more gunfire. My men have done their work, you see.”

Catharine stiffened, her eyes suddenly round and wild. She jerked, looking one way and then the other. No. No!

“Ella,” she whimpered. “Oh, God. Tell me you didn’t, tell me she’s not-”

“Everyone, Catharine,” Goethe whispered, stroking his daughter’s hair. He grimaced. She’d had it cut, like a boy. That would never do. She’d have to grow it out again, like her mother. Because she’d be taking her mother’s place now, after all.

“Finish here, Mehmet,” Goethe said, glancing at the other man.

Frueger nodded, understanding. He clipped his revolver at his belt and turned away to go gather the troops, as assured as Goethe that the lack of gunfire indicated all the women in the community were now dead, but then he stopped.

There was one woman left, at least. Slender, raven haired, with a dusky complexion and a red scarf about her throat. She was standing in the street up ahead, a pair of curious silver weapons at hand, glinting in the morning sunlight. Cherry blossom scattered in the air all about her like confetti at a wedding. The woman’s eyes were black and cold, and as he stared into them so Frueger felt his soul shrivel.

Goethe followed Frueger’s gaze. He scowled. When Catharine saw her friend, she exhaled a sound somewhere between relief and despair.

“Get your gun out again, Mehmet,” Goethe snapped. “Kill her.”

Frueger’s hand trailed to his revolver. But then his hand stilled, not through fear but through a riot of altogether different emotions.

“Do it!” Goethe roared. “Mehmet, for the love of Christ!”

Something about the woman in the red scarf had unnerved him, as well it might. Frueger looked at Catharine. He looked at the woman with the sword. He closed his eyes, as something in his heart died.

He removed his hand from his gun, untouched.

“I had a friend,” Elektra Natchios said, in a voice as still and clear as a golden lake on a day of slumbering breeze. “He told me that we cannot run from death. Not because death is quicker than us, not because it will never tire and we will… just because, wherever we try and run to, death is already there. Life isn’t the antithesis of death. Life isdeath. Sometimes…”

Elektra faltered. Something in her dark eyes glistened, and one hand strayed absently towards her abdomen.

“Sometimes,” she said, quietly, “a new life doesn’t even get a chance to be before death takes hold.”

My mother died as I lay newborn in her arms. I never even got the chance to hold my own children.

Life is such a fragile thing.

Goethe made a noise of disgust. Frueger kept his head bowed. Catharine looked on, entranced by her friend despite the desperate situation.

Elektra stared at Goethe, her eyes blacker still, even more than before.

“What you’ve done here today… it cannot be forgiven,” she breathed. “It can’t be accepted. But it was inevitable. Because we can’t run from death, and we can’t hide. There is no escape. I should have known that better than anyone, not just because of my friend’s advice, but because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known.”

Elektra turned her sword so that the blade caught the light and then stepped forward.

Goethe hesitated. Then he snarled and pushed his daughter clear, freeing his hands so that he had scramble for his own gun. However, when his fingers clutched at his belt, they felt nothing. He looked down and saw that the gun was gone.

It was now in Catharine’s possession.

“You killed my mother,” Catharine said, in a tiny voice. “And you made me watch as you did it. I hope you burn in hell.”

She pulled the trigger, and her father jerked and spun at the impact. His eyes shot wide and he grabbed at his chest. Blood spilled through his fingers. Catharine shot him again, in the face, and Goethe fell.

No escape. Now Goethe understood that too.

Elektra drew close and gathered Catharine in her arms, carefully sliding the gun from her trembling hands. Catharine collapsed, weeping. Elektra looked at Mehmet Frueger, who was utterly broken but met her gaze all the same.

“I brought him here,” Frueger said. “All of this is on me.”

Elektra considered the man with her dark, dark eyes, and then nodded. She reached out and took his hand, then returned it to the revolver at his belt.

“Then do what needs to be done,” she said.

And, after she had led Catharine Goethe away, Frueger took his gun and did exactly that.

There were survivors aplenty of the commune massacre. Goethe’s men had killed thirteen women before Elektra had dispatched the killers in turn, saving around forty further lives. Those survivors were grateful enough to remain and deal with the authorities and everything that came after, allowing Elektra to vacate the immediately vicinity; it was readily apparent that she and the establishment weren’t on particularly good terms, although no one questioned her motives further.

Catharine was understandably traumatized by events. She accepted that she would require professional counseling, and the other surviving women from the community rallied around her, just as they’d done when she’d first arrived among them one year before. But there was hope. Catharine had already seen such terrible things in her life that Elektra was convinced she’d endure this latest episode. Even so, when she returned to the valley to pay Catharine a clandestine visit three weeks later, on a night when the full moon hung low and pewter bright in a cloudless, indigo sky, she approached the reunion with the utmost care.

“Ella…?”

Catharine awoke to find the other woman sitting at the end of her bed, her black hair loosened from its braid and her dusky skin shining in the moonlight. Her scarf was still an alarming red. She was still beautiful. Catharine smiled and reached out to touch her friend’s cheek.

“You know that’s not my real name,” Elektra Natchios said.

“You’ll always be Ella to me.”

Outside there was the steady rush of water from the nearby river and the ring on wind chimes on the breeze. The night air smelled of jasmine and cherry blossom.

“I came to say goodbye,” Elektra murmured. “I’m returning to Europe tomorrow.”

Catharine nodded.

“You said you’d come back for me, and you kept your promise,” she said, her eyes averted. “But… I understand you now. A little. I can’t hold you to a pledge like that forever. I want you to know that… I can’t thank you enough. For saving me. And as many of the others as you could. I don’t know what brought you to Japan, the experiences and memories that drive you. I don’t know what you’ll do now. I just…”

Catharine’s cheeks were glistening. She shivered, and placed a trembling finger to her own lips.

“I’m gabbling. I’m sorry. All these words, just to stop myself saying what I really want to say. Which is that I… that-”

She closed her eyes.

She breathed.

“That I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, Ella. I know you don’t feel the same, and I know that after tonight I’ll probably never see you again, but I can’t let you leave without telling you. Forgive me.”

The wind whispered and the chimes sang. Catharine opened her eyes once more… and when she looked her room was empty.

Her heart contracted and she slumped in her bed, a sob rising in her throat. But then, after a moment of loneliness that seemed like it would stretch forever, the shadows spoke.

“Cathy.”

Elektra’s face appeared outside the window, dark and wonderful. And… she was smiling. The first time Catharine had ever seen her smile.

“I promised you something else,” Elektra said, gently. “A walk to the lake in the moonlight, on my last night in Japan. What do you say?”

Catharine stared out into the night.

Life is such a fragile thing, Cathy. Moments of opportunity, here and then gone. You should embrace every breath of happiness, no matter how fleeting.

She returned her friend’s shining smile.

“Yes,” she replied. “I say, yes.”